Welcome to my blog. My name is Jan Emming (pronounced “Yon” – it’s simply the Dutch version of the name John) and I have been working for almost 20 years (as of this writing in October 2017) towards the creation of a long-held vision, which is a large desert botanical garden and private horticultural collection in Arizona, USA. Ever since I can recall in my earliest years, I have been fascinated with all plants, but especially the cactus and succulent group, as well as the desert ecosystems they are adapted to survive in. By the time I was about 8 years old, I knew where to find populations of all of the cactus species that were native to the region surrounding our family home in Boulder, Colorado, and had figured out how to propagate many of them via cuttings. I recall the strong impression that the Sonoran Desert near Tucson, Arizona made upon me during one of our family vacations there – the exotic plants, the unique landscape, the clarity of the air and sunlight – it all captivated my 12 year old mind, which of course I was prone towards from years beforehand in any case.

When I was a teenager, the notion of living in a large desert garden that could be occasionally open to the public started to enter my mind, an idea that never really went away. Like a desert seed, this concept would have to wait for another decade or more for me to truly consider making it germinate and grow, since conditions simply weren’t right for this until I was in my late 20s. By the time I was 27 or 28, I had started seriously thinking about how to make this dream into reality, knowing with some valuable foresight that if I didn’t do it in my 30s and 40s, that it might never happen.

Thus began a two year long, multi-state search for a suitable property, which culminated in my purchase of a gloriously scenic 40 acre parcel of land near the small town of Yucca, Arizona. Located in the foothills nearing the southern end of the Hualapai Mountains, this property combines elements of two different desert ecosystems, the Sonoran and the Mojave, and also has features of two more ecosystems, the Arizona Interior Chaparral shrublands and the Great Basin Desert/Colorado Plateau ecoregions. The natural biodiversity of this region is perhaps best reflected by the unusual association of plants that occurs naturally: Saguaro cacti (Carnegiea gigantea) and ocotillos (Fouquieria splendens) of the Sonoran Desert mix freely with Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) of the Mojave Desert and California junipers (Juniperus californica) and scrub oak (Quercus turbinella) from the Great Basin/chaparral zones. This short list covers just a handful of the true species diversity of both plants and animals that live here and whom I am pleased to coexist with, but those who understand ecology will recognize this particular intermingling of vegetation as noteworthy and unique to just this immediate area.

I named this project Destination:Forever Ranch and Gardens, although I often abbreviate this as D:FR or DFR or DF Ranch. Note that the colon and lack of a space between the first two words are purposeful features of my name, not a typo. I do have a website at www.dfranch.com which I’ve had for over 15 years. I sell certain plants from there via mail order and offer information on how to best grow some of the most charismatic and prevalent species, such as saguaros, Joshua trees, and ocotillos. But that website is not a blog and has never been intended to serve as one, so ultimately I feel that this is a much better place to make regular updates and posts on the numerous aspects of rural and off-grid desert living, fascinating plants of the world, and how one goes about making a project like this happen.

Obviously this is a new blog and this is my first post, so it is impossible to do more than offer merely the briefest of overviews at this point. I have been actively posting my journey for years on Facebook, however, and have tens of thousands of photos covering numerous aspects of my life and travels and xeric plant horticulture, so I will never lack for material to share. As time moves forward I expect that I will catch up reasonably well with the archive of information and photos that are interesting enough to post and which can benefit both the plants and animals featured, as well as the people who read about them. Not to mention the ongoing flow of current and new items that will also come along. And unlike on Facebook, these posts and photos will be searchable on the internet, which should ultimately prove to be more useful to the wider world than having them restricted to a narrow band of friends and times over there.

So let’s get started! Thank you for your interest and for joining me and the various creatures you’ll be seeing as we migrate forth into the future. I look forward to the journey.

Jan Emming
Yucca, Arizona, USA
Monday October 23, 2017