Viewing comments posted by JuniperAnn

Pavonia lasiopetala (Texas Rock Rose), a sprawling deciduous perennial. In my zone (9a), grows to be 3-4'H x 4-5'W in 1-2 years, then stays that size. That is wider than any description I read before I planted it.

Full sun to part shade. Tolerates clay soil & drought. Reseeds a handful of seedlings per year, usually directly underneath or near the mother plant.

A tough native of the Chihuahuan desert that also took the humid heat and heavy rain of my climate in stride. Neither the leaves nor the flowers ever looked thirsty, tired, diseased, or rain-beaten.

Great rebloom without deadheading, proportional in size to the most recent rain. Has at least some blooms on it all spring, summer, and fall, and puts on a big show a few days after every big rain.

No fragrance.

I only wish that I liked hot pink more! If you love bold color and you live in the subtropics, you should have this plant! Stick it in the ground where it has space to sprawl, and walk away.

Does not like to be transplanted once mature. I've killed two of them by transplanting them. If you want it in a new spot, it's probably better to lift up the branches and see if you can dig out a seedling than to try to move the mother plant.

Some sources say it's short-lived. I've never had one up-and-die for no reason, but I had it in my garden no more than 5 years, so I can't say if it was short-lived for me.

This is a well-behaved variety of phyostegia virginiana ssp. virginiana, a North American native member of the mint family that's usually pretty aggressive. The white flowers are pretty, but subtle enough that I'd recommend a mass of at least 5 plants for it to stand out.

The Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center says it will grow in sun, part shade, and full shade.

That is true, but you won't get any flowers in full shade. My 3 plants survived in full shade for a year, then thrived in part shade for two years. Then all 3 disappeared during an unremarkable winter while everything around them stayed healthy. I haven't seen anything about a short lifespan for this plant, and it has a distinctive enough look that I don't think I would've accidentally weeded it out. On the other hand, it died shortly after my 2nd child was born, so for all I know maybe I ate it while hallucinating from sleep deprivation. *shrug*

It stayed under 18" for me, even in full shade, and never needed staking. I would recommend it as an attractive edging plant if I knew that the short lifespan wasn't a regular feature.

After lots and lots of reading about different kinds of trees, this is the one I chose to be the primary shade tree in our smallish front yard when our too-big ash died.

It's quick-growing (up to 4' per year), long-lived (can live over 100 years if not hit by a serious drought), and never gets too big for a smallish lot (max height 25-40 feet). Not a lot of trees share all of those features!

Also, it tolerates clay soil and moderate drought. It's not supposed to like poorly drained soil, but I placed a rain garden 3 feet from one in the backyard, and it's thriving in spite of the fact that the top inch or so of soil regularly gets anaerobic (PU!). I hear it wouldn't be a good choice for next to a permanent pond.

Will grow in part shade or full sun, so the backyard one was planted under the drip line of the backyard ash, just in case something happened to that ash.

A relative transplanted some big, 15-feet tall trees after digging up only about a cubic foot of root ball, and they bounced back just fine, so it's pretty tough.

The big clusters of white flowers bloom all summer long, when lots of other plants are sulking from the heat. Very showy but not gaudy, and easy to fit into any garden color scheme. No fragrance, unfortunately.

If I have any complaints, it's that this deciduous tree doesn't leaf out until April, which is pretty late for the subtropics. I always spend March wondering if somehow it died this year when it's the only brown stick in a sea of green.

If you live in the southeastern USA, you already know this plant. It's a well-behaved, if not terribly exciting, workhorse plant. Tolerates drought and some flooding. No care at all. A classic for edges of flower beds since it forms very slowly spreading clumps that are easy to keep in check. Grow in part shade (in which case it will grow some nice but not attention-grabbing spikes of purple flowers in spring) or full shade (no flowers). Tolerates clay soil, alkaline soil, & dry shade.

Descriptions of this plant sometimes say that it will not tolerate flooding. I've read in a few sources that if the leaves turn brown after flooding, then that means that the roots have a fungal infection and the plant will die. I have a few plants that came with my house in flood-prone areas, and they keep trucking on. If their spot floods for several days, the leaf edges will turn brown and then slowly recover. So I guess they need good drainage in some climates / soils / situations, but they seem to be fairly flood tolerant here.

When buying do NOT just go by the dark green or variegated grassy appearance. Check the label! Look-alikes liriope spicata and members of the ophiopogon genus are aggressive, and should only be grown in pots or in isolated beds surrounded by concrete (or, better yet, not at all. A bed of just "monkey grass" isn't particularly attractive and if you don't constantly fight it, that's what you'll get).

Short-lived (2-3 years) root-hardy perennial here. Beautiful flowers and foliage. It's difficult to grow from seed, cuttings don't root easily (and if they do, it's VERY slow), and it doesn't respond well to dividing, so unless you have an extra-green thumb, you'll be buying this one as a plant.

This is a variety of a native species here, so it can theoretically survive on just rain in a non-drought year. In practice, unless you've been lucky enough to over-winter one, they don't go on sale until the plant blooms in late spring, so you'll be be into the stressful part of the year here for plants before you get your hands on it. I've only tried this one in full sun, and it requires regular watering there.

Such a nice low-care plant. Evergreen in most winters here (all winters if grown near a house wall). Tolerates moderate drought, clay soil, poorly-drained soil, and even a few days of flooding. Shiny green foliage. Part or full shade, moist or dry. Does tend to struggle the first year it's planted, but then it bucks up. Makes baby plants at a moderate pace, which is nice for filling in, but you'll eventually have to thin. A relative grows this as a low-care hedge in front of low windows, and it works very nicely for that purpose. She has to dig up and pass along several baby plants every year, but she has a nice thick evergreen hedge with no trimming, so I think it's a good trade-off.

A lovely annual for growing in pots or raised beds with light soil.

This plant is hardy here in zone 9a, but I don't recommend growing it as a perennial. The flower spikes die at the lightest frost, and it stays ugly and dead-looking until the next warm spell brings another flush of flowers. With so many evergreen options in the sub-tropics, there's no reason to be staring at ugly brown twigs 1/3 of the year.

Also, the roots will not penetrate clay soil at ALL. I wondered why this supposedly drought-tolerant plant got drought-stressed so easily. After growing several plants for two years in a raised bed of amended clay soil, I pulled them up. They slipped right out of the original planting holes as though from pots. Not one root had left the original potting soil, even though I had cut any circling roots before planting. That's a new one to me.

A classy workhorse for zones 7-11.
Pros: unkillable. Drought and flood tolerant. Not picky about soil (grows in my unamended heavy clay). Can grow in full sun to full shade, though it will flower best in my region with just a little bit of shade. Big, elegant white flowers on long stems with mild to moderate sweet scent.
Cons: for 2 years after they're transplanted, crinums focus on growing roots instead of on growing blooms. Probably for this reason, I've never seen one in a local nursery. Scent is just a basic sweet scent, and doesn't waft (at least not to my nose). Leaves grow down past ground level and sprawl on the ground a bit, which is a bit messy, but doesn't bother me.

Excellent replacement for boxwood in a water-wise formal or semi-formal garden. Grows slowly, so you don't need to trim frequently (once or twice a year, in our region, if you don't water it). Drought tolerant. Flood tolerant. Never looks tired or thirsty. All-around great little workhorse of a plant. Previous owners planted it as a specimen in a tiny single-plant flower bed surrounded by concrete, which is baffling. It is not a specimen plant. However, it has survived 4 years of total neglect in that terrible little space as I ponder what to replace it with (and probably survived many more years of neglect before we purchased the house). If you have a female plant for the showy winter berries, then you'll need a male pollinator. This is a good, self-effacing choice for tucking into your garden if you don't want the male to be a feature. However, in the suburbs of our region of the world, every right of way & empty lot is full of yaupon, and I think you'd be better off just buying the female and seeing if the wild plants will pollinate it before you spend time and garden space on a male. Yaupon seeds are spread prodigiously by birds, but if you live where it grows wild, you'll be picking seedlings out of your flower beds whether or not you own the plant, so go ahead and buy it if you want it. That feature would probably make it invasive where it isn't native, so probably avoid this outside of North America. This is the only North American plant whose leaves contain caffeine, and it can be used to make a tea, which I've seen offered in a restaurant, but haven't tried yet.

This is one of my favorite plants. Grows in full sun (but will wilt a bit in the dead of summer), part shade, or full shade (but will grow slowly and bloom less—but still bloom). Grows in any soil. Tolerates both drought and flood.

It's a lovely bright warm pink, a color I have trouble finding in a sea of cool pink plants. Its small, bright, prolific, frequently-reblooming flowers and big light green leaves put it in an easy-to-use middle spot between showy and restrained.

Every part of the plant is edible (if not tasty), so you don't have to be concerned about having it around babies or children. In the fall, it grows very cute fruit that look like tiny red apples. The fruit has an appealing crunch, but the insipid taste of dilute sugar water. The leaves are fuzzy, which makes them thoroughly unappealing for raw eating. I've heard they're good cooked, but haven't tried yet.

Grows easily from cuttings (I say as per someone who always kills rose cuttings; I have ~a 1/2 success rate of rooting cuttings with rooting hormone, or 1/5 without). Will slowly spread by colonizing or self-seeding (my 3 mature plants have produced 1 seedling in 2 years), but not aggressively so. Easy to keep to the location you want.

One of its few faults is that it will die back to the ground if temperatures fall to the 20's F. For this reason, it's not a great choice as an isolated specimen or as the only plant in a single-species hedge. But it's evergreen in the 30s, so that's not often a problem here in zone 9.

Also, it tends to be pretty open and lacy, so if you want a dense look, you should plant at least 2 plants pretty close together (maybe 1-1.5' apart on the centers).