Easy, Simple Gardening for Texas Climate

Here’s my top list of easy plants for Texas climate. You can pick and chose which ones you like.

• Crepe myrtle (CM), flowering shrub

• Holly, one that’s at least 6-8’ without being any wider than that. This is an evergreen—important winter interest!

• Sea of gold juniper (JUN), a 3-4’ tall and wide evergreen shrub

• Knockout rose, an easy shrub rose

If you’re using any of these, here’s a very sophisticated representation of what your garden could look like!  For scale, this is for about a 30-40 ft. fence.

If none of these piqué your interest try these:

• Desert willow, a small flowering tree

• Russian sage, a shrubby perennial with purple flowers

• Autumn sage, another perennial but with deep pink flowers

• Drift roses, another shrub rise, but lower and wider than knockouts and different colors

• Smoke Bush, shrub (has great colors!)

Check out pictures on the internet to see what ones you like and show the pictures to a local garden center. They will tell you what they have, what is comparable, and what will work best in your garden area.

Now the question of mulch or rock?  Mulch.  It’s much better for soil and roots because it stays cooler.  It’s not that expensive and it’s easy to apply in a shrub row like that the above picture.  It’ll take ~20, 3 cubic ft. bags (some are 2 cubic ft.).  Re-apply a few bags in the fall, and then a few more in the spring.  Doing this a couple times a year will help so you don’t have to replace with a bunch at a time.