Ribbon-cutting officially opens Mojave Desert Discovery Garden

MEDIA RELEASE  
December 8, 2023 
Contact: Jessica Dacey, Director of Communications  
Phone: 760-820-2275  
Email: jessica@mdlt.org  

Ribbon-cutting officially opens Mojave Desert Discovery Garden 

Joshua Tree, CA – A former parking lot at the Mojave Desert Land Trust headquarters has been transformed into a vibrant interpretive public garden. A ribbon-cutting took place on December 8, marking the official opening of the Mojave Desert Discovery Garden in Joshua Tree.  

The Mojave Desert Discovery Garden showcases the beauty and diversity of the Mojave Desert’s native plants and ecosystems. Themed gardens include an Ethnobotanical Garden, Palm Oasis, and several pollinator gardens. Interpretive signage was created to provide visitors with a greater understanding of the desert’s flora, its importance to Indigenous cultures, and sustainable landscaping principles. Plant identification markers display plant names in Serrano, English, Spanish, and scientific Latin.  

Special guests and partners gathered for a ceremony on December 8 to celebrate the first completed stages of the garden. To date, the project has been possible thanks to funding from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, Mojave Water Agency, Horne Family Foundation, Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust, and JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa. 

MDLT broke ground on the project in March 2019. Heavily compacted soil was loosened and new landscaping introduced with additional soil and rocks from Whitewater Rock and Supply Company and BTI Rock and Sand.  

The terraces are built using rock-filled gabion walls — wire baskets filled with rock. Gabions are long lasting and low maintenance. Often used for civil engineering projects such as flood control, gabions can also be used decoratively for retaining walls, planting beds, and other landscape features. They blend into the visual landscape and act as rock piles, providing habitat for small desert creatures. 

The juniper timbers used in the garden contrast with the gabion walls, adding a softer look. Following decades of fire suppression, juniper has invaded the native grassland ecosystem of the Great Basin Desert in Eastern Oregon, leading to erosion and a loss of biodiversity. This rot-resistant wood is harvested by Sustainable Northwest Wood as part of efforts to restore the ecosystem, re-purpose valuable resources, and support local sawmills in rural communities.  

Water conservation is achieved using drought-tolerant native plants and a subsurface drip irrigation system that allows water to reach roots with little evaporation. In addition to conserving water, native plants reduce the need for chemical pesticides and fertilizers, while supporting beneficial insects, pollinators, and other wildlife. 

Across the garden, 95% of the plants were grown from seed collected and propagated by MDLT’s plant conservation staff.  

The garden is a community effort in the making, for the benefit of all residents and visitors of the Morongo Basin.  

Dedicated volunteers have generously given their time and labor to bring the garden to life. From moving soil in order to mimic the natural landscape, to digging holes for each plant and tree, to planting and regular watering and weeding. Eagle Scouts raised the money to buy the materials to build noise-reducing gabion walls which were assembled by Marines from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in 29 Palms. AmeriCorps NCCC volunteers helped with vital infrastructure like the terraces and irrigation.  

MDLT thanks the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians for funding and for their guidance in developing educational signage about the culturally significant aspects of the garden and for allowing use the Serrano language in this space.  

MDLT thanks the Mojave Water Agency for their ongoing support for this garden, from design development to signage, JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa for signage, and the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust for helping fund materials for the gabion walls and garden beds.  

Individual donors have funded signage and benches where visitors can stop and experience peace.    

"This garden is the proverbial fruit of the Agency's Strategic Partnership Program," said Mojave Water Agency Division 1 Director Marina West.  "The progress we make toward conservation when we work together far exceeds what we can do individually."  

Today this garden is part of a larger wildlife corridor that extends all the way to Joshua Tree National Park. To the west, the garden borders an underground culvert where water flows after rains and animals can safely pass under the highway to habitat managed by the Mojave Desert Land Trust.  

From its situation on Twentynine Palms Highway, the garden is visible to travelers and accessible to the public. A bus stop is conveniently located on the property, allowing easy access for public transportation users. 

Despite recent growth in the region, facilities such as this are lacking in the Morongo Basin, and this garden will be a unique space that is connected to the community and committed to protecting our diverse desert ecosystems. 

The garden has already become a living outdoor classroom for educational tours and workshops with young people and adults, as well as volunteer trainings on subjects like native plant horticulture and seed harvesting. Future plans include additional educational signage and seating throughout the garden and a covered pavilion. 

Through interpretive signage created with JT Lab, the garden teaches visitors about the importance of protecting wildlife corridors. It will foster a culture of stewardship and sustainability, while illustrating the benefit of native plants in residential and commercial landscaping as a way of restoring biological diversity in increasingly developed areas. 

Visitors are invited to explore the garden between the hours of sunrise and sunset.  

The California desert’s unique flora is a critical part of a sensitive desert ecosystem, providing food and shelter for wildlife and cleaning our air and water through soil stabilization and carbon sequestration. Studies show that locally-sourced plant material has a higher survival rate post-planting because local ecotypes are better adapted to the environmental and climatic conditions where they originated than non-local ecotypes. The California desert is home to over 2,000 species of native plants, comprising over 30% of the state’s diverse flora. Many of these species are considered to be of conservation concern.   

The Mojave Desert Land Trust (MDLT) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission to protect and care for lands with natural, scenic, and cultural value within the Mojave Desert. Since its founding in 2006 the land trust has conserved over 100,000 acres, conveying more tracts of land to the National Park Service in the last decade than any other organization. In addition to acquiring land, the land trust established a seed bank to ensure the preservation of native species. MDLT operates an onsite nursery at its Joshua Tree headquarters which has grown over 100,000 native plants since 2016 for ecosystem restoration. MDLT educates and advocates for the conservation of the desert, involving hundreds of volunteers in our work. For more information, visit mdlt.org.