Desserts in the desert

Not a very good start for a new blogger who simply left for a month without posting any news… I know! Oh well.. I was away for 3 weeks – 2 weeks spent in Dubai and 1 week spent being with my son whose adventure has just begun as a Year One kid and looking after my mom and daughter who fell sick after we got back from our family vacation.

Since I just got back from Dubai, let me tell you how amazed I was with all the architecture of the modern sky scrapers and mosques, Desert Safari, skiing in Dubai, the dancing water fountain, bling-bling-the-eye Gold Souk, the construction of Palm Jumeirah and No. 1 on this list is.......... GROWING PETUNIAS in the middle of the DESERT!

Can you believe it? I mean, petunias can easily wilt in our tropical weather and yet these same petunias are growing beautifully in Dubai!!!! Don’t believe me? Well, see the pictures below and you can see the double-decker tour bus as well just to prove that the picture was taken in Dubai.

Oh.. just look at the alamanda! Indeed a dessert to a gardener's eyes. This really motivates me to grow my new alamanda plant in the same way.

So how did they do it? There would be 2 main issues that I could think of in growing flowers in the middle of the desert: water supply and sandy soil. To overcome these, they installed a series of water tubes so the plants will always have sufficient water to withstand the dry weather.

I'm sure the water bill as as high as Burj Khalifa. Oh, well... Anything is possible in Dubai!