Wild Beauty

South Mountain community, Phoenix, AZ

I took this photo this morning of a local garden that I have always loved. While so many Phoenicians prefer manicured lawns with shrubbery and small trees butchered into balls and cubes, which I find to be distasteful, the owner of this yard believes in the beauty of letting things be. I love the shagginess of those untrimmed palm trees. There is a certain lushness here, a sense of an oasis thriving right in the middle of the desert. To be sure, I would probably not choose to grow a garden as densely packed with plants as this in Phoenix, fearing to give an attractive hiding place to rattlesnakes and scorpions. Instead, I would prefer a xeriscaping approach to landscaping, using native desert plants that have a high tolerance of drought and heat, but I would leave my shrubbery and trees alone to grow naturally, without manicure. At any rate, I really love this natural, untamed beauty. Things are often most beautiful when they simply are what they are, without apology, and without forcing them into unnatural shapes that are nothing more than illusion.