End of the gardening season

High performers in our high desert garden

Thanks to a delayed first frost, Santa Fe is enjoying lingering colors of wildflowers on the roadsides, and the last hardy blooms in our gardens. It’s a good time for looking back at this year’s planting successes, and planning ahead for next year’s improvements.

Since we moved here, my husband has discovered a real talent for gardening and landscaping! He has really tackled soil-building and irrigation projects and cultivated his innate sense of design to care for our patch of piñon-juniper woodland and establish our waterwise, native pollinator garden. The successes in our garden belong entirely to him and his hard labor. As a notorious plantkiller, I’ve restricted my participation to research and shopping (and sipping coffee in a lawn chair while applauding, of course!)

The biggest winner in our garden this year was undoubtedly the Rocky Mountain iris, Iris missouriensis. I purchased this via mail order in 2017. It took a couple of years for it to take off, but this year, the iris was our early spring attraction with over 20 flower stalks, each bearing two to three buds.

The second big winner was Rocky Mountain penstemon, Penstemon strictus. We planted this in 2021, and this year’s crop was a glorious mound of royal blue in June.

Our late summer success was the agastache. This hummingbird favorite formed a huge, fragrant drift in our front portal. It was the reason for many high-speed aerial battles between the rufous and calliope hummingbirds as they stocked up on pre-migration calories!

An unsung hero was Gaillardia pulchella, or Indian blanket. Bees and butterflies adore this red and yellow aster family perennial. As long as you pinch off the spent flower heads, it will bloom steadily from July until frost.

What about next year?

My hubby and I were so inspired by the success of the Rocky Mountain iris, and our hard luck irises planted by the lady we bought our house from, we decided to order an assortment pack of dwarf species iris to tuck into our front portal and our rock/cactus garden.

Hummingbirds love sugar water feeders, but they love natural flower nectar more. We planted Mojave sage, Salvia pachyphylla this year, and are waiting for a 1/4 lb pack of “western hummingbird mix” native wildflower seeds to spread in a strategic location for next year.

Our cacti did very well this spring, thanks to late snows, but the cactus garden area has been languishing. We still have to come up with a great concept for the space, and neither of us wants to tackle it in a big way next year. However, I *do* want some seasonal color changes to look at from our living room, so maybe some of the iris packet and some scattered wildflower seeds just to cover our bases for a year or two?

How did your garden grow this year? Any favorites—or plants that didn’t make the cut?