Two plants I’m excited about, plus a new nursery just outside of downtown Las Vegas that is well worth the drive
Indigo on the brain. The ‘i’ in Roy G. Biv. The color that blue wishes it were. A color I am now admiring on a potted Psorothamnus arborescens, Mojave indigo, which has decided to bloom on a warm, winter afternoon on a shelf at Las Vegas’s newest nursery, Mojave Bloom, while a song by the Indigo Girls bounces around my head.
The flowers on this desert shrub are so blue (if there is a difference between indigo and blue, I cannot tell) that I think I will collect only blue flowers from now until forever.
If anyone can help me achieve this goal, it is Brenna, the nursery manager at Mojave Bloom. Located just past Cashman Field on the edge of downtown Las Vegas, this new nursery is worth the drive. It is as charming as its name.
Mojave Bloom is a true plant boutique, selling local pottery, an assortment of houseplants, as well as artfully arranged displays of native and desert-adapted shrubs, flowers, trees, and succulents.
But it is the surprising discovery of indigo that has me most excited about this new nursery.
The indigos of America’s great deserts are in the Psorothamnus genus, which is home to just under a dozen species. I picked up two of these species, arborescens and schottii. Schottii, Schott’s indigo (formerly dalea), is native to the Sonoran desert. Arborescens, Mojave indigo, is native to the Mojave desert and is more widespread, occurring in the Sonoran and Great Basin deserts as well as canyon country on the Utah-Arizona border, according to the Utah Department of Natural Resources. Both shrubs take a lot of sun, heat, and hardly any water.
My two shrubs are small, still sitting in their one-gallon pots, waiting to go into the ground on a warm and sunny day, like the one that brought me to Mojave Bloom.
Native and unique plants are difficult to source in Las Vegas. Most garden centers sell the same few plants that can tolerate the narrowly overlapping conditions of southern California and southern Nevada, as if Las Vegas were just a Los Angeles suburb. But our native flora are beautiful, and there are many nonnative plants from other arid lands that grow remarkably well here.
I’m very glad Mojave Bloom is taking efforts to sell native and unique plants.
It is a noble endeavor for a nursery because, my Psorothamnus arborescens notwithstanding, natives don’t always look their best in a pot. The casual gardener is unlikely to intentionally place a native plant in her cart. But given the diversity of plants at Mojave Bloom, both indoors and outdoors, there’s a good chance shoppers might, on an impulsive whim, pick up a native—especially when the plants are accompanied by clear descriptions (which Mojave Bloom thankfully deploys) and photos of peak bloom (which could be added to displays).
But there are many gardeners wise enough to come to Mojave Bloom specifically for native plants, though I was not initially among them. Curiosity took me first to Mojave Bloom; I came to rubberneck, to wander the aisles and walk away with ideas for spring. Instead I walked away with two different indigo species, a desert senna, and two desert grapes that I hope to let run a little wild near the cooler, shadier patio on the northeast side of my garden near a palm that likes a bit more water. I got the idea from Brenna and I’m eager to get to it.
I am a poor garden designer—I will try almost anything that takes hardly any water (the grapes are a rare exception). My design instinct is rooted in abundance. I figure you can plant just about anything you like as long as you plant a lot of it. I have a few specimen plants—indigo shrubs are now among them—but if they grow well I will add more, filling out blank areas near them with wild and artful drifts of blue.
Other blue plants have started to pop up already. California blue bells are now tiny rosettes against the decomposing granite that I use liberally as a garden mulch. They have seeded themselves everywhere. A lovely little almost-indigo weed. As I said, I would make my entire garden blue. That would be fine.
Mojave Gardener 