Posted on by Desert Dweller | David C.

Mass y Mas

A common ingredient of good designs, anywhere, is massing! Masses grab the eye yet create serenity. Depending on budget and ability to maintain, one can add details to cause the eye to feast even more.

Mas = more. More plants.

Mass does not mean monoculture, necessarily. But hodge-podge means only hodge-podge. Photos from last month:

Sierra Prov E MOB-DeergrassCoahHesp-Sml
Hesperaloe funifera and Muhlenbergia rigens (pre-butchering)
Sierra Prov E-ApachePlmMesq-Sml
native Fallugia paradoxa (pre-butchering) and Prosopis glandulosa
LomaLinda-DesGrassTopCanyonBottom01-Sml
rock ledges and arroyo bottom plants, extending as far as the eye can see…Bouteloua spp. clumps in repeat mode foreground

There’s also nobody out here to turn every plant into a pineapple or gumdrop, either :-)

LomaLinda-PlumeTiqVista01-Sml
the pale blue bumps – Tiquilia greggii in a football-field-sized mass…more rock outcroppings dancing together

Much to where these plants grow is from soil types, and where the moisture collects or doesn’t.

LomaLinda-CreosoteGrassGEologyStrataVista01
more geology in the background…in front, Larrea tridentata mostly dotting the low foreground, knitted with clumping desert grasses

Writing both of my blogs, the most popular garden places I’ve posted may be trips to Austin and San Diego. The former has many garden blogs, but the latter has just a few that I’ve seen. At 3.25 million people in their metro area (and their gardening climate), I would expect more blogs…ditto Denver’s metro area (and their whiplash climate) at 3 million.

As usual, others are often interested in other things than me. I hope no one gets too bored with more posts of my horticultural life and times, and where I am!

5 Replies to “Mass y Mas”

  1. Mas plants! Yes! I have kind of a hodge podge which I try to remedy by throwing in even more. Sorry to hear that the plants in the first image got “pruned.” Ack!

    There’s something for everyone in my posts! And that’s why you’re the outlaw, and I’m not :-) Ack is right…

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  3. I really enjoy your posts. It’s nice to put some reason behind what’s going on in designers mind when working on projects in a desert environment.

    Thanks, though I can assure you it’s only some designers. Much is yet to be done in the Chihuahuan Desert.

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  4. Perfect post for me today. I was just appreciating a garden tour on a San Antonio blog featuring a handful of plants used in repetition and massed to provide xeric beauty. The posts in combination offer great reinforcement for my ongoing attempts to avoid “I’ll take one of everything” gardening impulses. I’m trying rather to increase negative spaces (what shows off a mass mas than emptiness!?) and buy additional specimens to bolster plant populations that are already thriving here.

    I’m not tired of reading here certainly. You aren’t signaling any desires to stop blogging I hope!

    Now, I need to find that blog you mention! Think in terms of mass to provide bones and garden walls / enclosure…then party with plant variety like you know you want to do. Mass can be on the edges, behind, or weave through the middle of variety? Probably not, just reflecting on what people really seem to respond to…

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  5. Are you saying those plants in your first two pics got “trimmed”? Someone seriously needs an intervention of the horticultural-education type. As for massing, it takes room to accomplish well – something you often have in abundance!

    Yes they did, no more than a few weeks later – “intervention”, I like it! And I’m working on that. Odd how people who get the provilege of overseeing the care of a nice facility actually direct actions that cost more and are ugly.

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