This spring many gardeners, landscapers and homeowners will be
replacing plants that perished during the great drought of 2011.

 

One very useful family of drought and heat tolerant plants to consider

is the yuccas. 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.

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 for 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 a well-drained soil. Some of my favorites:

 

Big Bend or beaked yucca (Yucca rostrata). Also called sapphire

skies, this beauty 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 planted in central Texas as a low to no-water use ever-

green perennial.  Hummingbirds love their flowers.

 

These are just a few of the yucca family that are suitable for the

Hays/Travis county areas. 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!