5 master gardeners are opening up their Tucson yards

Do you want a peek at the yards of Tucson's expert gardeners? You’re in luck, because it’s time for the 23rd annual Master Gardener Home Garden Tour.

Tickets are now on sale for $20 for the April 6 self-guided tour, which will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The five gardens featured this year include two that address topics near and dear to Sonoran gardeners’ hearts: how to grow tomatoes and how to have happy citrus trees.

The Pima County Master Gardener Demonstration Gardens, 4210 N. Campbell Ave., will also be hosting three special exhibits with the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the Tucson Audubon Society, and the Southern Arizona Beekeepers Association. With so much to choose from, Tucsonans will have a hard time deciding what to see.

Tomatoes ‘R’ Us

If you want to grow tomatoes, don’t miss this garden tour, which features lots of great tips on how to succeed with tomatoes in Tucson. Owners Dru Duncan and Gary Vender have been actively growing tomatoes on the property since before 2012, first in raised beds and then in the ground. They usually harvest between 4,000 and 8,000 tomatoes each year.

“Anybody can do it,” says Vender.

The garden is functional and fertile, an oasis of greenery and food production in an urban central Tucson neighborhood.

Vender has improved the soil over that time enough so that the tomatoes thrive. He’s added a system for shade protection with 40% shade cloth that slides into place over the planting area. This has the added advantage of discouraging birds from poking holes in their tomatoes.

There’s also a greenhouse for starting the seedlings in winter. “I plant the seeds in December, and then I put them on shelves on heating pads. I put domes over the trays and that keeps the moisture in there. And the heating pads keep it nice and warm,” says Duncan.

Vender and Duncan grow their own heirloom tomatoes from seed. In addition, they get experimental hybrid tomato seeds from researcher Harry Klee at the University of Florida. Each year, they record all the statistics about the hybrid tomatoes and send them back to Klee.

Duncan also keeps a daily gardening journal, which she advises all gardeners to do. “We've even actually done a presentation for the library talks on keeping a garden journal,” Duncan says. “It's amazing how many people have gardens and they don't keep a journal. But that's the key. So we'll have our garden journal out here with pictures and stuff for people to see.”

“It's always an experiment here. I just love it. Every year it's a little different,” says Duncan.

Serendipity: Garden Design and Evolution

This Catalina Foothills garden has been around for more than 30 years. Over that time, owner Betsy Decker has changed its footprint and various plants have come and gone. The focus of the garden is trees, which provide cool shade and a microclimate that allows other plants to thrive. There are also rainwater harvesting tanks to check out. The garden exudes a cool tranquility.

At first, Decker didn’t know how to garden in Arizona. “When we first moved here — having lived in California, I grew up in the Midwest — it was like gardening on the moon or something,” Decker recounts. She soon joined the Master Gardener program and was able to start her garden.

Over the years, many plants have come and gone, but the basic structure of her garden, built around the trees and the pool, has remained. She’s enjoyed having an unplanned garden, and when asked to name the garden for the tour Decker and her husband both came up with “Serendipity.”

She encourages other gardeners to have the same philosophy, and not be afraid to experiment. But she credits the Master Gardener program with giving her the tools and confidence to do that.

“I think the Master Gardener program is invaluable,” she says.

Citrus in the Southwest

If you want to know how to grow citrus in the desert, then this garden is a must see. Owner Maria Carbajal has 19 citrus trees and one grapefruit tree that is 20 feet tall and over 40 years old. Her citrus trees include blood orange, Meyer lemon and a large variety of others. Her midtown yard is peaceful, calm and tidy, and both humans and the citrus seem very content there.

When Carbajal moved to the house 40 years ago, she knew she wanted citrus trees. “That's what my mom had, my parents had. And I mean, we would go out there and we'd pick an orange or we'd pick a grapefruit or we'd pick a lemon and there's nothing like having fruit in your backyard. So when I got married and moved over here about a year after I decided, you know what, I'm gonna do the same thing,” says Carbajal.

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Her first trees were a grapefruit, a lemon and an orange. The grapefruit tree is still in her yard, 40 years later, looking happy and healthy. Her yard has 18 other citrus trees and shrubs, with bountiful fruit. Carbajal loves the year-round greenery that citrus provide. “A yard does not look ugly with citrus because it's green year round,” she says.

She also has a collection of 18 rose bushes, which should be blooming at the time of the tour, as well as colorful pots of flowers around the yard. She waters most of her plants from two large rainwater cisterns.

Carbajal says she didn’t have any major problems over the years with her citrus, despite the fact that she made some mistakes with her trees. “Once I went to the Master Gardener classes, then I realized everything I had been doing was not correct.” She was lucky, however, in having good soil without any caliche.

In addition to visitors having access to Carbajal’s vast store of knowledge, Master Gardener Deb North will be on site the day of the tour to answer questions about growing citrus in Tucson.

"Anyone can grow citrus in Tucson,” says Carbajal. “And I hope they do, because there's nothing like eating a fresh orange, making lemon pies with those big old lemons and lemon curd with the Meyer lemons.”

Keep it Simple

Owner Suzie Adams started her garden on Tucson's north side in 2014 and has focused on agave and other succulents and food plants. She favors a minimal work approach to gardening, and also minimizes her municipal water use. Her garden is simple and serene.

One of the first additions to her yard were raised beds that run the periphery of her garden. “I had them build the raised beds because I wanted to grow vegetables. And then that's how I ended up eventually in the master garden program, because I didn't know how to garden in the desert,” says Adams.

She grows tomatoes, herbs, salad kale and a variety of other vegetables. In addition, she has containers around the yard with colorful flowers. Everything is on irrigation, so she doesn't need to fuss with watering. The big takeaway she wants visitors to get is that a garden can be pretty without a lot of work.

Adams is also the Master Gardener expert on composting, and she will have a composting education station during the tour so both adults and kids can learn how to do it. She considers composting a fairly straightforward skill. She recommends keeping a bucket in the kitchen for scraps, and when the bucket is full, she adds a cup of water before she takes it out to the compost pile, so the microorganisms have the water they need to thrive.

“As long as you feed your microorganisms, if you give them water and food, they're gonna grow and they're gonna break it down,” Adams says.

Sonoran Desert Show

This lovely garden was started in 2018 and much of the work was done during the pandemic as owner Larry Lynam was stuck in his house. Lynam and his partner moved to Tucson from Florida, where Lynam was a Master Gardener. Initially they wanted a pool in the backyard, so much of the yard didn't start getting landscaped until about 2019.

The garden is perched in the Sabino Canyon area, with stunning views of the Catalinas and natural desert vegetation which Lynam has carefully curated.

After moving to Tucson, Lynam found that gardening in the desert was very different to the tropical gardening he was used to.

“There's so many more challenges here in the desert than I faced back in Florida," he said. "First of all, the rainfall — it's so limited so you’ve got to really learn to irrigate properly. The soil is different. I mean, there's not near as much organic matter … it's dry, it's hot, it's cold. It's always a challenge. And then the wildlife. Good gosh!”

Lynam’s had a few run-ins with local wildlife, including having to chase a group of deer out of his garden. “My neighbors got the biggest kick watching me herd seven deer down the street,” he recalls. There was also a squirrel that kept stealing all his peaches. That problem was resolved by a neighborhood bobcat.

“We love having the animals, but trying to establish that equilibrium with them and not just create a buffet — it's been a challenge,” Lynam says. Right now, he says, “I'm having fun trying to figure out what the javelina will leave alone.”

Besides putting in lots of plants and irrigation, Lynam has been working on passive rainwater harvesting on his property, which is quite hilly. “My goal is, any drop of water that makes it off the slope and hits the street, that's a failure. So I'm trying to capture it, pull it, spread it and retain it as much as possible,” he says.

Lynam takes a lot of care now to choose plants that are native and will do well in his garden. “I try to make sure I buy desert-adapted and low-water (plants). If something says it's a moderate water user, I just pass it by,” he says. “The best thing I can do is resist falling in love with a plant when I see it. I need to come home and look and make sure, is this a plant for my conditions? And it's just learning how to stop wasting money by buying things that are shiny and pretty just because they're shiny and pretty.”

Get a glimpse of Tucson's master gardeners' yards