Yuccas big and small give a garden the blues

September 30, 2021

I’m getting Blue Garden Lotusland vibes from this part of the garden. A loose grid of paleleaf yucca (Yucca pallida) glows blue-green amid foamy, silver woolly stemodia (Stemodia lanata) groundcover. The anchor plant, by the trio of blue ceramic balls, used to be a gigantic ‘Green Goblet’ agave, which was striking. But when it melted in the February freeze, I replaced it with a powder-blue wheeler’s sotol (Dasylirion wheeleri), a strappy-leaved native that’s as drought tolerant as the agave but won’t be as tempting a target for deer-antlering damage in the fall. Which means I won’t need to cage it from October to March to protect it. Yay!

Now this space is bluer than ever, which makes me feel the opposite of blue every time I look at it.

Blue-green and silver-green plants are cooling to look at during the hot Texas summer. And plants in those colors tend to be more drought tolerant and sun-protected as well.

Look how the straw-colored leaf margins catch the light — pretty!

A blueish-green anole fits right in with this color scheme, but I found this one hanging from a red succulent planter. Hello, little guy! I love your blue eyeshadow.

Another blue yucca that’s a must-have in any xeric Austin garden is ‘Sapphire Skies’ beaked yucca (Yucca rostrata). Look at that shadow play on the rocks below!

All it asks for is baking hot sun, and we’ve got plenty of that to spare.

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Digging Deeper

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7 responses to “Yuccas big and small give a garden the blues”

  1. Owen says:

    Beautiful- its so nice to see everything looking refreshed and wonderful again after the winter you just had!

    I think your anole is a young lady (they have the white zip like pattern normally down their spine) – and she looks so pretty with the blue eye shadow!

  2. hb says:

    A happy thing to go from vulnerable Agave to less vulnerable Sotol.

    The Stemodia looks quite nice. Here we would have the equivalent of sorts in CA native Lessingia filanginifolia. Small scale silver ground covers are lovely with larger blue-foliage plants. The Dichondra argentea so popular in Austin when we Flinged in 2018(?) has been good here also.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      I might be growing silver ponyfoot in place of the woolly stemodia but found the deer enjoy it. All for the best, as I have really come to love the stemodia.

  3. I love them all, the Yucca pallida is a favorite. Well, so is the Yucca rostrata. Glad that you found something to replace the agave – I may add one of those soon myself.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      I love agaves still, but I did hate having to cage that big one each fall to protect it from male deer. The sotol is less maintenance and beautiful in its own right. It makes easier to let the agave go.

  4. Wasn’t it nice of that anole to cooperate with the color theme? Especially the eyeshadow!