sunken beds

Here in far southwest Oklahoma gardening has always been challenging and the climate has always swung back and forth.  Actually historically back for centuries.  It seems we're swinging towards a more desert climate - sun is intense, rain is sparser, seasons have changed.  We have become interested in the techniques of peoples of the southwest.  We are in the process of building our first sunken garden bed as an experiment.  Does anyone have any practical experience, advice or pictures of the technique? Thanks in advance.

Here in Texas folks like to use the word Xeriscape for sunken gardens.

Here are some threads that might offer some suggestions/pictures of sunken gardens:

https://permies.com/t/166918/Xeriscape-Fruit-Trees

https://permies.com/t/54362/Sunken-gardens-conserving-resources

https://permies.com/t/74432/Sunken-beds-hardpan-caliche

I am looking forward to what other folks have to suggest.

Tyler documents her buried wood beds in this thread.

Here, in southern Arizona, some folks use the Zuni sunken garden method. Dig down about 6-8 inches and that’s your bed. Here we have to dig deeper and put some decent soil in. Then you use the plants to shade the ground by (basically) over planting. Think Three Sisters method. THEN you water deeply every other day. It makes the roots grow deep so they are less susceptible to the heat. I hope this was what you were looking for!

Based in Arizona, The Urban Farm may be a good source of information.  They do focus on fruit trees, but have applied permaculture principles on urban scales in the SW.  Greg moved east (I forget where), but he's still involved.  They do have a podcast that sometimes has some good information.

Good luck.

When we lived in Yuma, Arizona, the "soil" in the back yard was VERY hard.  Rototiller, row garden, etc., did not work.  

One approach that did work.  Designated bed areas 4'x8', with 16" paths between all around.  Soaker hose buried several inches down running at the 1' and 3' lines of the 4' dimension, across the 7' mark on the 8' dimension.  The entire garden area covered with "upside down" scrap carpet.  The 4'x8' bed area drawn on the carpet, along with the one foot grids.  This provided a means to avoid puncturing the soaker hose, and cut selected holes in the carpet depending on the desired plant density in a given square foot.  I used a 3" x 24" bulb auger to drill out the native "soil".  Then a vortex vacuum cleaner to suck the hole clear.  Then backfill with a commercial potting soil.  Seeds planted would be directly watered until they were a few inches tall, then allowed to just continue on with the water from the buried soaker hose.  Where other approached were horrible, this provided great crops.  

I set up several 4'x8' test beds that were essentially in ground "wicking beds".  Digging out was NO fun.  About 18" deep, lined with plastic up maybe 6".  Up the middle of the long dimension, from 1' to 7' line, Beneath the plastic rock stacked up something over 4", and the plastic at the top sliced.  The intent was to provide a "drain" in the middle, so water overfill would go down via the center of the bed.  3" to 4" of rock on the bottom to provide a water reservoir.  Cover the rock with fiberglass weed block.  Fill the bed with a mix of potting & native soil.  One end of the bed had a piece of PVC pipe that went down to the bottom of the bed to check water level / refill.  

Unfortunately, after setting up most of the yard in beds, we had to move...