Yellow Xeric Perennials

As our gardening season gets started maybe you’re considering reworking an area in your landscape to create more color. These days the nurseries are offering so many colorful and interesting perennials it’s hard to know where to start and which ones may be good choices for the Front Range. Here are a few of my favorite yellow blooming perennials, in no certain order. I’ve successfully included all of these in many landscapes and they have thrived in most instances. The one characteristic they all share, besides being yellow blooming, is that they all are low water plants that thrive in sunny conditions.

Prairie Cone Flower, Yellow; -  Ratibida columnifera. This is a long blooming perennial with an interesting shaped flower. The “cone” part of this flower is elongated; some people even describe the flower as a sombrero shape. The plant itself will grow to a size around 18” x 18”. This is a great choice for an area that wants to have a naturalized feel.

Columbine ‘Denver Gold’ - Auilegia ‘Denver Gold’. Denver gold is a 30” tall re-blooming columbine that can bloom into the summer. The blooms are a softer canary yellow. One challenge to be aware of is that this plant readily reseeds itself if seed heads are left to mature.  In general columbines reseed and cross breed easily and even though you start with yellow other shades and colors can spring up in your garden like this photo. Aquilegia species ‘Swallowtail’ and Aquilegia chrysantha are other yellow blooming columbines that are worth planting. I like planting columbines towards the rear of a perennial bed with thicker foliage plants in front of the bed.

Chocolate Flower  - Berlandiera lyrata. This is a long blooming small yellow flower that blooms from summer into fall. The flowers open during the day and in the morning release a fragrance that really reminds you of milk chocolate. The plants are a little wild and wiry looking, but the blooms are worth including, and they work well as small cut flowers.

Evening Primrose, Missouri – Oenothera macrocarpa.  A lower mounding plant with nice bright green foliage and waves of very large yellow blooms mixed in. This plant works well in larger plantings as well as a specimen. The soft yellow blooms are large enough to be visible at night; a great plant to include in a night time garden around an evening oriented patio.

These are just a few possibilities and many others are out there. Expect more lists of perennials with different colors in future posts. Maybe the orange and peach spectrum will be next.

Be in the garden and thrive.

Soil Bacterium Benefits

A while ago I read a great article that discussed the potential positive benefits that a specific soil bacterium possesses. A few days ago I unearthed the article on my desk and enjoyed reading it again. Below is a link to a similar story. If you have some time it is worth watching or reading. Perhaps it will get you excited about the upcoming gardening season.

Mycobacterium vaccae is a soil microbe that seems to possess several benefits for us mammals. It may help us generate serotonin, reduce our anxiety, and stimulate our ability to learn. Exposing yourself to soil and being outdoors is probably the simplest way to encounter this soil microbe. Imagine all these benefits in the soil, readily available right at our fingertips. At the very least this is a great excuse to get our hands “dirty” gardening.


What makes these findings so intriguing to me? They are just one more piece of reinforcing evidence that our connection to nature is vital to our well being. The stronger that connection is, the healthier and happier we can be. Sadly, as a culture we increasingly strain this connection. Taking the time to enjoy our natural outdoor environment is something we do not stress and make little time for in our daily routines. Kids may be the biggest losers in this increasing trend.

Encouraging and enabling our children to experience and play in the natural world is one of our most important responsibilities. Studies like the one I included here, reinforce why this is true. Gardening and outdoor fun are beneficial in ways we have ot identified or even imagined.

Take some time to walk a wooded trail or play in the earth with your child; you will feel better for having made the effort. Then consider making it a habit for the whole family; it really can be that simple.

Be in your garden and thrive.

Time to think about a xeric investment

Is the drought sneaking up on us? We need to pay much closer attention to this condition. It’s close to Spring and the snow pack across the state of Colorado is below average, in fact,our overall snow pack for last year was also below average. This means that we may not have the luxury of watering our landscapes whenever we want and as much as we want. Even now we can help the situation by conserving and using our water thoughtfully indoors; and it is not too early to consider the water we use in our landscapes.

Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate your landscape and lawn to see if it can be more water thrifty.  The adjective Xeric, is defined as of, characterized by, or adapted to an extremely dry habitat. Your landscape possesses many opportunities to be more xeric in nature and these changes can really be an investment with great returns. Like many other investments it can put time and money back into your pocket.

Here are several different ideas to help you reassess your landscape. 

When you turn your sprinkler system on in Spring, check to make sure it’s operating properly and that the appropriate times are set for each specific zones. Throughout the growing season you should adjust your sprinkler running times at least a few times to correspond to the weather patterns. Is each sprinkler head/nozzle adjusted correctly so that it is watering efficiently? Are you watering your lawn too frequently? Established bluegrass lawns only need to be watered once every three days and can be trained to require even less. An efficient sprinkler system can save a surprising volume of water.

How much turf is too much? Consider which family activities use your lawn; can all those activities take place on a smaller area of lawn than you have now? Perhaps you do not need as much lawn area as you have. Lawns on steep slopes are hard to properly water; the water tends to run off the surface before it soaks into the soil. What about terracing slopes with low walls or replacing the lawn with low water plants that are ideal for holding slopes and preventing erosion? Beyond these, many other strategies to help make your turf areas less thirsty exist. Saving water saves money.

Landscape shrub and flower beds should also be part of this assessment. Maybe it’s time to update all or parts of your landscape bed areas with xeric plantings that require less water and less maintenance. Many colorful and interesting low water shrubs and perennials have been introduced into the nursery industry; xeric minded gardens and bed areas can be designed to be vibrant, colorful and even beneficial in many ways. Xeric gardens are not about settling for less, but creating something interesting and thriving to heighten your senses while saving water, time and money.

Many more options for creating a more xeric landscape are out there, as well as different ways for your yard to be more sustainable. Remember, we can help with all of these ideas so please feel free to contact us with questions and your own landscaping challenges. 

Xeric means adapting to lower water conditions that seem to be inevitable for our region, but not a zeroscape or a yard full of rocks. After all, Zeroscape is the name of a Canadian band that blends different music genres together and not a term for the landscape.

Be in your garden and thrive.