Lessons from a local: Tips for people new to the Basin on building garden beds

For people who want to start a new garden and are new to the dry, sunny weather in the Columbia Basin, figuring out how to best help plants and flowers flourish is key.

Julie Piper-Phipps was born and raised in Moses Lake, but lived all over the world while her husband, Stephen Phipps, was active with the U.S. Air Force. Phipps and her family lived in New Mexico, Colorado Springs, Iceland and Norway before winding up back in Moses Lake about 10 years ago after her husband retired.

“I’ve had many incarnations of my yard in different places,” Phipps said. “In Colorado Springs, I had clay: we lived in Norway and it rained all the time and we had slugs. I lived in Iceland and it was too cold to grow anything.”

Phipps said she loves being back in Moses Lake, where she has “magic dirt” that provides a fantastic base to experiment and try a variety of different plants and flowers. Traveling for the Air Force, Phipps said she never lived anywhere for more than four years and never got to see any of her gardens really mature fully until now. She said it’s been fun watching her trees and bushes and perennials flourish and spread without worrying about having to move away again.

Phipps said the first thing new gardeners to the area need to identify is what growing zone we are in, which she said is Zone 4.

She said some people will argue the area is closer to Zone 5, but she sticks to Zone 4 plants that will do well even in years with freak colder weather. Phipps said she’s sure some Zone 5 plants could do well here with proper protection.

“I love planting perennials; my goal for this year has been to make sure there’s something that blooms in spring, blooms mid-summer and blooms in the fall and kind of have a variety,” Phipps said.

Phipps said she’s also planted more than 20 trees around her property since moving back to Moses Lake, staking them up when they’re young to protect them from the winds that frequent the area.

She said choosing the right plants is key. Phipps said she often drives around town and looks at what other people have in their yards and what’s doing well for them. She’s stopped on occasion to ask what plants were, but there are apps to identify plants, too.

“We do a lot of research before we plant anything,” Phipps said. “I’ve tried a few things and usually it’s not that they don’t do well, it’s that they do too well and then it’s just a weed that spreads around my flower beds. I have more problems with that than anything.”

As a result, she said she’s learned more about pruning and thinning out her plants here than anywhere else.

Phipps said she finds raising plants and flowers much easier in Moses Lake than anywhere else she’s lived. While she said her soil at her home outside of Moses Lake is “magic,” the soil varies quite a bit in this area, with yards three miles away having very sandy soil.

For yards that may lack the rich, loamy soil present outside of town, she recommends bringing in peat moss or topsoil to help provide a nutrient base.

With minimal rain in the Columbia Basin, watering is key, too. Many people put drip irrigation systems in their yards, otherwise Phipps said they have to be willing to go out and hand water everything.

“When it’s 115, frankly some of those things you need to water twice a day, you have to stay on top of watering,” Phipps said. “Because you have to water more, you need some type of fertilizer because all of the nutrients are just being washed through.”

She said there are varieties of plants that will do very well in the abundant sun here. If plants recommend six-plus hours of sun a day, Phipps said those plants should flourish. If there’s only a recommended three to four hours of sunlight, those plants and flowers should be planted under a tree in shade.

As her yard continues to expand each year, Phipps said she’s put an added importance on “foundation plants” in her yard that help support the rest of the garden beds. She said it seems like every year she has new experiments.

“A yard is ever-evolving,” Phipps said. “I love that here it can evolve fairly easily. I know that I’m not leaving, so if there’s a tree that isn’t doing well, I don’t have to rip it out, I can wait til next year and see how it does.”

With Facebook groups for gardeners in Moses Lake and the Columbia Basin, Phipps said there are plenty of “green thumbs” eager to learn and ready to share their knowledge and experiences for newcomers to the area.