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Hail-proof Plants for your Colorado Garden

It’s summer, which means in Colorado and other surrounding states in the Central Plains/Inter-mountain West region of the country, it is Hail Season!

Earlier in the Summer, the Denver area had several sessions of hail that ripped through gardens and landscapes late one June night. Avid gardens who’d been awakened by the cacophony of thunder, torrential rain and hail that night, sleepily rushed out in the morning to find shredded plants and debris scattered everywhere. I myself had many plants I’d been babying from seed and roots all Spring which were severely torn up by the barrage of hail stones.

This horticultural carnage got me wondering what plants are best at surviving the annual severe weather in our region? As I walked around the yard sadly inspecting the damage, it was easy to see that the native and climate adapted plants fared best from the aerial ice-bullet onslaught. So I thought it might be a good idea to create a list of “hail-proof” (or at least “hail-resistant”) plants. The following list of plants is just a cursory look at some possible plant choices that should be better able to handle hail storms:

Ornamental Grasses:

-Many, many varieties. Some of the hardiest, and easiest to grow in our region are Feather Reed (Calamagrostis spp.), Switch grass (Panicum virgatum), Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), and Giant Sacaton (Sporobolus wrightii)

Korean Feather Reed Grass

Plants with Grass like leaves:

-Daylilies, Bear Grass (Nolina microcarpa), Desert Sotol (Dasylirion)

Trees and Plants that Leaf out Later:

-Catalpa, Gaura, Datura

Datura

Trees and Plants with Small Leaves:

-Honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos), Rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa), some Hysops (Agastache spp.), some Penstemons, California Fuschia (Epilobium canum), Coreopsis

Pineleaf Penstemon

Plants with No or Insignificant Leaves:

– Cacti (many varities), Ephedra, Broom (Cytisus purgans, Cytisus scoparius)

Cylindropuntia cactus

Plants with Tough Leaves:

– Evergreen trees & shrubs (Pine, Spruce, etc.), Agave, Yucca, False Yucca (Hesperaloe)

Agave

Plants that can be moved or sheltered easily:

-Annual/Perennial pots

Pot planted with perennials

This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects.  For more information about our business and our services, click here.

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New Bill Seeks to Encourage Use of Xeriscape in Common Areas

As water prices rise, and the climate warms, water conservation is becoming even more important. Colorado’s current population is estimated to be 5,695,564, nearly 700,000 higher than in 2010. That 13.2 percent growth is the fourth highest among all states over that time period.

All these new residents continue to put a strain on water supplies. It makes perfect sense then, to encourage Xeriscape, which, as we’ve written in the past (the-7-principles-of-xeriscape-revisited-30-years-later), is a form of landscape design that requires much less water.

We are pleased to hear of HB19-1050, a new bill in the Colorado General Assembly, that encourages the use of Xeriscape in common landscape areas.

Here is a summary of the bill:

Section 1 of the bill augments an existing law that establishes the right of unit owners in common interest communities to use water-efficient landscaping, subject to reasonable aesthetic standards, by specifically extending the same policy to limited common elements, which are owned by the community and available for use by some but not all of the unit owners.

Sections 2 and 3 extend existing water conservation requirements, currently applicable only to certain public entities that supply water at retail and their customers, to property management districts and other special districts that manage areas of parkland and open space.

This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects.  For more information about our business and our services, click here.

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