Yucca Love

You know that quiet person in the office who gets an incredible amount of work done but never walks around blowing their own horn? They just keep their head down and work? Well in the danger garden those workers are the yuccas. When it comes to an easy care, architectural, evergreen (and spiky!) plant there is nothing better. Agaves and flax require babying during cold temperatures, the yuccas couldn’t care less. Snow piles on the flax leaves and they break, the yucca leaves just laugh it off.
Now before you go thinking “yucca, how boring” there are so many different ones to choose from! Without even realizing it I’ve managed to collect eight distinctly different yuccas. They are as different as Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' And Sammy, my Yucca Rostrata…Care to join me on a tour of the danger garden yucca collection?

First up are what I think of as the Spokane Yuccas. These came from my mother’s garden and the yard of my brother’s old house, both in Spokane. These are the plain old garden variety yuccas, but they reliably bloom every summer!

All the green plants in our parking strip are Spokane Yuccas, they’re joined by a few Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard’
Are you thinking our parking strip is a little boring? That’s on purpose. There’s a park at the end of our street and during certain times of the year the traffic is nonstop, cars park and little soccer stars spill out with all their gear. The yuccas stand up to trampling and even bite back a bit.

The colors of ‘Color Guard’ are so vivid!

As are the purples of the Yucca a. purpurea, one of my new favorites.
This Yucca aloifolia ‘Spanish Bayonet’ (below) has such striking variegation. Please ignore the leaves that I should have plucked out of the center of the plant before taking the picture.Interestingly the tag on this one also claims it’s a Yucca aloifolia ‘Spanish Bayonet’. I think one of these plants is not who it’s claiming to be! Their coloring and overall form is so different.
On the right under Sammy is a little Yucca linearifolia 'Dusky Blue,’ this picture was taken last spring when it was first planted, right now you can hardly see it due to the grass planted in front growing up and hiding it. I will be moving it to a better location this spring.
In addition to Sammy there’s another Yucca Rostra in the danger garden, but this one is much smaller. That’s it on the right; on the left is Agave striata.

Below is my only Yucca recurvifolia or Soft Leaf Yucca. I need a couple more of this one.And the variegated form, although it’s not looking very variegated at the moment.

The same is true for this one. This is one of my oldest yuccas. When I bought it something like 8 years ago it was striped with yellow. The tag is long gone so I can’t know exactly what it was, and as it has multiplied the new plants are tending toward solid green. I suppose I should have been more diligent about removing the green lest it take over?
Here’s a close up. You can see a little variegation is still present.

And because it’s my blog I’m going to include the Hesperaloes in my Yucca love, after all they are sometimes referred to as False Yucca, or Red Yucca. This is a two year old (to me) Hesperaloe parviflora in the ground…it was flowering when I planted it but not since.And one in a pot, this plant has been with me about 4 years and has at least doubled in size, if not tripled. It bloomed for the second time last summer and the blooms lasted for months!I collected a few seeds which I hope to start this spring. I also let a couple of the pods fall to the ground and break open. I am curious to see if they were carried away by insects and if I’ll have any volunteers sprouting up when the weather warms. This Hesperaloe parviflora 'Yellow' (below, please try to pardon all the leaf clutter in these pictures, this one especially, I hope to get outside and clean up someday soon!) was purchased last spring from High Country Gardens. I’ve only seen the red variety bloom; hopefully someday I’ll see the yellow flowers.So there you have it, the danger garden yucca collection. I’ve vowed to add to it this year. I desperately need more hardworking, no complaining type plants.