Goodness sakes it's hot! I know, we choose to live here but when it is consistently 115 degrees (and soars to 122 for days at a time) and then the humidity arrives earlier than usual, ick!!

Every year we endure the same issues with landscape -- trying to keep the succulents and new plantings alive. Several of our clients opted to redo their landscape or have significant trimming done just before that last unexpected heat wave (including me!).

Now the challenge is to keep it all from burning to a crisp - no easy feat! Some plants, like the popular fichus commonly used to create wind breaks and set property boundaries, suffer during their first summer after planting. Often, some of them won't make it.

In nearly all cases we've managed to keep the green growing but there have been a few casualties, like there are every year. It's the desert. It's hot. And the sun is brutal.

A few tips about plants for the desert:

--Whether you hire someone (us?!?) to redo your landscape or if you are selecting new plants yourself; ask the nursery where those plants came from. For example, if you go to a local big box self-improvement store here in the desert, their plants all come from San Diego.

Obviously the climate in San Diego is much more temperate than our desert extremes so their plants will suffer more than usual once planted into the sun - even though they are full sun varieties.

--Nurseries are typically shady and that's to help the plants thrive and look extra beautiful. But again, once you put these plants in full sun, it is a shock to their system.

--Plants near block walls and stucco suffer the most as those building materials act as an oven; cooking plants.

--Most flowers out here are seasonal, meaning they are planted for winter, look gorgeous and then are pulled out for summer. Sometimes we plant summer flowers but often the beds are empty until Fall.

--Grass will look terrible - bare and dead spots abound from July through October or until the Fall scalp and reseed. No, the grass here does not look lush and green year 'round (sorry about that!)

--Forget HOA common areas altogether during summer -- HOA's are good stewards of your assessments and typically will not replace plants or grass in common areas until the weather cools down. Their goal is to save money, to help the new plants have the best chance of taking root and to insure your community is lush and beautiful during the winter season when most people visit.

So if you plan to visit over the summer, please take the heat into account and understand that most of your plants will thrive come Fall. Some won't make it, but we do our best to keep you involved and to let you know when one has sacrificed itself to the sun.

--Reduce the image quality by going to Settings/Messages/Low Quality Image -- turn on to save data

In the meantime, click here to view a past video about managing growth.