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Drought Tolerant Annuals for the Summer

Angelonia Angelface® Wedgwood Blue, from Proven Winners, is a garden must-have. (Image thanks to Proven Winners ®)

Summer gardening is made easier with tough, drought-tolerant annuals, especially where summers are hot and dry. So many popular bedding plants are tender and water-needy, but there are plenty of waterwise, or xeric, annuals that go beyond low-growing succulents. Many are colorful, resilient, and bloom effortlessly all summer long.

When choosing waterwise summer flowers, I pick from plants native to areas with hot, dry climates, like Mexico, dry regions of Africa, the American Southwest, and hot, dry areas of the Mediterranean. Agastache, angelonia, cuphea, autumn sage and hybrids, marigolds, and low-growing zinnias are several excellent choices. Exciting new varieties make it easy to fill the garden with beautiful flowers sure to shine in tough weather.

Hummingbird Mint

‘Rosie Posie’ is an exceptional hummingbird mint with magenta-purple, fragrant flowers. (Image thanks to Walter’s Gardens ®)

Hummingbirds visit Agastache’s pretty wands of flowers. Otherwise known as hummingbird mint, the plants bloom through summer and into fall with moderate watering. Because of their reliability, they are a standby in my garden, especially the more colorful varieties.

The compact and floriferous Arizona™ Sunset has lavender and orange flowers and plants reach just one foot high. The 22-inch ‘Rosie Posie’ has even more colorful flowers of magenta-purple and orange. The plants originate from the American Southwest, where heat and drought are common, so expect them to flourish in warm-summer areas.

Angelonia

Summer snapdragon (Angelonia angustifolia) is a nonstop bloomer native to Mexico with distinctive spikes of white, purple, or pink snapdragon-like flowers. The tall (~2.5 feet), large-flowered varieties in the popular Angelface® Series from Proven Winners® are popular and prolific. The warmer the weather, the better they grow. I like the white and violet-blue flowers of Angelface® Wedgwood Blue the most.

Firecracker Plant

Proven Winner’s variety Vermillionaire™ is one of the best firecracker plant varieties available. (Image thanks to Proven Winners)

Heat and drought are never a problem for the firecracker plant (Cuphea ignea), another Mexican native. Try the Proven Winner’s variety Vermillionaire™. Each bushy can reach around 2-feet tall and wide and become loaded with small, orange-red, tubular flowers visited by hummingbirds. A strong tendency to bloom all summer until frost is another reason to grow the superb bedding plant. As advertised, the firecracker plant has a high tolerance to hot, dry weather once established.

Autumn Sage

‘Lipstick’ is a bright-pink-bloomed salvia able to tolerate drought.

From mid to late summer, I always rely on colorful autumn sage (Salvia greggii and hybrids) to add summer garden color. Autumn sage is a busy tender perennial native from West Texas to Central Mexico, and the blooms are very attractive to hummingbirds! Gardeners up north grow the plant as an annual, but further south they will overwinter if planted in well-drained soil. Try the watermelon-pink ‘Lipstick‘. The shrubby, fast-grower can reach 3 feet high and is laden with short flower spikes until frost.

Marigolds

Frilly tall African marigolds can be grown as cut flowers and garden flowers.

Mexican-native marigolds are made for summer with their warm, nonstop blooms. Try the 3-foot-tall Giant Orange African marigold (Tagetes erecta ‘Giant Orange’) with a plethora of 3-inch flowers. The long-stemmed flowers are suitable for cutting and are borne on strong plants less apt to topple over in the wind. Plant them in colorful cut-flower or annual borders.

Narrowleaf Zinnia

‘Crystal White’ is an award-winning tough Zinnia. (Image thanks to AAS Winners)

My garden always contains zinnias. Narrowleaf zinnia (Zinnia angustifolia) is notably tolerant of hot, dry weather, and the flowers are reliably attractive. The award-winning, 1-foot-high ‘Crystal White‘ is a garden mainstay with clear white flowers and narrow, dark green leaves. The foliage of the Mexican native is resistant to powdery mildew and will flower through summer. With good care, they will bloom continually. Occasional removal of the spent blooms is recommended. Bees and butterflies visit the flowers.

Growing Waterwise Annuals

Add these waterwise and heat-wise annuals to your summer garden, and you will thank yourself when the scorching days of summer arrive. Give them moderate care and water, and they will keep blooming. Those planted in the ground appreciate the added organic matter of Fafard® Premium Natural & Organic Compost, and those grown in containers of Fafard® Ultra Container Mix with Extended Feed will grow happily.

Native Trees and Shrubs for Oceanside Gardens

Bearberry is a low-growing evergreen shrub for salty ground.

An oceanside garden poses special challenges for plants. The wind-whipped salt-laden air and sandy soil typical of such sites is inhospitable to many sensitive garden favorites, such as border phlox (Phlox paniculata), primroses (Primula spp.), and summersweet (Clethra alnifolia). When faced with these challenging conditions, some gardeners go full denial, erecting barriers to the wind and adding truckloads of humus to the thirsty soil to grow the ungrowable. Such efforts usually end with the realization that defying nature is not a viable gardening strategy.

A more successful approach is to embrace the many rewarding plants that naturally inhabit coastal regions or a streetside garden where winter salt is common. Many of these seaside natives are still not seen in gardens nearly as much as they might be, even in places near the ocean’s roar. They’re also ideally adapted for inland gardens where salt and drought are problems. If sandy soil and salt-happy road crews pose challenges for your garden, coastal natives are among the best answers.

American persimmon fruits are beautiful and delicious when allowed to ripen and added to baked goods.

Trees, shrubs, and shrubby ground covers form the core of any garden, coastal or otherwise. Here we highlight 11 of the best such plants that hail from North American seaside habitats. Most offer the added bonus of being favorites of pollinators and other wildlife. As you’d expect, all are happiest in full sun but will tolerate light shade in some cases. Sandy or otherwise well-drained soil is best, with a light mulch of Fafard Organic Compost to help buffer the soil from extreme conditions.

Salt-Tolerant Native Shrubs

Nantucket Serviceberry (Amelanchier nantucketensis)

The spring flowers of Amelanchier nantucketensis develop into edible summer fruits.
The spring flowers of Nantucket serviceberry develop into edible summer fruits.

Most gardeners know serviceberries as small trees, but this rare East Coast native is a suckering 4-foot-tall shrub. As with most of its tribe, the Nantucket species (Zones 4-8) produces white early-spring flowers followed by edible dark blueish berries that ripen in late spring and early summer. Its close cousin running serviceberry (Amelanchier stolonifera) will also do in a pinch. Both can be hard to find in nurseries. Look for native plants in coastal regions from Nova Scotia to Virginia.

Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi)

Bearberry is evergreen and covers the ground in emerald. (Image by Russell Stafford)

Spreading tufted mats of small rounded evergreen leaves give rise to pinkish urn-shaped flowers in spring, evolving to ornamental red berries in late summer. Even in the poor sandy soils bearberry (USDA Hardiness Zones 2-7) prefers, the groundcover shrub can take a while to settle in, so it’s not for gardeners in a hurry. The natural distribution of the shrub includes the upper latitudes of North America and Eurasia.

Groundsel Bush (Baccharis halimifolia)

Groundsel bush has impressive silvery white seedheads in the fall.

Most hardy members of the aster family are herbaceous perennials, dying back to the ground every winter. Groundsel bush (Zones 5-10) is anything but, forming an upright medium to large shrub – up to 15 feet tall and wide in moist fertile soil. Its growth is relatively restrained in dry sandy conditions. Clad in attractive shiny bright-green foliage from spring until late fall, Baccharis halimifolia takes center stage in late summer, engulfing itself in clouds of small white flowers. Female plants go a step further, producing downy silvery seedheads that glisten in the slanting late-season sunlight. The seeds drift away in late fall, often producing a large crop of progeny – so you and your neighbors will need to be on the lookout for possible unwanted seedlings. The shrub’s native distribution is from Massachusetts to Texas.

Inkberry (Ilex glabra)

Inkberry is a reliable evergreen native shrub. Many good cultivated varieties are offered.

Inkberry (Zones 4-9) has become a staple evergreen shrub for sunny and lightly shaded gardens throughout much of the US. This is largely thanks to the introduction of compact varieties such as ‘Shamrock’, ‘Green Billow’, and ‘Forever Emerald’, which maintain a dense compact habit rather than becoming sparse and rangy like the straight species. The glossy spineless dark-green leaves are joined by small white flowers in spring, and on female plants by little black berries in fall. The cultivar ‘Ivory Queen’ is showier in fruit, bearing pearly white fruit. The native distribution is from Nova Scotia to Louisiana.

Creeping Juniper (Juniperus horizontalis)

Rug Juniper is a classic landscape shrub for sea or oceanside landscapes.

Even the most casual gardener is likely to be familiar with this garden workhorse, whose prostrate scaly-leaved evergreen branches provide ground cover in many a sunny garden niche. Plants often turn bronze-green in winter. Numerous varieties of creeping juniper (Zones 3-8) are available, including vigorous blue-tinged ‘Wiltonii’ (commonly known as blue rug juniper), and ground-hugging, fine-textured ‘Bar Harbor’. The native distribution is across temperate North America.

Northern Bayberry (Morella caroliniensis)

In the spring, northern bayberry has inconspicuous flowers followed by waxy bayberries later in the season. (Image by Russell Stafford)

Long prized for its glossy aromatic semi-evergreen foliage and its winter berries, northern bayberry (Zones 3-7) spreads gradually into somewhat sparse 6- to 8-foot thickets that work well as informal hedging. Cedar waxwings, yellow-rumped warblers, and other birds hungrily harvest the berries in late winter. Both male and female plants are required to produce the fruits, which were traditionally used to scent bayberry candles. The shrub exists from Newfoundland to North Carolina.

Beach Plum (Prunus maritima)

Beach plums are delicious and the tough little shrubs make good specimen plants.

The tart, grape-sized fruits of Prunus maritima (Zones 4-8) excel in preserves, syrups, vinegars, and jams. Beach plum fanciers typically harvest them from the wilds of the Atlantic coast when they ripen in late summer. Plant a few female beach plums along with a pollenizing male, and you’ll have a harvest right outside your door. Although a rather scraggly 3- to 5-foot thing in its native dune habitats, beach plum forms a dense, attractive 6- to 10-foot shrub under garden conditions. Swarms of snowy white flowers in spring are a further ornamental feature. Most plants bear irregularly from year to year, so look for selections – such as ‘Snow’ and ‘Jersey Beach Plum’ – that are more consistent producers. Cultivars ‘Nana’ and ‘Ecos’ bear reliable annual crops on more compact 3- to 5-foot-tall plants. You can further enhance beach plum’s productivity and habit by thinning out old, unproductive branches in early spring. Beaches from Maine to Virginia are home to the shrubby plum.

Dwarf Sand Cherry (Prunus pumila)

The bright green foliage of dwarf sand cherry brightens summer landscapes. (Image by Russell Stafford)

Edible fruits are also a feature of the outstanding 2-foot tall ground cover cherry (Zones 3-8), which will quickly cover a sandy bank with its sprawling stems. The summer-ripening fruits are preceded by white flowers in spring. Dwarf sand cherry can be found along coasts from Ontario to Virginia.

Salt-Tolerant Native Trees

American Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana)

American Persimmon flowers are urn-shaped and appear in spring.

A must for the edible coastal garden, this Connecticut-to-Texas native does indeed bear tasty persimmons (Zones 5-10). Ripening orange in fall, the squat, tennis-ball-sized fruits mellow from astringent to tartly flavorful as they soften. A tree in full fruit gives the appearance of being laden with miniature pumpkins. You’ll need both male and female trees – or a self-pollinating selection such as ‘Meador’ – to get fruit. American persimmon matures into a large picturesque open-branched tree with handsome, plated, charcoal-gray bark and bold, oval, deciduous leaves. Few trees can match it as a four-season ornamental.

American Holly (Ilex opaca)

The fruits of female American holly trees are just as pretty as those of European holly.

If you’re looking for a classic spiny-leaved, conical, tree-sized holly (Zones 5-9), here’s the native for you. Growing slowly to 20 feet or more, it maintains a dense, fully branched habit in sunny sites. Partially shaded specimens are sparser and lankier. With its signature shape and its red berries from fall into winter, American holly makes an arresting feature plant. It also works well as an impenetrable barrier hedge. Selections that depart from the norm in size, fruit or leaf color, or other characteristics are also available. Look for the holly in native lands from Massachusetts to Texas.

Pitch Pine (Pinus rigida)

Mature pitch pines develop artful, windswept branches.

The signature species of pine barrens and other sandy habitats in eastern North America, Pinus rigida (Zone 3 to 8) typically grows as a somewhat gnarled small to medium-sized tree. It can attain considerable height in more fertile habitats. Best for gardens is ‘Sherman Eddy’, a superior dwarf cultivar, which forms a rounded, 12- to 15-foot specimen with densely needled, bottlebrush-like branchlets. Even more dwarf is ‘Sand Beach’, a mounding prostrate selection. Look for the tree from Maine to Georgia.