Yucca, Another Good Plant for Winter
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- March
- 14
Yuccas are seriously tough plants: drought tolerant, disease and pest resistant (including deer) and happy in just about any soil you throw at them.
With their exotic swordlike leaves, they look like they belong in Mexico or a desert in the Southwest, but yuccas do quite well in the Northeast.
Here’s a variegated variety known as ‘Color Guard’ that I shot at the NY Botanical Garden.
Yuccas look good in groupings.
You don’t have to pamper them in any way — just give them full sun and let them be. Once the plants are established, they don’t need water, fertilizer, mulch or regular division.
Known botanically as Yucca filamentosa and commonly as Adam’s needle, yuccas add year-round interest to your garden because the spiky leaves are evergreen and hardy through the winter.
Here’s another variegated one known as ‘Golden Sword’ (also at NYBG, in the perennial garden).
Yuccas form clumps 2 to 3 feet tall and 4 to 5 feet wide. In summer, spikes of nodding, bell-shaped flowers in shades of cream or green rise to a height of 5 or 6 feet.
The only soil requirement is good drainage, so they don’t sit in water in winter and rot. Otherwise, they don’t mind sand, road salt or clay. They also do quite well in large containers.
The leaves are sharp so plant them well away from foot traffic — or use them as a hedge of sorts where you don’t want human or animal traffic.
To keep yuccas neat, remove old discolored leaves and spent flower stalks.
New plants, called pups, will appear on the outer edges of the clumps and you can cut them with a sharp knife or spade and replant them elsewhere in your garden.
This entry was posted
on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 9:10 am by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
