The very upright, columnar tree known as the Yew Pine has lustrous green foliage, reminiscent of pine or true yew trees. It tends to be slow growing, which makes it a great choice for easy hedging or pruning into round and square shapes. Feeding young trees with a balanced fertilizer can help to encourage faster…
This stately beauty lends a distinctly romantic, old-world charm to gardens wherever it is planted, perhaps because it has been in cultivation for almost 200 years! Lady Banks rose can be grown as a ground cover or kept pruned as a hedge, but we think that it looks best when given some support and trained…
The Yellow Orchid Vine is a superb garden and landscape performer. It offers a bright-yellow, unusually shaped, orchid-like flower sporadically throughout the warm season, but heaviest in the spring and fall. Unique flowers then morph into oddly shaped seedpods, which bear an uncanny resemblance to a butterfly. With support such as a trellis or fence,…
Height: to 40 feet (with support)
Width: to 40 feet (with support)
Bloom color: Yellow
Flowering season: Summer, Fall
USDA minimum zone: 4
Cold hardiness: -20° F
Yellow bird of paradise is a somewhat confusing common name for this plant because its flowers are actually yellow with prominent, bright red stamens emerging from their centers. The nectar produced by these distinctive flowers is a hummingbird and butterfly favorite, so you can expect a long season of happy activity because blooms appear from…
Butterfly Bush is an obvious must-have for any butterfly garden, but makes a lovely addition to a hummingbird garden as well! The cone-shaped clusters of flowers, borne on the ends of its arching branches, are magnets for hummers and butterflies from spring through fall. Butterfly Bush works well as a dark green background or foundation,…
Xylosma was a very popular landscaping plant in Phoenix and Tucson in the 1950s, and while it may not be used as widely today, it is still a great plant that almost always looks nice and is very easy to grow. New foliage emerges as a reddish-bronze color, aging to a bright, shiny green. Flowers…
Height: 15 – 20 feet
Width: 10 – 15 feet
Bloom color: Inconspicuous; Greenish White
Flowering season: Spring, Summer
USDA minimum zone: 8
Cold hardiness: 10° F
There have been a lot of new Tecoma hybrids hitting the market lately, and while many of them claim to be improvements on bloom color and production, none of them can match the drought tolerance or cold hardiness of Arizona yellow bells. This native shrub is larger than the hybrid cultivars, and it has thin,…