What not to plant

I married a gardener who has a horticulturalist for a best friend.  Thus our back yard is full of all sorts of things that no one else plants.  But the record low of 2011 and the record heat and drought of 2011-12 has left a lot of dead things in yards all around town.  My rentals get little or no special care and so I thought I would pass along observations about plants and especially trees that didn’t make it in the drought.  Here’s what not to plant if you want low maintenance.

Silver Maples.  We have dead ones all over town due to the drought.  Some are only half dead, but only a few show no signs of suffering.  They are a shallow-rooted tree famous for raising sidewalks.  One guy told me he planted one under an inoperable car and as the years went by it high centered the car.  When the ground got dry the silver maples couldn’t take it.  The Sugar and Red Maples were okay.  They have deeper roots. Japanese maples really suffered but if babied they survived. 

Sweet Gum.  Likewise there are many dead sweet gums and many others with many dead branches.  The only one in town that did not suffer, I believe is a giant old gum tree at one of my rentals that has tapped the sewer lines and sits adjacent a drainage creek.  Besides, the gums drop a horrific number of balls which you have to rake.  Both the sweet gums and silver maples have nice fall color—otherwise no redeeming social value.

Colorado Blue Spruce.  We had blue spruces that had to be 50 years old which died in some locations.  There are practically none alive anywhere in town now.  Just too stinking hot, I guess.  Plant blue atlas cedars instead, which can take the dry, the heat, and in normal summers, can take the humidity without promoting blight.  Interestingly the Colorado aspens seemed to have faired fairly well.  Aspens are shallow rooted and hate heat, but have a root system like rhizomes of Bermuda grass, which gives them survivability. 

Birches.  The white birch can’t take the heat and was never recommended for this area.  I know of two in town and both died, despite ardent attention by the owners.  There is a Korean birch which has white bark and supposedly can survive, but it takes water.  So does the River Birch which is often planted.  Many were half dead or dead this year. Another water lover, the weeping willows seemed to survive when they were watered.  Corkscrew willows and native willows made a comeback without much attention.

Some version of Arborvitae, not the usual one, died flat in 2011.  You’d see large hedgerows of this tree that were 20 years or more old and they just turned brown and croked. 

All the native trees one associates with  moisture—sycamores, elms, mulberries and “low-cussed”—did just fine.  So did the hillside native trees of eastern red cedar, hackberry and redbud.  My peach tree did okay as well, although the fruit trees here are subject to borer attack so you never know what happened to a fruit tree by just driving by and noticing a dead tree. Katalpa trees have a lot of dead branches from drought but see few that are dead. Oaks did just fine.

Sometimes people will say you shouldn’t plant Japanese boxwood or crape myrtle because of winter kill, but these didn’t show bad signs of our -24F winter in 2011. Plant that keeps shocking us for its love of hot summers is the silver gray artemesia.  It even looks fairly good in winter. The native butterfly bush also thrives.  Savanna grass winter killed somewhat.  Ajuga that was doing swell for years up and died from lack of moisture.  Creeping red fescue found it hard to keep going when it got very dry in summer.