I asked this very same question over at davesgarden, and was told that lilacs don't do well here because they need to have the dormancy period asociated with enough cold time at low enough temperatures. One of the people there told me how they tried to simulate that by keeping the base of the plant cold with buckets of ice, and was only rewarded with one or two blooms. Not nearly enough growth or blooms for that kind of work. I am going to replace my dreams of lilacs with butterfly bushes that come in several different colors and a similar bloom form as lilacs. Good luck!

Hey there Amijo,

I'm from NY originally and miss lilacs sooo much! Stephanotis is probably right about lilacs not blooming properly here because of the heat. We did get snow (for one day!) here in Tucson last year, and there were a few more blooms than usual on our Arabian Lilac bushes, but nothing to write home about.

When we moved here there were two Arabian Lilac bushes - quite large. One ended up needing to be cut down to about 1 foot because it died, we don't know why. The other is still 6-7 feet, but even with regular watering, it doesn't *look* right, and when it blooms, there aren't many and they don't look right either. They are nothing like the lilacs I grew up with in NY. :( We're planning to compost them this year, or next...

They were planted up against a pond, which we drained and it's possible the evaporation from the pond helped them to look good before - but when we moved in we just couldn't take care of the pond. Even so, they were known to us only as foliage bushes until one year they finally bloomed.

Now we're in the middle of switching over all the plantings to low-water usage and mostly native plants. I thought this might be depressing as all-get-out, but surprisingly, there are quite a few lovely shrubs that bloom here!

I ordered some **free** booklets from the Phoenix Dept of Water (can't find the URL, sorry) one called "Landscape Plants for the AZ Desert" and the other "Xeriscape" - both were incredibly helpful since I longed for pretty flowers, but hated using so much water for what I'd have planted in either NY or CA.

If you get the Crepe Myrtle I hope you post about it, especially how much water they really need here. They look like they'd make nice small trees, too!

We have some Texas Sage bushes that are wonderful, and cover themselves in blooms when deeply watered.

Some other shrubs you might be interested in -

Texas Mountain Laurel - Sophia secundiflora

Little-leaf Cordia - Cordia parvifolia

Sky Flower - Duranta erecta

Emu Bush - Eremophila maculata

Apache Plume - Fallugia paradoxa

Baja Fairyduster - Calliandra californica

I'm in the midst of considering all of these to replace the lilacs, and found them in the book - Arizona Gardener's Guide (by Mary Irish) that has a section on shrubs.

They are all low water, all with blooms, some with lots o scent, and some with berries for the birds.

If you decide to use any of these and have any luck with them, please post about it :)

vitex is a great option!