Full Sun, Part Shade
Medium WaterMature Size: 1’X 3’+
Blooming Season: Summer
Flower Color: White
Widely regarded as a medicinal plant, and often found in the bosque as the wild groundcover under Cottonwoods, the landscape value of Yerba Mansa is finally being recognized. Its white coneflowers stand a foot above a dense carpet of large thick leaves that are deep green during the growing season, turning red and then a rich rusty brown through winter.
Full Sun, Part Shade
Low WaterMature Size: 8”X 8”
Blooming Season: Summer
Flower Color: Bright pink
This perennial relative of moss rose grows neat tufts of narrow succulent leaves topped with a continuous show of rose pink flowers every afternoon throughout the hot summer months. The flowers float above the leaves on wiry gold stems giving them a delicate appearance completely at odds with their resilient nature. They reseed easily in gravelly or sandy soil without becoming weedy. With Flameflower you can’t have too much of a good thing.
Full SunRainwater OnlyMature Size: 3’X 3’
Blooming Season: Early summer
Flower Color: White tinged pink
There are many species of Yucca that are native in the Southwest. They vary in height, leaf width and color but they are all reliably heat- and drought-resistant. Soapweed is one of the toughest; it is one of the smaller, narrow-leafed species that given enough time develops short stems and several clustered heads. Its bellshaped, waxy white, fragrant flowers are borne on short candelabra-like stems, the buds sometimes tinged rose-pink.
Full SunRainwater OnlyMature Size: 5’X 8’
Blooming Season: Late spring
Flower Color: Yellow or orange
In high desert gardens, Engelmann Prickly Pear is one of the largest reliably cold-hardy cacti. Its dinner plate-sized pads stand perpendicular to the sun in summer, one of the ways it minimizes its water needs by avoiding the direct rays of the sun. Its flowers can be either yellow or a spectacular red-orange, and the same plant may have one color or the other in different years, but luscious red fruits always follow.
Full Sun, Part ShadeLow WaterMature Size: 36”X 36”
Blooming Season: May-June
Flower Color: Reddish-Orange
Hesperaloe is a very showy plant native to southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. Not only does it thrive in hot, dry summers, it is also remarkably tolerant to sub-zero winter temperatures. Evergreen clumps of narrow, dark bluish-green leaves make a great accent of year-round texture. In early summer it sends up 3- to 4-foot stalks covered with reddish flowers. A great-looking, low- maintenance plant that attracts hummingbirds.