Desert garden author in Yuma Saturday

  Grab your trowels, rakes and shovels because Southwest horticulturist Mary Irish will be in town Saturday to lecture about "Plants for Desert Gardens" at the Gila Mountain United Methodist Church, 12716 North Frontage Road in the Foothills.

 Mary's lecture is scheduled from 1 to 2 p.m., and 2 to 3:30 p.m. is reserved for questions and answers, as well as time for book sales and book signings.

  Tickets at $15 each are available by calling Cal Kelley at 1-581-3981 or Jean Hobson at 305-9112 or at the door. The event is sponsored by the Yuma Garden Club.

  Mary has been a prominent voice in Southwestern horticulture for the past 23 years and spent 11 years as the director of public horticulture at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. She is the author of eight books on Southwestern gardening. She knows desert gardening.

  "I'm planning on concentrating on perennials and flowering woody plants," she said in a recent phone interview. "There are some wonderfully colorful plants that grow well in Yuma's climate. Both yellow and red birds of paradise do really well."

  A Texas native with a master's degree in geography from Texas A&M University, Mary and her noted photographer husband, Gary, have been
Arizona residents since 1985, when they moved to Phoenix. Mary was soon working as a volunteer at the Desert Botanical Garden, where her enthusiasm for desert gardening earned her a full-time position and eventually director of public horticulture.

  She is a regular contributor to Sunset magazine and also teaches classes on beginning gardening, as well as classes on the care of desert plants and trees for the cities of Avondale, Peoria, Phoenix and Scottsdale.

  When asked about current specific plants that she thinks would go well in Yuma, she replied: "I'm big on things like the Barbados cherry, but something that would really grow well in Yuma would be bulbs. There's such an enormous variety of them available, and the desert soil in Yuma is just perfect for bulbs."

  She said Yuma has the same problems as most of the desert Southwest.

  "Heat is the real enemy of plants here - heat and proper pruning. I get more questions from people about the proper time to prune, as well as the proper planting time. You can quickly kill a plant or tree in this climate if you don't prune at the right time.

  "Of course, my talks are normally wide ranging over a variety of topics about gardening here in the desert. We always seem to spend a lot of time on succulents and agaves, as everyone seems to have them in their yards and they are the ultimate desert plants."

  As an added bonus on Saturday, Mary's husband will bring along a collection of his desert photographs for display. Gary and Mary co-authored the book "Agaves, Yuccas and Related Plants," published by Timber Press in 2000.