Golden Toothed Aloe
Aloe nobilis
- Plant Form: Succulent
- Water Use: Very low
- Mature Size: 1-2 ft. tall x 3-4 ft. wide
- Exposure: Full sun, part sun, filtered sun
- Bloom Time: Spring (Mar – May), Summer (June – Aug)
- Native to: South Africa
- Hardiness: Cold hardy to 20°F
Want to liven up a small garden space with a tidy, spreading succulent that also attracts hummingbirds and butterflies? Golden Toothed Aloe fits that niche with its rosette-forming mounds and beautiful red-orange flowers in spring and summer.
Golden Toothed Aloe is a rosette-forming succulent that can create a mounded colony of close rosettes spreading up to 3-4 feet wide. Its fleshy leaves are bright green when grown in light shade, but turn orange when in full sun, making quite a display. Yellow to creamy white teeth line the edges of each leaf which glow when backlit. In summer, 2-foot-tall spikes of tubular orange flowers rise above the rosettes, attracting bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies to the show. In hot deserts, it needs afternoon shade to prevent burning the leaves. This vigorous succulent makes a unique small-scale groundcover, and looks great in beds and borders, rock gardens, succulent gardens, cactus gardens, and Mediterranean gardens. It is also happy in decorative containers.
Check out our “Garden Tasks” for October
Mediterranean Fan Palm
European Fan Palm
Chamaerops humilis
- Plant Form: Palm, shrub, tree
- Water Use: Low, moderate
- Mature Size: 6-15 ft. tall x 6-20 ft. wide
- Exposure: Full sun, part shade
- Bloom Time: Spring (Mar – May)
- Native to: Europe, Northern Africa
- Hardiness: Cold hardy to 10°F
Looking for a low-litter plant with a tropical feel to perform as either a focal point or lush background plant? Mediterranean Fan Palm can fulfill either need, while standing up to heat, wind, frost, and drought.
Mediterranean Fan Palm is among the hardiest palms, able to survive triple-digit heat and cold down to 10 degrees F, with exceptional tolerance to wind and drought. This bushy, evergreen palm forms either a single stem or becomes multi-trunked in age, growing up to 8 trunks. While slow-growing, it is prized for its use in small yards, its low maintenance, and drought tolerance. Its fan-shaped leaves grow up to 2 feet long, held at the ends of 3-4 foot-long, spiny petiole stalks, so take care when trimming off old leaves. This attractive plant can anchor either decorative containers or tubs, or provide the focal point of a pool or spa, but is just as happy to create the background ambiance for either. This low-litter, dwarf palm works beautifully as either an accent or focal point, as a background planting, barrier, privacy screen, windbreak, border, or as a tidy companion to pools, spas, patios, and Mediterranean gardens.
Check out our “Garden Tasks” for September
Cimarron Sage
Blue Ranger
Leucophyllum zygophyllum
- Plant Form: Evergreen shrub
- Water Use: Low
- Mature Size: 3 ft. tall x 3-4 ft. wide
- Exposure: Full sun, reflected sun
- Bloom Time: Summer (June – Aug), Fall (Sept – Oct)
- Native to: Texas, Mexico, SW US
- Hardiness: Cold hardy to 10°F
Cimarron Sage provides a perfect silvery contrast to all or your green-foliaged plants. As an added bonus, it produces a flush of purplish-blue flowers whenever summer or fall rains occur. This evergreen shrub takes all the heat, sun, cold, and drought thrown at it in southwestern deserts, while asking for very little maintenance or added water in return.
Cimarron Sage is a petite variety of normally much larger Texas Rangers, all known for their masses of flowers produced in response to summer and fall rains. This evergreen shrub is prized for its soft, rounded form and silvery-gray fuzzy leaves which contrast beautifully with its bluish-purple flowers. Butterflies, bees, hummingbirds, and other pollinators are attracted to the flowers. Cimarron Sage has exceptional drought tolerance, heat tolerance, cold hardiness, and is very low maintenance. Water regularly but infrequently in summer. Avoid watering in winter months except in extreme winter droughts. Allow these beauties to grow naturally – resist pruning into box-shapes or globes. While creating a denser appearance, flowers will be sacrificed, and water use will increase. Prune only lightly in late February to maintain the plant’s natural form. Typically used as an accent plant, border, screen, or informal hedge, and in beds and borders, by patios, as a filler shrub, and in containers.
Check out our “Garden Tasks” for August
Century Plant
American Agave
Agave americana
- Plant Form: Succulent
- Water Use: Very low
- Mature Size: 6-10 ft. tall x 10-15 ft. wide
- Exposure: Full sun, reflected sun
- Bloom Time: Summer (June – August)
- Native to: Mexico, SW US
- Hardiness: Cold hardy to 15°F
Century Plants can make a striking, symmetrical accent or focal point in a large garden space. Just keep in mind how huge it gets before planting it, and always avoid planting it next to driveways, pathways, curbs, or patios. These agaves form expanding circles of pups, grand-pups, and great-grand-pups, so be diligent about digging out and discarding (or giving away) pups when they are small or your yard can be overtaken by a forest of giant agaves.
Century Plant is a large and impressive succulent that forms symmetrical rosettes of fleshy, gray-green, spiky leaves that can grow up to 6 feet long. Named from a belief that it blooms only after 100 years, it actually blooms when plants reach about 15 – 30 years old. The giant flowering stalk with clusters of yellow flowers seems to grow overnight, reaching 20 to 40 feet into the sky. After flowering, the agave dies, but not before producing offsets or “pups” around the base, which continue the cycle: grow, bloom, die, create more pups and grand-pups (which can be transplanted). Century Plants can reach giant proportions, so make sure you take its full size into account before choosing where to plant one. Don’t plant near curbs, walkways, driveways, or patios. You’ll regret planting it anywhere you have to cut its leaves back to safely pass by it. To avoid spoiling its beautiful symmetry, make sure to plant it in the right place. Use care and protection if you must prune it, as the plant sap is very irritating to skin. In the right place, Century Plant is carefree, being tolerant of drought, scorching heat, poor soil, and strong winds. It makes quite a statement in southwest and Mediterranean gardens, borders, containers, in mass, or as a focal point.
Check out our “Garden Tasks” for July
Crape Myrtle
Lagerstroemia indica
- Plant Form: Deciduous tree, shrub
- Water Use: Low, moderate
- Mature Size: 2-22 ft. tall and wide
- Exposure: Full sun, part sun
- Bloom Time: Summer (June-Aug), Fall (Sept-Nov)
- Native to: China
- Hardiness: Cold hardy to 15°F
Crape Myrtles are a versatile tree or shrub that brings interest to your yard, especially in summer and fall. Pick from a variety of summer flower colors, including white, pink, rose, red, or purple, all of which make great cut bouquets. Fall brings a flush of colorful foliage before winter leaf drop, which exposes attractive sculptural branching. Happy to live in a container, there is a size and height of Crape Myrtle to fit your individual space.
Crape Myrtle’s claim to fame is its incredibly showy, ruffled flowers, but it has many other admirable qualities. This ornamental shrub or tree offers year-round interest: flowers from summer into fall, fall foliage color, sculptural branching in winter after leaves drop when allowed to grow naturally, and interesting exfoliating bark, revealing a velvety trunk. Many hybrids are available to satisfy a spectrum of needs and preferences for size, height, and blossom color, from knee-high dwarfs to towering shrub-tree forms. These deciduous plants are very low-maintenance if you select the correct variety to fit your space (to avoid constant pruning, which some call “crape murder”). Flower colors range from white to pink, rose, red, and purple. Crape Myrtles are resistant to both rabbits and deer, tolerate most soils, grow well in containers, make great flowers for cutting, are patio friendly, easy-care, water wise and fire wise. Landscape uses include privacy screens, hedges, specimen trees, mass plantings, borders, and containers.
Check out our “Garden Tasks” for June
Purple Phlomis
Purple Jerusalem Sage
Phlomis purpurea
- Plant Form: Evergreen shrub
- Water Use: Low
- Mature Size: 2-4 ft. tall x 3-4 ft. wide
- Exposure: Full sun, light shade
- Bloom Time: Spring (Mar-May), Summer (June-Aug)
- Native to: Spain, Portugal, Morocco
- Hardiness: Cold hardy to 15°F
There is so much to like about Purple Phlomis! It thrives in hot, dry areas of your yard while needing very little water, produces unusual but beautiful purple flowers from spring through summer, has leaves so soft you want to pet them, and takes heat and cold in stride.
Purple Phlomis offers a beautiful solution for hot, dry areas of a yard, forming a large mound of wooly leaves with whorls of rose-lavender, hooded flowers skewered in tiers on long spikes of fuzzy stems. Its softness belies it tough nature, since it is drought-tolerant, heat tolerant, cold hardy, low maintenance, resists browsing by deer, and requires very little summer water once established. Butterflies and bees love the flowers, adding good habitat to your yard. The cut flowers make nice bouquets, and after the flowers fall away, the seedpods create interesting dried arrangements. Flowers allowed to go to seed attract songbirds in fall and winter. Cut back to about 1 foot tall in late fall. While this drought-tolerant shrub tolerates some shade, it may get leggy with too much shade. Use as an accent or specimen plant, in borders and beds, or massed in the garden. Ideal plant for rock gardens, butterfly and hummingbird gardens, Mediterranean gardens, and any xeriscape garden.
