Dawn’s Wonderful Winter Garden in Arizona – Fine Gardening

Happy Monday, GPODers!

January for many veggie gardeners is a time for prep and planning. Seed starting will be here before we know it, and it’s time to sort through our store of seed packets, flip through catalogs, and replenish our supplies. However, for Dawn Fountain in Surprise, Arizona (Zone 9), the growing never stops, and the harvests keep coming straight through winter. Dawn has shared her small but mighty resilient garden several times in the past (check out her previous submissions: Dawn’s Backyard Garden in Arizona, Dawn’s Spring Garden, Indoor Growing in Arizona, Dawn Gets Ready for Fall, and Dawn’s Garden in Arizona Battles Extreme Temperatures), and each time it appears she is growing more in her lovely but limited space. Today she is sharing the story of how she found herself gardening in these unforgiving conditions as well as photos of what’s been growing this season.

I started gardening in 1994 when a neighbor showed me how to grow portulaca in a tire. Then I started tomatoes and carnations. Because of a life event, I had to let that garden go until 2007. Then I married my current husband, and he built me a garden. Had to abandon that one for a while, and when we moved back to Arizona in 2024, I got this one.

My main garden (clockwise): lettuce, beets, carrots, radishes (I will enter them in the county fair in April), cauliflower, strawberries, broccoli, cabbage, basil, peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley

Left to right: cosmos for my grandfather, Ketchup and Mustard™ rose (Rosa ‘WEKzazette’, Zones 5–9) for my mom, and Scentuous™ rose (Rosa ‘TAN97281’, Zones 6–9) for my grandmother

My side garden I started mostly from seed: mint, lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, lantana, grapes

Three of my roses: Neil Diamond (Rosa ‘WEKdereroro’, Zones 4–10), Peace (R. ‘Peace’, Zones 5–10), and a basic red; and peppers (habaneros and jalapeños) for infused honeys

My apple tree with sunflowers

Baby cauliflower from the main garden

Where I start my seeds and grow inside (my dining room window)

Thank you so much for another fabulous update from your garden, Dawn! It is such a treat to see your space continue to evolve as you make more additions, and each subsequent season becomes more and more bountiful.

Your winter garden doesn’t need to be as lively as Dawn’s to be worthy of a feature on the blog. From snow-covered trees to those limited winter bloomers, we would love to see and appreciate your garden during this period of downtime. Follow the NEW directions below to submit your photos to Garden Photo of the Day!

We want to see YOUR garden!

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

To submit, fill out the Garden Photo of the Day Submission Form.

You can also send 5–10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.

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