Drought-tolerant perennials for Zone 7

So, here in the South, we’ve had a few rough years the last few years. This year has been better, however. But, I’m still a little leary of planting plants that require excessive watering as we never know what Mother Nature has in store for us! So, I keep my eyes out for drought-tolerant plants. And, what I’ve found is that many of the drought-tolerant plants are actually plants that were found in cottage gardens back in the day. This actually makes sense when you think about it; settlers didn’t want to spend their time, manpower, and water on flower gardens when it was more productive for the family to grow food (flower gardens were not popular till the 1800s and started as cutting flower gardens).

Lavender (lavandula)
This is a great smelling (very fragrant) plant. There are many varieties including English, French, Munstead, etc. Lavender also comes in more colors than simply purple as one might expect; you can find it in blue, lavender/purple, and even white. I just planted some this year that I bought from a local nursery and bought Lavender Munstead seeds for next spring to have more lavender in my upcoming cottage garden.

Yarrow (full sun perennial, but not the prettiest in my book) – grows to 4ft. This isn’t a plant I have in my garden, but perhaps in the future.

Agastache (full sun perennial; grows up to 4ft)

Sages (eg Russian Sage, Meadow Sage, Mojave Sage) – Some have silvery foliage (e.g. Russian Sage, and the foliage color reminds me of my favorite plant – dusty miller). Depending on the variety, size will vary. Some are shorter (Meadow and Mojave) reaching just shy of 3ft, while others are larger (Russian; up to 6ft).

Salvia (Full sun; up to 3ft) – this is a great plant available in a variety of colors though commonly found in reds and pinks.

Lamb’s Ear (up to 18” tall). Depending on the variety you get different size leaves. The common variety that was found here in the area had smaller leaves (we have lots of this in our yard including the border of our cottage garden). Lamb’s ear may have blooms in white, magenta, purple and potentially other colors in hybrids. At Park Seed’s Flower Day , I saw their Stachy’s Lamb’s Ear which has beautiful fuzzy large leaves that truly feel like a small lamb’s ear. It was a much more elegant variety than the common one, and I may one day have to add it to our yard as well once I graduate and have more income!

Penstemon (up to 18” tall; grows in full sun). This is a good choice if you’re interested in attracting butterflies or hummingbirds.

Blanket Flower (from the Gaillardia family). This is a tough plant that was also found in cottage gardens. I just bought some seed that I’m freezing to plant next spring so that I can add this to my little cottage garden.

Coneflowers – yay for Echinacea! I also got some of this from Park’s Flower Day as well. Coneflowers were also popular in cottage gardens … and I’m very excited to be adding this to my garden. Coneflowers remind me of droopy purple daisies (and daisies are one of my favorite plants … so it stands to reason that I’d enjoy cone flowers, too!)

Sedum (relatively small perennial; less than 3ft depending on the variety). Sedum is tough & drought resistant …. Very good if you’re still working on developing a green thumb :) Or, for those of you like me who are always on the go (and doing a PhD, one is Always doing something!) and sometimes neglect their plants because they’re busy running experiments.

So one thing you will notice with many of these plants is that they don’t have big showy leaves like those of the hydrangea. This helps them be more drought resistant as they have less surface area to loose water through. Also, you’ll find that the petals on drought resistant plants tend to be smaller for the same reason. I love my hydrangeas, but I can definitely tell you that they are by no means drought-resistant. Some summer evenings when I get home from work, I’ll drive up to a droopy front of the house with the 4 hydrangeas with all of their leaves drooping to the ground. They are fine the next morning once they’ve been watered, but wouldn’t last long-term without frequent watering! So, depending on which garden one talks about (especially if you’re afraid you might forget to water it!), these drought-resistant plants might be highly advantageous!

Park Seed’s Flower Day

So, yesterday Mom & I went to Flower Day at Park Seed in Hodges, SC (near Greenwood). I was very excited when I found out that Mom & I were going to go together. My mom, who gardened with us when we were children, is a great gardener and great mother. Further, she is a SC Master Gardener and she teaches Jr Master Gardener classes as well as 4-H events. Mom & I went down and explored the experimental gardens and got to see new plants such as SunPatiens (think Impatiens that like sun, but with different numbers of petals); they were very pretty and available in a variety of colors. Mom & I spent 5hrs at Park Seed exploring and looking at plants. I got to visit some of their shade gardens to get ideas for our property since we do have 10 fully mature pecan trees on our property … hence Lots of shade! I loved the lamb's ear that they had growing in the shade gardens; it had lush large soft leaves. We also bought a Vibe-full of plants to bring home and add to our own gardens. I’ve been reading a lot about cottage gardens lately and planning some for our house since it is an older house (built in the 30’s) and I find the cottage gardens particularly attractive! For the cottage garden, I got coneflowers, coneflower seed, lavender seed, blanket flower seed, salvia, and astilbe. I also got some butterfly weeds to attract butterflies for pollination as well as a new rose (I Finally got a Peace rose … I’m super excited!) For the shade gardens, I got some blue mouse ears hostas (yes, those of you who know me know I LOVE hostas) and ‘brownies’ heuchera (coral bells) to add some more color to the shade gardens. I also got a few more plants, but I won’t bore you with all the details! But, needless to say, Mom & I had such fun that we’re planning on going again next year and hopefully we’ll be able to go to the Master Gardener preview day since I’ll hopefully have my Master Gardener’s license by then.

Hostas

So, one of the most abundant plants at our house is hosta. I love hostas. They make such beautiful displays of foliage. They do bloom late in the summer upon tall spikes, but I prefer them without the blooms (I always want to cut off those long spikes!) Now, don't get me wrong, I do love flowers, just not a big fan of the hosta's. When we moved into our house, we had several fully mature hostas. As with most perennials bulbs/tubers/rhizomes, once plants mature, they will need to be divided or split. This is relatively easy to do. Hostas are very hardy plants so they can essentially be divided anytime, but spring (just post emerging of leaves) or in the fall once they're past their peak are the recommended times. When we divide ours, we dig them up, lay them on a hard surface and use either a shovel or a machete (or large kitchen knife) to cut them apart. If the hosta roots have not become highly entangled, you may be able to pull them apart by hand, which is advantageous to the plant. You will need to be careful to water them for the first 2 weeks post-division as they have few roots than they previously did and are more prone to wilting in spring sun. If you have hostas, and you notice in the spring when they start emerging, that they have a doughnut shape (none emerging in the center), you know that it is Definitely time to split them! The reason there are none in the center is that they have died. We had this problem with all of our hostas that were present at our house when we moved in. We are dividing them up (the last one we divided into 8 plants and put into a new shade garden). While not recommended, and one must be Very careful if doing this, some hostas cultivars can be grown in the sun. We have a bank to the west side of our giant bonsai trees and we tilled, fertilized, limed and planted about 80 hostas (undulata) along it. Only about 80% of them survived and we have a few that we stored back as we knew this would happen. The hostas are ok once they have matured in the full sun, but hostas will always prefer part-shade to shade. The hostas in front of our house are full sun, however, they are also 2.5ft in diameter and have been there since several years before we bought our house. Enough ramblings about hostas! If you have questions, please let me know .... We currently have the following hostas in our yard: 'Francee' (green with white edging), 'Undulata' (white stripe down center of green leaves), a blue hosta with wavy crimped edges (unsure of variety), and two reverse variegated hosta (green with wide white centers) that resembles 'loyalist' or 'dancing in the rain', but I'm unsure of the exact variety that are planted on either side of our back door. Slugs enjoy hostas (as do deer). Slugs don't kill them, however, they do like to eat holes in hosta leaves (thick-leafed hostas are more slug resistant than thin-leafed varieties).