PGSU Garden Story: Joey & Zach

We’re delighted to welcome Joey and Zach’s garden back to the tour for a second year. Their property is a lush oasis in the heart of the desert, designed as much for sustainability as for beauty. At its center is a serene, self-cleaning pond built by Zach’s company, Salamander Springs—a cooling refuge for swimming, reflection, and relaxation.

Stewardship as Philosophy

For Joey and Zach, gardening is stewardship. “It’s not ours; we are borrowing it, and caring for it while we are here. By helping it become the best version of itself, that helps make us the best version of ourselves. It’s reciprocal,” Joey explains. That philosophy shapes every part of their garden, where hundreds of plants thrive in a carefully balanced, self-sustaining ecosystem.

Growing with Intention

Inspired by permaculture, publications, and local gardening wisdom, they grow everything from heirloom vegetables to medicinal herbs, edible natives, and towering sunflowers that reseed each year. Many plants are direct sown or propagated from cuttings, adapted over time to local soils and conditions. Their garden is both classroom and laboratory: Zach draws on his background in survivalist training, and Joey shares her knowledge through Utah Tech ICL classes and workshops on native and edible plants.

What’s New This Year

Visitors this year will discover a host of new additions: a Hopi/Pueblo Three Sisters Garden; heat-loving edibles like Sahara Kale, Vine Peach Melon, and Papalo; expanded culinary and medicinal herb gardens; and creative wildlife habitat features like bat houses, owl houses, bird feeders, and a “bug hotel.”

Play and artistry are woven into the landscape too. A newly built three-sided tree house—crafted from reused stumps, juniper posts, and salvaged trampoline pipes—offers both a children’s play space and an evening retreat for adults overlooking the pond. Alongside it, a trellis-in-progress will soon form a living tunnel of grapes and vines, while a gazebo with a Reciprocal Roof structure will be cloaked in wisteria by next summer.

Joey and Zach’s garden is a place of constant evolution—where experimentation, adaptation, and respect for the land come together to create a desert oasis full of life, learning, and wonder.

Garden Wisdom from Joey & Zach

• Garden as stewardship. Care for the land as if you’re borrowing it, not owning it.

• Start simple. Direct sowing and cuttings often thrive better than store-bought plants.

• Adapt through trial and error. Move plants, replace what fails, and keep experimenting.

• Build with what’s at hand. Reuse salvaged materials for structures and trellises.

• Support the whole ecosystem. Invite pollinators and wildlife with habitat features.