Welcome to the Santa Fe Garden Blog. This blog is owned and run by me, Kendall McCumber, with the help of friends who share my love of gardening, plants, food and photography, namely Yeshey Myles, Jenny Harris and John Kieling.

It is built with the intention to share information and share the joy, anguish and humor of gardening in the high altitude desert of Santa Fe and the surrounding areas. While gardening here can be very tricky, it can also be very rewarding. Many wonderful things grow wild here, and many more can be cultivated with patience. There are many things that don’t grow, due to altitude, cold, cold nights in the summer, high pH in the soil and water, strong sun, wind and many other things that we encounter on our journey to grow things here.

I believe that gardening is one of the most popular past times in Santa Fe, (maybe second after hiking), after all, we are land locked.  We have beautiful weather, beautiful sunsets and lighting at other times of day, which makes being outside looking at plants that much more fun.  And Santa Fe has lovely houses, and lovely houses call for lovely gardens.  Our sunshine inspires us to get outside and grow things, both for beauty and for food.

Many things can make gardening easier here, such as timing, plant selection, proper soil additions and amendments, good hardscaping, proper design, and patience. I hope to share with you what I have learned from twenty-two years as a hobby gardener and twenty years as a career landscape designer and gardener.  My garden tastes range from simple and xeric, to formal, to lush, funky, overgrown and wild.  I love the sophistication that some of my client’s homes call for, but I love to grow for the fun of it too.

While I don’t have all of the answers, I feel like careful observation and commentary are the only way to track what is going on in this fickle environment. My attempts at bettering my own life and the lives of others through gardening and landscaping while remaining true to my core beliefs as an environmentalist have been endless and with mixed results. But mostly gardening has brought joy to me, my family, my friends and many, many clients. I hope over the years to create a library of observances and trial and error experiments that will help other gardeners. If you would like to contribute an article, please email me. If you would like to post a question related to gardening in Santa Fe, please post it in the question and answers, and I will do my best to answer it within the week.

Happy gardening: above all, have fun with it!