Get Ready for the Heat with Drought Tolerant Bloomers
When you think of heat tolerant plants that don’t mind scorching temperatures, many might automatically think of agaves and cactus. And while both are beautiful and architectural in the landscape, there are many other types of plants that both take the heat and look beautiful at the same time. When choosing plants for the xeriscape garden, a variety of textures, colors and sizes makes for a most interesting landscape.
Whether you are choosing plants for a client’s landscape or for the garden center, offering variety is key.
When it comes to drought tolerant blooms, White Rockrose Cistus x corbariensis, is a gorgeous, moderately sized shrub that is lovely featured as a foundation plant or perennial border. Foliage has a rough texture that creates a perfect background for soft white blooms that bud out with an interesting red tinge of color in late spring. While White Rockrose can tolerate temperatures down to 10F degrees, it is the heat of summer in which these hardy plants shine.
Another gorgeous drought tolerant shrub includes the low growing Desert Mallow, Sphaeralcea abigua. At only one to three feet tall, it makes a wonderful border or container plant in the xeriscape garden. It features wooly textured leaves and large, salmon to orange hued clusters of blooms on upright stalks from february through November, giving you a long season of color.
Looking for a more traditional looking shrub? Glossy Abelia, Abelia grandiflora ‘Edward Goucher’ is sure to please! Its arching growth habit work well in both informal and formal gardens alike. The variegated green-red foliage offers wonderful color in the landscape until the show of small soft pink bell-shaped blooms appears in spring, lasting through fall.
Where water is scarce, or even if you are just focusing on saving valuable resources, adding these and many other drought tolerant shrubs, perennials and trees to the landscape will save you time, money and water all summer long.
More featured plants
Phyllostachys ‘Aurea’
Xylosma congestum ‘Compacta’
Tradescantia pallida ‘Purpurea’
Phormium tenax Rubrum
Fatsia japonica
Convovulus cnenorum
Festuca Elijah Blue
Tecoma capensis
Alyogyne huegelli
Feijoa sellowiana
