Tohono Chul Park by Jane St. Clair

When you think about parks, you think about sports and playgrounds. Tucson’s Tohono Chul Park is nothing about those. Tohono Chul is about gardens and trails.

“Tohono Chul” means “desert corner” in the language of the Tohono O’oham nation, but the park isn’t deserty. It’s more gardens and oasis. And unless you’ve lived in the dry brown dust of a desert, you can’t understand how refreshing it is to feel the green lushness that is Tohono Chul Park.

It’s a big place, almost 50 acres. Once it was a commercial orange grove, and once it was somebody’s house. The house and other properties are now an art gallery, classroom, and a chichi restaurant. The Haunted Bookstore used to be part of Tohono Chul Park, but Amazon ate it up a long time ago.

The many gardens of Tohono Chul have names and themes. I like the ones with flowers and water elements the best. The park puts name tags on the plants and flowers that grow there, including over 300 kinds of cactus, and a zillion kinds of Penstemons. The Superb Penstemon, the Showy, Cleveland’s Beardtongue, Whipple’s, Sunset Crater, Gulf Coast, and whatever. Cool.

The tiny Baja Fairy Duster looks exactly like its name. I’m convinced that tidy fairies grab them up when no one’s looking.

The Children’s Garden has a whimsical birdhouse and water stream for paper boats. In the Ethnobotanical Garden you can see how the Native Americans farmed and harvested the desert centuries ago.

You’ll want to check out the tortoise enclosure and the dancing men petrographs, and the cactus circle with the horse statue. You can hike on natural desert trails, and if you’re lucky, you’ll see bobcat, coyote and javelina.

I have a favorite cactus out there I always visit because he’s so dorky he makes me smile.
I like to sit on the benches in the gardens and listen to the rustle of the trees and shrubberies accompanied by wind chimes. I like to feel the soft ground under my feet –desert ground is hard, sandy and rocky.

Ralph Waldo Emerson loved gardens. He once said he would rather walk around gardens and nurseries than among the Pyramids. I love his definition of a successful life:

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

So there it is. Gardens are that important. To succeed –all you need to do is build a garden. Isn’t it pretty to think so?

To check out the park’s hours and admission charges, go to their website here.