Hi Julia,
The most distinctive characteristic of weather here is that we can go from mid January to mid July without getting more than, say, two inches of rain. Then we get something like 16 inches of rain split almost evenly over the monsoons of July and August and the dark winter days of November and December. We also have long warm spells in spring followed by late frosts: the high can be 80F for four days straight in February and the low can be 22F for two days straight in late April.
There is no question about the soil being well drained. It's silty soil, not too much sand or clay. The plants live two or three feet from the edge of a retaining wall (that goes downhill...) so there's never any standing water. I do tend to dish the soil an inch or so when I plant plants so that when I hand water some of the water stays near the plant. Not a lot of organic matter, but I do put down two inches of mulch every year. After five years of practice it does do a good job of preventing weeds. I generally plant heuchera north of a mature allegator juniper where it gets thin, dappled light, only the occasional ray of bright sunlight. But here at 5200 ft the light is intense on clear days. And we have 220 of those a year, on average.
I do have browsing deer and gophers, but I've never seen evidence that they attack the plants. No evidence of leaf disease, either.
This year, for the first time, I started watering in March and I notice my roses are happier. No heucheras planted last year, though.
BTW is it pronounced HEW ker a, or HOOK er a or WHO ker a?
