Desert plants that survive a Las Vegas summer

Trees

• Desert willow — fast, airy, pink-to-burgundy flowers spring through fall, drops leaves in winter.
• Palo verde ('Desert Museum' is the thornless one) — green trunk, yellow bloom, light shade, very tough.
• Chitalpa — desert willow's bigger-flowered cousin, a bit more water.
• Texas ebony or mesquite for a denser, slower shade tree.

Structural accents

• Agave (americana, parryi, weberi) — the classic. Give the big ones room; they get wide.
• Ocotillo — dramatic spined canes, red flower tips, looks dead until it isn't.
• Red yucca (Hesperaloe) — not a true yucca, throws coral flower spikes for months, nearly indestructible.
• Golden barrel cactus — slow, sculptural, great in groups of three.

Flowering shrubs

• Texas sage / Texas ranger — silver leaves, purple flush after humidity, shears into a hedge or left loose.
• Lantana (including purple trailing) — flowers relentlessly in heat, low and spreading, freezes back in winter and returns.
• Mexican bird of paradise — ferny, orange-red flowers, takes the worst sun.
• Bougainvillea — huge color on a wall or fence, hates frost, worth the winter risk for most people.
• Damianita and brittlebush — low mounds of yellow, good filler between bigger plants.

Groundcover and grasses

• Trailing rosemary — evergreen, edible, cascades over walls.
• Deer grass and pink muhly — soft movement, pink muhly's fall plume is the payoff.
• Blackfoot daisy — tidy white-flowered mound, long bloom.

Getting it through year one

Almost every desert-plant failure here is a watering failure in the first summer — too little while roots are shallow, or too much once they're not. New plantings need frequent, deep drip water for the first few months, then you back the timer off in stages as they establish. Set the drip zones by plant type, not one setting for the whole yard, and check emitters twice a year.

Plant in fall or early spring if you can. Summer planting works but the plant spends its energy surviving instead of growing.