the Austin Garden 🌿 Chris W's favorite yuccas 🌿 Yes Farm 🌿 Repel mosquitoes with plants

NURSERY NOTES: feeling lots of gratitude for the normal spring we've all been enjoying. In late March and early April came some days in the 90s, but everything chilled down, and what followed has been weeks of gentle warmth and rains. Despite all the change and growth, Austin remains a garden city, and it's all looking beautiful right now. 🌿 Windsor Park hosts an eco extravaganza tomorrow (Sat) from 10 a.m. - 1. p.m. at 5512 Coventry, 78723. W.P. Eco 🌿 Try some plant-based ice-cream (including sweet potato) on June 12 at the Austin Organic Gardeners Ice Cream Social at Zilker. 7 p.m. A.O.G. ❦

REPEL MOSQUITOES WITH PLANTS: American Beautyberry, catnip, mint and lavender are some of the many plants that mosquitoes dislike. But often just having the plants isn't enough. For beautyberry, it's best to crush the leaves with a pestle and mortar, and then wipe the bruised leaves on your exposed skin. The Spruce ❦

YES FARM: Seattle's Black Farmers Collective has created a flourishing 1.5 acre garden farm in the city. "Yes Farm is about celebrating black leadership, knowledge, and ideas while offering a safe space for people of color to learn how to grow." Garden Culture Magazine ❦

MAYFIELD PARK NOTES: Thanks to Park Rangers Danielle Brown and Chris Cormier for a fascinating nature walk at Mayfield Park a few Saturdays back. After sharing the principles of 'leave no trace,' we set off on safari identifying various sumacs, rock rose pavonias, bee balms, bonesets, silktassels and much more (with some help from plant identifier Seek). ❦

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CENTRAL TEXAS GARDENER: John Dromgoole from the Natural Gardener tips over nursery containers to inspect plant roots to see if they're ready to come home with you.

Central Texas Gardener ❦

THIS SPRING MANY GARDENERS had to work hard to get their landscapes back in shape after all of the wild weather events - most recently that branch-snapper of an ice storm in the final days of January. Top of mind for many is the quest for plants that stand tall, no matter the conditions.

Yuccas are New World plants with a vast natural range. They grow all the way from Baja, California in the west, to Florida in the east, Canada in the north, and Guatemala in the South. They are widely thought of as architectural plants, and can be used to create dramatic accents within a garden.

These beauties have strong, evergreen sword or strap-like leaves, and they produce dramatic spikes of glorious white flowers once a year.

Another more evocative name for them is ‘ghosts in the graveyard.’ This comes from the high number of yuccas growing wild in forgotten graveyards, where their large white flower clusters appear as ‘ghosts’ in the moonlight.

Yuccas are drought tolerant to the extreme. Their heat and cold tolerance is also great. They only require a full to partial sun location and well-drained soil. Some of my favorites:

Big Bend or beaked yucca (Yucca rostrata). Also called sapphire skies, this beauty (see photo above) has a rosette of sword-like leaves of a bluish to silver color. Older specimens will form trunks and add a dramatic accent to any landscape. These are my all-time favorites.

Adam’s Bright Edge (Yucca filamentosa) is a clumping, dwarf yucca with narrow variegated foliage with yellow edged foliage. Its mature height is 2 feet with a white flower stalk to 5 feet.

Color Guard (Yucca filamentosa) is a dwarf yucca with each leaf centered with yellow-gold foliage. Color guard will stay under 2 feet in height and will spread to 3 feet in width. It produces a dramatic 5-foot tall white flower spike.

Red Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) has evergreen, grassy-like foliage to 2 feet with coral-red flower spikes to 6 feet. Red yucca is not in the yucca genus but is closely related (agave). This plant is commonly grown in Central Texas as a low- to no-water use evergreen perennial. Hummingbirds love their flowers.

These are just a few of the yucca family that are suitable for the Travis County area. With thoughtful placement, yuccas can make our landscapes more beautiful and will be sure to last through any droughts that come our way in future years. Happy Gardening everyone! ❦