Star Nursery - Dixie Drive

Star Nursery on Dixie Drive supplies plants, trees, soil and gardening equipment in St. George. Gardeners arriving from almost anywhere else bring a planting calendar with them, and it is the first thing this valley invalidates.

Worth knowing

St. George sits in a warm end of the hardiness scale, generally mapped around zone 8b to 9a, and hardiness zones describe average annual minimum winter temperature - the cold a plant must survive. That number is not the binding constraint here. The binding constraint is summer: sustained heat well over a hundred degrees, intense solar radiation at elevation, humidity in single digits and soil temperatures that cook a shallow root system. A plant rated for the zone can still fail in July.

That inverts the calendar. In cold-winter regions spring is planting season because the danger to a new plant is frost. Here the danger is heat, so fall is the main planting season: roots establish through mild fall and winter soil temperatures, and the plant meets its first summer with a root system already in place rather than trying to build one under heat stress. Late winter and very early spring are the second window. Planting a tree or shrub in June is asking it to establish under the hardest conditions of the year. The corollary is that a plant's exposure matters as much as its rating - western afternoon sun against a reflective wall is a different microclimate from the same yard's north side, and experienced local growers plant accordingly.

Related on the site: the Red Hills Desert Garden and landscaping and lawn care companies. See every listing under Garden Centers & Nurseries.

Nearby: Raven Solar Services, The Breakfast House, Snow Canyon Catering.