Something to keep in mind is that Arizona is "hot" only for a few months of the Summer, and at that only during the daytime. The rest of the year the days are balmy, with the nights sometimes becoming quite chilly, and in Winter there is the occasional hard freeze.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "proper" garden, but can assure you that there are plenty of gardens in Tucson, both of the food-producing and the purely ornamental variety. In fact, if you get out into our lovely Sonoran desert, you will soon discover that it is one big garden, though maybe not the kind you're used to whatever "cold" place it is you happen to be living.
Of course a desert porch garden is practicable; you might just have to change a few assumptions from your current location. Hot weather means you have to water more, and perhaps grow plants that enjoy lots of sun and heat. If you want to grow food, think Mediterranean crops like tomatoes, basil, etc, and don't forget all the great desert-adapted plants that have been grown around here by humans for millennia, like beans, squashes, etc. One of the big plusses of the climate here is that you can grow food all year round, rotating crops for the Winter and Summer. I know people who grow tons of chard, lettuces, wheat, and other Winter crops out in the middle of the desert. No reason you couldn't do the same in your back yard (another bonus of living here is it's a lot easier to afford a house than in most parts of the US).
If you're after ornamentals, well, the desert is loaded with beautiful plants of all description, but you're not going to be growing, say, a "proper" English garden here.
Take a trip to Tucson, and while here be sure to visit the excellent Tucson Botanical Gardens. It's a wonderful place to spend an afternoon, and they have resources to answer questions like this. Perhaps you'll become a member.
Then start checking out the downtown neighborhoods and notice how many different types of trees, flowers, cacti, bushes there are in peoples' yards. I think you'll be quite pleasantly surprised by what you find.
Good luck with your research.

Something to keep in mind is that Arizona is "hot" only for a few months of the Summer, and at that only during the daytime. The rest of the year the days are balmy, with the nights sometimes becoming quite chilly, and in Winter there is the occasional hard freeze.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "proper" garden, but can assure you that there are plenty of gardens in Tucson, both of the food-producing and the purely ornamental variety. In fact, if you get out into our lovely Sonoran desert, you will soon discover that it is one big garden, though maybe not the kind you're used to whatever "cold" place it is you happen to be living.
Of course a desert porch garden is practicable; you might just have to change a few assumptions from your current location. Hot weather means you have to water more, and perhaps grow plants that enjoy lots of sun and heat. If you want to grow food, think Mediterranean crops like tomatoes, basil, etc, and don't forget all the great desert-adapted plants that have been grown around here by humans for millennia, like beans, squashes, etc. One of the big plusses of the climate here is that you can grow food all year round, rotating crops for the Winter and Summer. I know people who grow tons of chard, lettuces, wheat, and other Winter crops out in the middle of the desert. No reason you couldn't do the same in your back yard (another bonus of living here is it's a lot easier to afford a house than in most parts of the US).
If you're after ornamentals, well, the desert is loaded with beautiful plants of all description, but you're not going to be growing, say, a "proper" English garden here.
Take a trip to Tucson, and while here be sure to visit the excellent Tucson Botanical Gardens. It's a wonderful place to spend an afternoon, and they have resources to answer questions like this. Perhaps you'll become a member.
Then start checking out the downtown neighborhoods and notice how many different types of trees, flowers, cacti, bushes there are in peoples' yards. I think you'll be quite pleasantly surprised by what you find.
Good luck with your research.

Gardening isn't a problem here, except for a couple months in the summer. We water our plants with gray water that we collect in a big tub from when we take our showers, and whenever else we use clean or safe water. We also have a couple of small garbage cans that we use to collect rain water. In the winter, we cover our plants with sheets on cold nights so they don't freeze. Some people put Christmas tree lights to keep their plants warm.

We are planning to start a vegetable garden, and our neighbor has given us information about how to get started. He helped us find a location where we could get horse manure, since the dirt here is not conducive to growing vegetables without compost or manure nutrients. He also lent us a great Arid Gardening book.

For your decorative gardening, be sure to plant native plants... they do much better here and are better for the land. If you come to visit, do the following: Visit the Desert Museum (www.desertmuseum.org/) to see the billions of beautiful plants that grow natively in our desert, then visit Desert Survivors (www.desertsurvivors.org/) to see all the native plants you can get for your garden. Also, check out Native Seed Search (www.nativeseeds.org/v2/default.php) for vegetable and other plant seeds that grow around here.

Also visit these websites for ideas:

wc.pima.edu/~bfiero/tucs...ants_home.htm

aznps.org/