Hey again it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm and I'm here today to talk to
you about drought tolerant plants. now you may think it's kind of a funny day
to make a point about drought tolerant plants on this cool wet early summer day
I guess it depends on what kind of point you're trying to make the point I got to
make first of all in this video is that don't wait until it's dry - don't wait
until it's the hottest day of the year to start putting drought tolerant plants
into your garden you'll find that plants like this this this silvery senecio
that's listed as drought tolerant and all of the other drought tolerant plants
you'll find in books and on their tags are followed by a little asterisk or the
very next sentence will say "once established in the landscape" so you
can't just plunk it into the ground in the middle of summer and expect it to
have any sort of drought tolerance in fact it's very likely to die quite
quickly if you don't water it so keep that in mind in this video here I'm
going to talk about some my favorite drought tolerant plants I'll put those
up with pictures and with the spell with the names both common names and Latin
names as well i'll where appropriate or whether the weather where the weather
allows i'll show you in the landscape as well i'm going to follow that up by
talking a little bit about the cultural requirements of drought tolerant plants
how you can establish in the gardens to give them the best possible chance let's
start with light blue Nepeta or catmint
has beautiful flowers all season long and textured foliage just don't blame me
if you find your cat rolling naked in it Kniphofia or red-hot poker and this one
has a bunch of new cultivars and so many bright colors now centranthus or
Jupiter's beard maybe even a little too successful in a dry poor soil but a
beautiful addition to the garden nonetheless and sort of a brick red
color or also in white salvia is wonderful and hey let me just take you
out to the garden and show it to you the purple spikes of flowers you see
here are from salvia the cultivar is a well known one called salvia Caradonna a
woodland sage with fragrant foliage and rebloom throughout the season if you
deadhead it here on the left you'll see peonies now peonies don't bloom all the
way through the summer but they put on a beautiful display early on and become
drought tolerant because they kind of go into a semi dormancy / summer they they
halt all their growth and they just hold their leather leathery foliage there and
rely on their good root system to hold on to moisture so even though they don't
bloom through the summer they are a drought tolerant perennial and here on
the left is Agastache which I've displayed before on my channel and this
is a tall variety I believe it's called blue fortune and gorgeous
flowers all the way through the summer once again if you stage them down by
deadheading you'll have blooms all the way through the summer I should also
talk about penstemon or beard tongue and it's hard to believe anything so
colorful with such tropical looking flowers will hold up all summer but it
does in a ground cover ajuga or also known as bugle is good even in a bit of
dry shade which is hard to come across in the garden Artemisia fills in all of
those silvery accents for the garden and baptisia or false indigo in this one my
favorite cult of our purple smoke here in a similar planting I have spikes of
liatris in the center there coming up blazing star is the common name and
liatris is a prairie plant so quite drought tolerant and pushing over to the
right here past that salvia again I have lilies coming up now lilies are again
drought tolerant by virtue of going dormant in the summer so even though
they won't continue to rebloom and they'll sort of die down and put on
brown foliage the the bulb is quite safe and and drought tolerant will take
dryness all the way through the summer also in this group here I have rudbeckia
gaura I don't think he can see the foliage but the flower spikes are
starting to come up there towards the center and cleome which I'll have to put
a picture in of the cleome because it's not quite blooming yet I can't forget
about sempervivum more chicks and hens sure looks like the more tender tropical
echeveria but is extremely Hardy even in cool winter climates echinacea in the
classic relaxed purple flowers or something more double or more colorful
now euphorbia with the unattractive common name of spurge but available in a
crew in an incredible range of shapes and sizes and finally perovskia or
russian sage just lays tall Airy spires of silvery blue flowers all season long
if you deadhead it here in the front garden I have a beautifully colored
purple sedum this is an upright variety now sedum is the kind of succulent plant
that comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes and is a beautiful plant for
considering in an area that won't get rainfall consistently through the summer
and backed up here also in the garden with yarrow which yarrow is an excellent
drought tolerant plant in the landscape I found that it doesn't do well in a pot
it sort of relies on its strong root system to give it the drought tolerance
to dryness and so if you have it in a pot it's a supply of water is very
limited and it wilts very easily and just scanning over to the right here I
also have this allium this is the Globetrotter Allium sorry Globemaster a
Liam that has already bloomed out for the season but it's still putting on a
bit of a display with the dried flower heads and a Liam is another plant that
is drought tolerant by virtue of the fact that it goes dormant after its
spring bloom season one strategy that drought tolerant plants exhibit is
having silvery or reflective or woolly leaves to help them to hold on to
moisture as is the case with this senecio that I showed at the beginning
of the video or this Artemisia here as well
other strategies that plants use is to have vigorous or deep or tap rooted root
systems or storage organs underneath the ground where they can hold on to some of
that moisture so it does benefit you to help establish the plant early enough in
the season and not place them in a place where there's lots of
competition from thirsty tree roots which can hamper their ability to
collect or retain that water one final thing I'd like to discuss is that when
you are establishing your perennials in the garden whether they're drought
tolerant or not it benefits you to water deeply and infrequently rather than
shallowly every day having those roots go searching for water helps to develop
a strong deep root system so that when dry times come your plants have the
resources to go looking for that water all right thank you so much for watching
today if you have any questions about these or other drought tolerant
perennials drop it below the video and thank you again for watching