Gardening is a blast in Borrego Springs! The soil is easy to dig in and there are very few weeds because we have an irrigation system and nothing seems to grow outside of the watered spaces.
I have a favorite plant in my Borrego Springs garden that I used to plant as an annual in Seattle - Lantana (lantana camara).
Lantana is part of the verbena family (sometimes called a shrub verbena). It is a resilient, drought and heat tolerant plant that comes in many varieties/colors and attracts butterflies, bees and hummingbirds. Most varieties are quite affordable and will grow to be several feet wide and a couple of feet high. Red and hot pink/orange are my favorite lantana colors.
Lantanas thrive in hot weather and bloom like crazy from spring until frost. The round tri-colored bloom clusters are made up of tiny tubular flowers that change color as they age. Lantana is a great plant for around your swimming pool since the flowers don't blow around like some other plants (e.g. bougainvillea).
After Borrego's unseasonably cold weather last winter, our lantana plants turned brown and eventually lost all of their leaves. Patty from the Torres Desert Nursery on Palm Canyon Drive in Borrego Springs told me not to do anything, because the plants would come back. Sure enough, the woody looking shrubs ended up sprouting tons of new leaves and are absolutely stuffed with bright blooms now!
"Try 'em, you'll like 'em, but be careful! Foliage can irritate the skin.
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| "Sunglow" |
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| "Sparkler" |
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| "Rocket Fire" |
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| "Trailing Lavender" |
