If you move, get this book: Sunset Western Garden Book
It's the reference manual for climate and plants and all sorts of things for the Western USA.

Look up the zone for Santa Fe, and check your favorite plants to see if they are listed for that zone.

Roses, yes
Trees, yes (this is not the Sahara!)
Vegetables, yes
Lilies depends on variety. Daylilies, definitely
Delphiniums ? I don't know what they are,l but maybe. Hollyhocks YES!

Good sites:
http://www.santafebotanicalgarden.org/
http://www.sfmga.org/

Thanks so much for your help Lazy Gardens! I will check out that "Sunset"book at our library. Actually, I think that may have been the book I bought for my bestfriend when she moved to Arizona. I will also check out the websites you listed. Actually, after I posted here, I did have the thought that I should check online to see what Santa Fe public gardens there were so I could get a better understanding of what grows.

I'm *thrilled* that I will be able to grow veggies and herbs there. LOL on the Sahara...what are common shade trees for the area? Do you get rain in spring and summer? Do you find you need to do a lot of supplemental watering?

Thanks again for being so helpful.

Eileen

I live in Phoenix, not Santa Fe (it's about 500 miles away).

Check the weather sites for seasonal averages and rainfall patterns.

It's a fun place to garden, if only for the Penstemons. http://blog.highcountrygardens.com/ is another good site.

If you are moving to Santa Fe, also check with The Arboretum at Flagstaff (www.thearb.org). They have mucho info on gardening in the dry mountains of the Southwest.

Kevin : )

Definitely different soil, mostly alkaline and possibly shallow and rocky. Caliche is a possibility depending on where you are in the area.
Check for micro-climates, mesa tops, valley bottoms and the slopes in between. East, West, North or South?
Watch out for our famous (or infamous) Spring winds, which should be starting any day now. The joke is New Mexico has four seasons, Summer, Fall, Winter and Wind.
The big issue will be water. Snow or not? How much runoff? To be safe, don't count on using much supplemental water. By that I mean municipal water, the stuff that comes out of the tap. Also our water is alkaline and will have a higher mineral count than you're used to.
Water harvesting (catching rainwater) should be done as much as possible. Our rainy season is in the summer, it is actually a monsoon season. Most of our precip. falls during the late summer and early Fall. Santa Fe gets some snow, in a good year, but what falls on the mountains may not fall in town.
Acid loving plants will either a. be severely stressed or, b. dead. If they can survive in a pot, try that. But then keeping them watered will become an issue.
Shade loving plants that aren't fussy about soil or need a lot of water can do well.
Most herbs love it here, roses usually are happy too.
Shade trees? We do have trees.
All this being said, New Mexico is a great place to garden and live. Instead of trying to bring all your old familiars from back east, why not embrace a whole new garden adventure? We have lots and lots of plants that can give you the garden look you're used to be but with a minimum of hassle. I see you live in Illinois, considered the Middle East by many folks out here. You're in for a change that's for sure. You're lucky to be moving to the Santa Fe area, they get a lot more precip. and are a lot cooler than where I live in NM. We're luck to get 8 inches of moisture a year down here!
Good luck and let us know how you're doing!

Here is a link that might be useful: NM Xeriscape

Here's another source of info.

Here is a link that might be useful: Santa Fe Master Gardener site

It maybe clay, loam, sand, rocky, or caliche! It all depends on where you are.
Whatever you have it will most likely be alkaline to some degree. There are very few patches of naturally occurring acidic soil.

Whatever you plant, understand it will take a lot more water than you think to get established, even if it says xeric. That's later. At first you must water, water, water. It might live with less but it won't look good. Drip systems are a godsend because they water slowly. If you dump a whole lot of water at once with a hose, it'll either run off or evaporate before very much of it gets to the plant. Even if you water at night. My dead grapevines are proof!

Drip systems are cheap and you don't have to permanently place them. You can use it in one area for a year or two to get things established, them move it to a new area.

As for shade trees, it seems only the blasted chinese elms grow large fast. Trees take forever. Not that you shouldn't plant some, you should! But you might consider a trellis structure or pergola covered with vines for quicker shade. Pretty besides.

You may have to seriously amend your soil, too. I planted two rows of berries last fall (black and rasp). It takes a pick to dig my "soil" so I doubt if I got deeper than a foot. A lot was scooped out and topsoil, peat, composted cow manure and the leavings from a friends sheep pen were all mixed in. I'm also putting them on the drip and mulching heavily. After 9 years here, I think I might have a clue how to get things to grow. :D

But it isn't like Ohio or Tennessee where I was before. There, you put things in the ground and you expect them to grow. Here, unless they are prickly pears, you expect to fuss over them an MAYBE they'll live, maybe not.

It's a little frustrating but it's hugely rewarding when something does well!

Vanessa

Wow...thanks for all the great advice NMGirl & Vanessa...

I was thinking water would be a problem. I am water conscious even here and already use rain barrels, but mostly for all the pots I have. I don't know why I thought the soil would be acidic in NM...boy did I get *that* wrong. Oh well, I can't really grow acid loving plant here either. How do your plants fair during monsoon season? I can see where that would be a challenge for me. Lol...the Middle East...do we seem like a world apart? :-) You must have been reading my mind NMgirl;I have to admit it will be a whole new way of gardening for me I imagine and yes, I would be sad to say goodbye to some of my much loved plants...but another part of me is very excited to try something new. I look forward to learning all about what does well in N.M. My gardens here are very cottage garden style (though that wasn't my initial intent - it just seems that a lot of my plants loved to seed about and I had a hard time hardening my heart enough to pluck out a happily growing little seedling. Though I've become brutal enough to scratch out some of the hundreds of Verbena bonariensis seeds that pop up in spring. Well, I'll quit rambling now. :-) I'm thinking poppies and penstemon and salvia and grasses and roses are going in the right direction; yes? Thrilled about the roses & herbs and I grow and love many poppies here too....

Thanks for the links everyone...I plan to give them a good search when I have a good block of free time.

Thanks too Vanessa for the suggestion of drip systems. I smiled when I read your comments about Ohio & Tennessee and about digging a hole. I consider myself a pretty good worker...like to think I'm very strong...but I can imagine by your description that my muscles don't have a clue as to what they may be getting themselves into...lol. BTW...why don't you like Elm trees? Are they a problem there? We really don't have many elms growing here in Illinois, most died out from D.E. disease. I *did* have a huge old elm here that shaded my deck in summer, was home to many a robin, and I had a tire swing laid flat that I attached to the tree and would swing my son in until he fell asleep under the Elm's welcoming arms. She finally started oozing slime out of her trunk and there was nothing to save her. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I cried the day she was cut down and it took a long time beofre I could walk past the sawdust pile where she once stood. It's a wierd thing...I never thought I could get so attached to a "plant", but many memories of picnics with my son and our dog and quiet moments of contemplation were made under her lovely shade. I still miss her. :-)

Thanks again everyone for being so helpful...

Eileen

P.S. Can you tell me how to get rid of the "smart tags" or whatever those instant links are that show up in my posts...I really dislike them.

Chances are, when Vanessa is talking about "blasted Chinese elms", she's probably really referring to the Siberian and Siberian hybrid elms that were sold as "Chinese elm" by unscrupulous mail-order nurseries, all over the high elevation Southwest from the 40's through the early 80's. Chinese elms are reasonably well behaved trees, though not always frost hardy. Siberian elms are hardy as rocks, but are otherwise short-lived, brittle, invasive weed trees. As a quick test, real Chinese elms have smooth, scaly, tan and light gray bark; Siberian elms have rough, furrowed, near-black bark. In some areas, real Chinese elms are much over-used, however, so I apologize, Vanessa, if that's what you really meant!

Full bloom, your plant list sounds hopeful, but remember that roses and some ornamental grasses need quite a bit of water to stay happy in semi-arid climates. If you wind up gardening below 6000 ft. elevation, look for roses on 'Dr. Huey' rootstock, since that grows deeper, more heat resistant roots than the Rosa multiflora you may be more used to.

Hope this helps!
Kevin : )

Kevin - you are right. It is the blasted Siberian elms! Pop up every where, impossible to uproot, impossible to kill, drop branches constantly and wreck every sidewalk in town by heaving them up. Not to mention the seeds that I have to scoop out of my little pond by the bucketful! Nonetheless, I have two and they are my only shade trees so I try to keep them healthy.

Eileen, when I was just here, I dug an area and seeded a mixture of native grasses and wildflowers. I was so excited about all my little plants until my neighbor saw them and said, "No dear, those are elms." Thousands of them!

Beautiful plants to add to your list that have done very well for me: Agastache (might be misspelling that. I think it's called hummingbird mint), sedum (I need more!), blue flax, mexican hat coneflower, fame flower, ice plant and Russian sage. All these have done very well and the non-natives are not invasive. Last year I planted a few moss roses and they were crazy bloomers until the frost. Most of my weeds have been replaced with blue grama grass. I don't mow it because it's so soft and pretty when it blooms but you can. Buffalo grass is a better lawn grass, though.

I never have been able to get poppies to grow, but I'm not done trying! I'm sure you'll have as beautiful a garden here as you do there.

Vanessa

Thanks Kevin...for the link to the Arobretum at Flagstaff and the advise on rose rootstock.

Lol Vanessa...I'm not laughing *at* you...I'm laughing *with* you on the seedling faux paux...I could so see myself doing something just like that. :-) Thanks for the additional plants to check out too...I *love* Agastache and grow it here, though only a few are truly hardy here.

Thank you all for being so generous with your time and knowledge...

Eileen