It’s About Thyme
by CHRIS WINSLOW
As we enter the parched summer months, a gardener’s thoughts often turn to plants that can make it through a drought, and many folks who come to visit my nursery are often seeking some guidance on this matter.
The booklet Native and Adapted Landscape Plants is a good place to start. This is a free City of Austin guide that you can pick up at any nursery. It covers trees, shrubs, perennials and turf grasses.
It’s important to remember that while xeriscape plants are indeed tough … they still need a helping hand to get their root systems established. So water for a few weeks after planting, and also give them water during very dry conditions.
Here is a selection of some of the yuccas, agaves and other plants that I consider my bullet-proof xeriscape favorites:
Red yucca: Low-growing, reaches two feet in height, four-to-six feet in width, making it an excellent groundcover. It is evergreen and blooms from spring to summer with tall coral red spikes. Hummingbirds love them!
Softleaf yucca: Grows to six feet with soft foliage and beautiful spikes of white to pale green flowers.
Blue yucca or Palmilla: This can reach over ten feet and its blue tinged foliage makes it a striking addition to any xeriscape garden. It blooms in late spring to summer with showy white flowers born on spikes.
Beaked yucca: Tall, with beautiful white flower spikes. Their trunks make for a very attractive landscape addition.
Texas Sotol: Has light green leaves with sharp edges, short trunks, and fabulous white flower stalks that can reach fifteen feet. There is also a silver leaf option called Wheeler’s Sotol.
Century Plant: This great desert plant can attain massive size and comes in an array of colors from green to silver, and blue. Known also as maguey, it has a spreading rosette of leaves and can attain a width of eight feet. Its flower spike can reach over fifteen feet. After flowering, the plant dies. The average life expectancy is fifteen to twenty years, and during this time the century plant will produce a number of offspring. Tequila is produced from a similar plant called the blue agave or Agave tequilana. There are a number of cultivars of this plant which have striking variegated foliage (white striping along the centers or margins of the leaves).
Queen Victoria Agave: A great choice for someone who doesn’t have the room to plant the larger agaves. Queen Victoria only gets to one foot by one foot. The foliage has beautiful white markings on the leaves.
Artichoke Agave: Grows to three feet and has the appearance of an artichoke. They make gorgeous specimens in the landscape and are extremely heat tolerant.
A great idea for a drought and heat tolerant landscape design is to use some of these yuccas and agaves in sparse plantings with gravel or decomposed granite as mulch.
Most of these plants stand perfectly on their own: the beauty of the plant’s own architecture can make a strong statement on any landscape. Adding a drought tolerant, fast-growing tree such as paloverde in the background and some zexmania or blackfoot daisies in the foreground can all add up to a simple yet beautiful xeriscape garden.
Happy gardening everyone!
If you have a gardening question, send it to me via [email protected]. (Please put ‘Ask Chris Winslow’ in the subject line.) Or mail your letter or postcard to: Ask Chris Winslow. It’s About Thyme: 11726 Manchaca Road, Austin, TX 78748
