Yeah I agree with one poster about forgetting most of what you know about gardening, though not everything, but conditions are very very different here. Any plant that requires humidity (like tropicals)... forget it! The air can be so incredibly dry here that if you leave a cutting out without water even in the shade, the next day it will literally crumble to dust if you squeeze it in your hand. This means that crowding plants together can sometimes work to create a micro-climate that retains a bit more moisture. The sun up north is lower in the sky throught the day and the difference in day length between summer and winter is bigger. This affects what areas will be shaded and when. There is an awesome free 3D modeling software called "GOOGLE SKETCHUP". It's super easy to use and it has built in shadow modelling that is very accurate. You can for example create a rough model of the house and other things around it using the correct orientation. Then you can enter a location (Phoenix is close enough), and time of day, and it will show you exactly what areas will be shaded. You can then make it automatically change the time in one hour increments, that way you can tell throughout the day which areas are shaded and which ones get the most sun. Anything with exposure to the west in the afternoon will have to bear the hottest arizona sun. Personally I would think that planting a row of fairly tall trees on the west/SW side to provide afternoon shade would help whatever else grows in the rest of the yard. There is no such thing as too little sun in Arizona, and full shade is actually rare EVEN on the north side.. The sun is at a high angle (about 80 degrees) in the middle of the day. Google "Caliche"... we have plenty of it, along with hardpan. very very backbreaking work to dig through. If you dig a planting hole, do the water drainage test to see if the water will go down. If not you might have to dig through the caliche to create drainage chimneys. Arizona is a place of extremes. Just because it gets hot it doesn't mean it stays hot. Daily temp swings can be as much as 40 degrees. That means it could be 70 during the day and freeze at night in the winter. Ficus trees are beautiful but won't survive even a light frost (and they're water guzzlers). Look up the Sissoo tree. It likes lots of water but can do very well on low water once established. it's a beautiful shade tree that is almost litter free and fast growing. (I planted one 2 years ago and it grew from 6 ft to about 20 ft. Water deep and less often. In the summer I water trees about once a week, but leave the water running for a long time until there's a puddle and the water soaks deep. soil conditions: biggest problem is high ph. This can prevent uptake of iron and zinc especially in citrus. Chellated iron can help keep things green. Nitrogen dissapears fast when it's hot (citrus like a lot of nitrogen) Arizona has some pretty lax graywater laws. That means you can modify your plumbing to use some of your graywater for watering shade trees. You don't need a permit. My bathtub drains in my backyard around my trees. This goes a long way towards conserving water. ok this is more than 3 things, but I hope it helps.

1) In general more attention to include advice from Christopher Alexander et al's A Pattern Language where appropriate. Of those, these two patterns: 2) Habitable roof spaces, 117. Sheltering roof. The roof as an integral part of the habitable building - not placed on like a hat on top of a cubic form as with typical roof truss construction. A roof should be more than a lid. Rather it should wrap the house and appeal to our innate need for safe shelter. The edges of roofs should overlap the building. The roof should be "lived" in, i.e. part of the roof should be walls / ceiling of some rooms. 3) 159. Light on two sides of every room This pattern, perhaps more than any other single pattern, determines the success or failure of a room. The arrangement of daylight in a room, and the presence of windows on two sides, is fundamental. If you build a room with light on one side only, you can be almost certain that you are wasting your money. People will stay out of that room if they can possibly avoid it. Of course, if all the rooms are lit from one side only, people will have to use them. But we can be fairly sure that,they are subtly uncomfortable there, always wishing they weren't there, wanting to leave - just because we are so sure of what people do when they do have the choice. Light on two sides: vs. light on one side:

1. be done with doctor appointments and back to good health for both of us 2. have nice warm sunny days so I'm not freezing cold all of the time 3. see and smell our gardenias blooming (hoping this harsh winter didn't kill them all)

Not recovering from "walking pneumonia" and pink-eye. Not cooking for Thanksgiving. Swore off of it last year, then DH was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Back to the kitchen; he loves leftovers and I don't even like turkey! Finally getting an answer for DHs ongoing weight loss and nausea.