Arizona Daily Star reporter Dominika Heusinkveld's top gardening stories of 2021
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We are sharing Arizona Daily Star reporters' and photographers' favorite work from 2021.
Dominika Heusinkveld has written Arizona Daily Star's bi-weekly Tucson Garden Guide newsletter since September 2020. The newsletter features two articles per issue and discusses locally-specific gardening tips, information, and favorite plants for gardeners in the Sonoran desert. To get these free stories and more in your email inbox, go to tucson.com/newsletters and subscribe to the Tucson Garden Guide.
Here are some of her favorite articles from this year:
(6) updates to this series since
Want to grow food but don't have the patience for vegetable beds? Here are some low-maintenance native desert food plants to try out like mesquite, palo verde, hackberry, wolfberry, prickly pear and more.
Passive rainwater harvesting involves building earthworks to channel and store water in your yard, saving you lots of money and conserving water.
Active rainwater harvesting involves the use of gutters and tanks to channel and store rainwater. This allows you to “bank” rainwater in Southern Arizona's unpredictable climate so you can stretch out the period of time rainwater is available for irrigating plants.
With more extreme weather in our future, you may wonder if you can still have a garden. Here are tips on how to make your garden more resilient.
Tired of seeing the same plants in every yard? Want to help local wildlife? Find six native plant alternatives here.
Tips on designing a beautiful garden. Get some basics of design and how you can use them in your Southern Arizona garden.


