Drought-tolerant plants for your garden

The recent pro­longed heat wave and drought con­di­tions have taken their toll on gar­dens in cen­tral Ohio.

Accord­ing to the Del-Co Water Com­pany, a Delaware County water sup­plier, water is being con­sumed at a record pace. In late June, the com­pany set a manda­tory one-week ban on water­ing lawns. That ban was lifted on July 7, but manda­tory irri­ga­tion and sprin­kling restric­tions are in place lim­it­ing lawn water­ing to two days a week. Hand water­ing of gar­dens, shrubs, and trees is per­mit­ted any day. The com­pany urges cus­tomers to con­serve water wher­ever pos­si­ble, and unless the weather pat­tern changes, the com­pany believes it may need to add fur­ther restric­tions “to pre­serve enough water for domes­tic and other indoor uses.”

While this year is worse than most, nearly every year peo­ple com­plain about the lack of rain dur­ing the heat of sum­mer. We can’t change the weather pat­terns, but there are some things that we can do with­out run­ning up huge water bills to min­i­mize the impact of a drought on our yards.

One method is to group your plants accord­ing to the amount of water they use. This way you can max­i­mize the impact and min­i­mize the need for sup­ple­men­tal irri­ga­tion by hav­ing the water-hungry plants together in a lim­ited area of your gar­den or landscape.

Another way is to grow plants that require low or very low water zones. But, as a word of cau­tion, since drought-tolerant plants thrive in arid cli­mates, many do not do well in clay soils that are poorly drained. Before plant­ing a drought-tolerant gar­den in clay soils, you may need to amend the soil by mix­ing in peat, manure, and/or com­post. Also, many drought-tolerant species may not per­form well in years when rain­fall is plentiful.

You can find many infor­ma­tive bul­letins and fact­sheets about the yard and gar­den at ohioline.osu.edu/lines/hygs.html. This includes the fact­sheet HYG 1643–94 by Michael T. Loos, which has a list of trees, shrubs, and peren­ni­als that do not require much water and are appro­pri­ate for the Ohio land­scape. While his list is long, it does not pre­tend to be com­plete. Today’s arti­cle high­lights just four attrac­tive drought-tolerant peren­ni­als from that list that fel­low Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­dener Vol­un­teers have used successfully.

Russ­ian Sage (Per­ovskia spp.,) is a large, woody peren­nial with gray foliage and tiny blue flow­ers. Depend­ing upon the vari­ety, it can grow from three to five feet tall and up to five to six feet wide — the plants need lots of room and should not be crowded. Russ­ian Sage likes full sun and blooms from early sum­mer until fall. Russ­ian Sage needs to be pruned back close to the ground, prefer­ably in the spring so wildlife can enjoy the foliage dur­ing the winter.

Pur­ple Cone­flower (Echi­nacea pur­purea) is a three to four foot high plant that is native to prairies in the east­ern United States, includ­ing Ohio. Tall stems are topped with a sin­gle flower that is in the shape of a bad­minton shut­tle­cock, when fully open. The flower is two to four inches across and has a promi­nent domed brown­ish cen­ter sur­rounded by light pur­ple petals that typ­i­cally point down­ward. It prefers full or par­tial sun and well-drained soil and typ­i­cally blooms in the sum­mer. The flow­ers attract but­ter­flies, and the seed heads attract song­birds dur­ing win­ter. Pur­ple Cone­flower needs to be pruned in late win­ter or early spring.

Blan­ket Flower (Gail­lar­dia spp.) is an eight to 24 inch high peren­nial with large daisy-like blooms. They come into flower in June and are red, orange, yel­low, or a com­bi­na­tion of these col­ors. Blan­ket Flower is native to the west­ern plains states and is the state flower of Okla­homa. It prefers full sun and tol­er­ates hot, dry soils. It tends to be short-lived in moist, fer­tile soils. Blan­ket Flower attracts bees and butterflies.

False Indigo (Bap­tis­tia aus­tralis) is a North Amer­i­can native plant that reaches two and a half to three and a half feet at matu­rity. It grows slowly at first, but will form an attrac­tive three to four foot wide mound in two to three years. The blue flow­ers are lupine-like and appear in late May and early June. The plant forms a deep tap­root, which makes it dif­fi­cult to trans­plant, so young plants need plenty of room. False Indigo was used by Native North Amer­i­cans and early set­tlers to pro­duce a blue dye. The plant prefers full sun and may need to be staked when grown in par­tial shade. Since bap­tis­tia is a legume, this plant can fix nitro­gen, and, there­fore, requires min­i­mal fertilizer.

If you would like to rearrange the plants in your land­scape gar­den accord­ing to their water needs or cre­ate a drought-tolerant gar­den, now is the time to start think­ing about it. Ide­ally, you should wait until mid-August or Sep­tem­ber, when the weather has cooled off before giv­ing your gar­den a major over­haul. This should help min­i­mize the impact of trans­plant shock. Also, new plant­i­ngs, even drought-tolerant plants, need to be watered more fre­quently to help get them established.

Mas­ter Gar­dener School to be offered

The OSU Exten­sion in Delaware County will be offer­ing a Mas­ter Gar­dener School start­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2013. If you are inter­ested, please con­tact the Exten­sion Office at 740–833-2030 for an appli­ca­tion and more details.

Seventh-annual Mas­ter Gar­dener plant sale

The Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­dener Asso­ci­a­tion will hold its annual plant sale at the Delaware County Fair­grounds from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. July 28 and from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. or until every­thing is sold. The plant sale will be held in con­junc­tion with the orig­i­nal Delaware Coun­try Farm­ers Market.

The plant sale will fea­ture numer­ous vari­eties of col­or­ful annu­als and peren­ni­als such as hostas, daylilies as well as many other vari­eties of peren­ni­als at very rea­son­able prices, selec­tion varies depend­ing on par­tic­i­pa­tion from local Delaware County Nurs­eries. Mas­ter Gar­den­ers will be on hand to answer ques­tions about plant care. This event is open to the pub­lic. All pro­ceeds will go toward edu­ca­tion and beau­ti­fi­ca­tion projects through the Delaware County OSU Exten­sion and Mas­ter Gar­dener program.

This is a great event to acquire plants to beau­tify your gar­den and help our com­mu­nity at the same time.

Nancy Traub is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gard­ner volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on Jul 20 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.