Creating a desert rain garden in the Tucson and Green Valley area is a unique way to look at landscaping. A “rain garden” is a planting area where the species are plants which can survive solely on rainfall. Granted, there will be times when rainfall is scarce and you may need to give some plants a little help, but choosing the right plants makes this work, along with incorporating passive water harvesting techniques. To do this, shape your yard in such a way as to capture and slow down rainfall as it passes through. You don’t need to create ditches or ponds. Depressing areas or making basins around trees and planting areas allows the water to flow through and around plants with shallow swales.
In the bottom of basin areas, plant species that can take occasional inundation. This includes Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa), deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens), Goodding’s verbena (Verbena gooddingii), and hummingbird trumpet (Zauschneria californica). Along the edges of swales plant species such as desert agave (Agave deserti), bee bush (Aloysia gratissima), desert lavender (Hyptis emoryi) and globemallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua); all of which benefit from the rain water but do not like to sit in standing water. Desert Lavender freezes at 25 degrees, but will come back in the spring.
Brookbank, George. Desert Landscaping, The University of Arizona Press. 1992
Arizona Municipal Water Users Association. Landscape Plants for the ArizonaDesert. Ironwood Press. 2004
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