These Homes Feature the Best Plants for a Desert Landscape

Throughout the years, Architectural Digest has featured diverse landscapes—including manicured lawns and wild, flourishing gardens—all of which are as unique as the properties they surround. Desert landscapes in particular, prove that no matter what climate you live in, it’s possible to enrich your property with plant life. These desert topographies feature creative ways to incorporate adaptive plants and carefully chosen perennials into a warm and dry climate. A cactus garden on the grounds of a country house in Atotonilco, Mexico, and an agave populated terrain encompassing Liz Claiborne’s St. Bart’s retreat with a backdrop of the Bay of Saint Jean are two examples of how a gardener can embrace the native vegetation of warmer areas. Take a look at these stunning homes, and their resourceful incorporation of cactus and other desert foliage.

“Basically, the land was a desert with trees,” says interior designer Linda Warren Simon of her Mediterranean-style country house in Atotonilco, Mexico . She and her husband added fruit trees to give the property a lusher feel but kept many of the native plants. Landscape designer Manrey Silva created the cactus garden along the south side of the home.

Architect Francisco J. Urrutia added the façade of this Palm Springs, California, hotel ; landscape designer Andy Cao put in the cactuses.

Israeli architect Pitsou Kedem chose an edited mix of materials—chiefly pietra sierra , teak, and glass—for his clients’ house near Tel Aviv. A tree, planted on the basement level, grows up between the cactus garden and the pool.

The Dunlap Collection, a three-quarter-acre garden at Lotusland, Ganna Walska’s former estate in Santa Barbara, California, features more than 300 species of cactus.

“It is the essence of tranquillity, but never boring. There’s always something beautiful to look at: our ocean views, the abundance of our garden,” fashion designer Liz Claiborne said of her St. Barts retreat. The west garden, full of cactus, flowering crown of thorns, and agave, has the Bay of Saint Jean as a backdrop.

At the late fashion designer Oscar de la Renta’s oceanfront home in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic , an artfully composed garden features the bristling century plant and variegated agave, both at left; lanky consolea and candelabra euphorbia, at center; and diminutive golden-barrel cactus, throughout.