Garden globetrotting

Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix Garden globetrotting Fancy a new look for your plot or just want to try something different? Our new series about gardens around the world could be just the ticket. This month, Matt Collins reveals what captured his heart in Arizona

- Matt Collins

Despite years of transatlantic travel, immersion in the beautiful and botanically diverse landscapes of the American Southwest had long eluded me. Evermore curious to experience the arid homeland of some of the gardening world's toughest and most dynamic flora, I finally made a trip in spring and fell head over heels for the 'Grand Canyon state'.

Arizona paints a very particular image in the mind: of wide-open Route 66 and the magnificent Canyonlands, and of the Sonoran Desert stretching off into the Mexican sunset. But as the fifth largest of the contiguous United States, preparing an itinerary can feel daunting. Arriving at Phoenix's international airport, you face the question of whether to head north to the dramatic sculptural landforms that Arizona is famed for - the Grand Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, the buttes of Sedona - and the great forests of orange-tinted ponderosa pine, or south towards the iconic saguaro cacti, whose desert rangelands are, for the planthungry gardener, every bit as captivating as the Canyon. In the end, I just had to do both.

Fortunately for those with limited time, Arizona's floral diversity is thrillingly encapsulated in one prime central location: Scottsdale's Desert Botanical Garden (DBG).