Creating a Natural Environment for Desert Spiny Lizards in the School Garden

When we were in the planning phase of our garden ten years ago, we decided that our school garden needed to be as natural as possible for all kinds of wildlife to visit and stay in the garden.  This is why desert spiny lizards exist in our garden today. The lizards are not school pets.  We do not have to buy any special food and we do not keep them in a cage or aquarium tank. The desert spiny lizards are there because the environment allows them to survive without any predators, such as snakes, hawks, and foxes.

Our school is in the Las Vegas Valley, which is in the Mojave Desert.  The Mojave Desert is where desert spiny lizards inhabit.  One of the quadrants in our school garden is the Mountain Riparian area. It has low slopes and grassy areas.

We built hills in the mountain riparian area
because the land was all flat.

    This low hill was built by wheelbarrowing sand and dirt.

We added trees and grasses to our mountain riparian area.

Another area that the desert spiny lizards like to visit is the desert area. This area has a Joshua tree, bushes, yuccas, and sandstone boulders. Lizards like to bask in the sun on top of boulders and find food near the Joshua tree, bushes and yuccas.

Desert Spiny Lizards like to rest on the
 boulders during the hot sun. They also like
the twisted leaf yucca and the Joshua tree.

The agricultural area provides a variety of insects for the lizards to eat.  Ants, beetles, crickets, aphids, spiders, wasps, caterpillars, moths, butterflies, cockroaches, and other bugs crawl on, under, or near the apricot, plum, peach, fig, pomegranate, pistachio, and almond trees.

It's definitely a buffet of bugs for our family of desert spiny lizards.