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Desert Garden is a 5-acre public park in Scottsdale, Arizona. The goal of the project was to transform a flat and barren dirt parcel into a multi-sensory garden that conveys the landforms, landscape habitat and environment of the Sonoran Desert in an informative and fun manner.
Floor & Associates, Inc., a Phoenix-based Landscape Architecture firm, lead a multi disciplinary design team, including The Thinking Caps Partnership – environmental graphics, and Entellus – civil engineering. During the construction phase of the project, the team encouraged the City of Scottsdale to hire a well-known metal sculptor, Joe Tyler, to fabricate the various interpretive elements – including the lights – incorporated throughout the garden.
The overall concept for Desert Garden was to replicate the three distinct bio-habitation zones that exist in north Scottsdale?EUR??,,????'???s Sonoran Desert: the valley floor, the upper bajada and the desert washes. Starting with a totally denuded remnant parcel of land, the design began with the creation of landforms that convey the sense of place of each zone, including a desert wash running through the middle of the garden.
The appropriate landscape was then created for each zone by utilizing strictly native plant materials. To create interest and fun, the design team incorporated a variety of unique hardscape, sculptural and interpretive elements that draw the visitor down a path of discovery through the garden. Great emphasis was placed on unique and inventive construction detailing and the incorporation of art and educational elements throughout. Included are larger than life representations of desert life, including plants, cacti, mammals, reptiles, insects and birds, along with a series of story panels, written by Jill Spear, through which the garden?EUR??,,????'???s resident host, Kwaatsi, treats the visitor to a tour.
To the greatest extent possible, all site elements found at Desert Garden were specifically designed and custom fabricated for the garden. As a desert interpretive garden, the goal of the design was to create an organic feel for all aspects of the place, including form, material palette and color palette. This included such elements as the signage, trash receptacles, seatwalls and, in particular, the site lighting.As a ?EUR??,,????'??dawn to dusk?EUR??,,????'?? facility, the lighting concept was to create subtle lighting along the main paths without lighting the entire garden. Special emphasis was placed on eliminating light trespass from the property, both to address adjacent neighborhood concerns and the environmental concerns of light pollution. To accomplish these goals, Floor & Associates developed a concept of indirectly reflected lighting that washes the paths with subtle light without over lighting the garden. The solution was to design a relatively large reflector mounted atop a pole with the light source directed upward under the reflector, reflecting a diffused glow back to the ground.
After working through a series of conceptual studies, a member of the firm found a dried seedpod from a desert milkweed plant that had opened in an elegant reverse curve shape. This shape became the basis for the shape of the reflector, which was then mounted on top of an organically designed pole. The light fixture itself was mounted on top of the pole directly under the reflector on an adjustable bracket to allow aiming to be done in the field. There are a total of 16 of these ?EUR??,,????'??Desert Milkweed Lights?EUR??,,????'?? within Desert Garden, including both single- and double-headed configurations. During the day, the lights become interesting sculptural elements that complement the other sculptural elements throughout the garden. At night, they provide subtle path and security lighting. Joe Tyler fabricated the fixtures.
The Garden is organized around a central gathering space that is arrived at by following one of three sinuous concrete walks, laid out and patterned in the forms of huge snakes. Each walk has its own distinctive color palette, pattern and texture. Visitors enter the garden from one of three points and soon discover they are on the back of a huge snake, starting at the tail and walking towards its head. The tail sections, each measuring approximately 8-feet wide by 20-feet long, are segmented to resemble the sections of a rattlesnake?EUR??,,????'???s rattle and are made of thousands of tightly packed iron spheres, transitioning in size from 3/4-inch to 2-1/2-inches in diameter.
The iron spheres are set into integrally colored concrete and form a fascinating flatwork texture, reminiscent of an actual rattlesnake?EUR??,,????'???s rattle. The ?EUR??,,????'??rattles?EUR??,,????'?? transition into a series of hand placed river rock textures that, in turn, transition into a diamond patterned concrete walkway. The diamond patterns were created using three different expanded metal stamping devices created specifically for Desert Garden. At 40-foot intervals, 2-foot wide accent panels were separately poured in the shape of diamond chevrons. The surface of each accent panel is seeded with over 2,000 colored glass marbles to lend a sense of magic to these huge snakes. In total, more than 120,000 marbles are incorporate into the Garden?EUR??,,????'???s three walkways.
As one follows the walks towards the Central Gathering Place, one by one they join together until they finally reach the snake?EUR??,,????'???s head, which rises from the walk and is formed of hand placed river rock, set in a scale-like pattern. Befitting the scale of the ?EUR??,,????'??bodies,?EUR??,,????'?? the head is huge, measuring 18-feet wide by 28-feet long. The black concrete tongue is even longer, curving through the landscape for more than 60-feet to intersect with one of the walkways. The snake?EUR??,,????'???s eyes and nostrils are made of rusted steel.
Away from the concrete Snake Walks and the Central Gathering Area, Desert Garden is designed to allow visitors to become immersed into a more natural desert setting. Here, visitors are able to explore the relationships that exist between each zone?EUR??,,????'???s plants and animals. This is done by following a stabilized decomposed granite trail that connects three interpretive nodes representing each of the three zones.
Way finding along the trail is accomplished by the placement of rock cairns at each intersection along the trail and by a large spiral compass laid out in the center of the path. The Compass Spiral is formed by two separate pours of integrally colored concrete in the shape of a shallow basket design, reminiscent of a Native American form. The cardinal directions were carefully laid out using GPS and are etched into the colored concrete in a heavy sandblasted texture. At the center of the interlocked spirals, a large stone cairn points the way.
The upper bajada habitat is represented in the area of the Lunar Garden. The plant materials in this area are representative of the plants found at the higher elevations of the Sonoran Desert, including saguaros, foothill palo verdes and jojoba. This area also includes a variety of plants that only bloom at night, such as the nightblooming cereus and tufted evening primrose.
The Lunar Garden is enclosed on the west by a cast-in- place concrete seat wall. The high arching back of the wall was cast with voids through the wall in the shapes of the various phases of the moon. The wall is made of a unique specialty concrete mix incorporating aggregates of white pea gravel and blue and clear recycled glass. Upon completion, the wall was sandblasted to expose the aggregate to create the appearance of stars in the night sky.<
At the center of the Lunar Garden sits a rusted steel interpretive sculpture of a huge bat drinking nectar from an oversized saguaro blossom. The bat was chosen as the representative desert mammal because of its critical symbiotic role in the pollination and survival of the mighty saguaro cactus.
The valley floor habitat is represented by the Hummingbird Nest. This garden is encircled by more than 90, 8?EUR??,,????'??? tall ocotillo plants. The intertwined branches of the stick- like ocotillos create the feeling of being inside of a huge bird nest. The curved seat wall in this area is cast from green concrete accented with vertical bands of hand selected river stones. The inside of the seat wall?EUR??,,????'???s concrete forms were lined with corrugated sheets to create a vertical pattern on the wall reminiscent of the ribs of a saguaro. This garden is planted with species representative of the lower Sonoran Desert elevations, including a concentration of flowering plants that provide food for the native hummingbird population.
The riparian habitat is represented by the creation of a desert wash through the center of the garden. The source of the wash is located within the Butterfly Garden where a spiral of river rock forms a ?EUR??,,????'??butterfly seep.?EUR??,,????'?? The area of the seep is kept constantly moist to attract butterflies. Located throughout this garden are native plant species that attract all varieties of native butterflies, including desert milkweed, fairydusters and native diclyptera.
The desert wash is planted with native trees, shrubs and annual wildflowers associated with the riparian zones of the Sonoran desert, including desert willows, mesquite, sycamore, trixis, bursages and lupine. The seat wall within the Butterfly Garden was designed to reflect the character of an eroded desert wash by casting strata of river rock into the wall and exposing them with a heavy sandblast finish. A 2-foot long rusted steel lizard suns himself on the south facing back of the wall.
From the beginning of the project, the landscape architects wanted to create a completely native garden as an educational immersion experience for the visitor. Although there was pressure to turn the garden into another xeriscape landscape with non-native, ?EUR??,,????'??drought tolerant?EUR??,,????'?? ornamentals, the firm maintained that if done properly, the native palette of plants found in Scottsdale would produce a spectacular one-of-a-kind garden for the Valley. The landscape architects saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate the unique qualities of the desert?EUR??,,????'???s plant associations and the fragile symbiotic relationships between the landscape habitats and the animals that live there.
To accomplish this concept, the firm identified nearly 100 native plant species for use in the garden. The plants were categorized by the desert zone in which they naturally occur, as well as their natural plant distributions, densities and associations. This information became the basis for the landscape planting concept, with each plant being located within their natural zones.
One of the most important aspects of the Desert Garden?EUR??,,????'???s ambiance was created by importing over 500 tons of ?EUR??,,????'??desert pavement?EUR??,,????'?? rock that was hand placed throughout the garden to replicate the texture and the patterns of shadow and light found in the nearby undisturbed desert. Floor & Associates has been a strong proponent of this technique and has worked with local suppliers to develop custom specifications to replace the typical sterile decomposed granite top dressing that has become almost universal throughout the valley.
Francisco Uviña, University of New Mexico
Hardscape Oasis in Litchfield Park
Ash Nochian, Ph.D. Landscape Architect
November 12th, 2025
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