A WORLD OF GARDENS 
IOI 
Farmers have tried to raise dates in many 
places in the United States but have not been 
very successful. We have very few places 
where there is underground water, no rainfall, 
and plenty of hot sunshine. The best place 
seems to be in Arizona, near Phoenix, and many 
trees have been planted there, and have been 
growing for a number of years. It is too soon, 
however, to tell whether they will be perfectly 
successful, for a date palm should live for at 
least a hundred years. When the year 2000 
comes, we should know if Arizona is a good 
place for the growing of dates. 
Usually we think of a desert as being hot, but 
the word really means a dry country. The cold 
arctic regions are deserts because they are frozen 
for two-thirds of the year. Plants cannot use 
frozen moisture. In the arctic countries there 
is a short season in the summer when the ice 
melts and the snow thaws out. A plant that 
can manage to grow so quickly that it is through 
flowering before the frost comes again may live 
in these cold deserts. 
Some oases 
have thousands 
of date palms 
