In our opinion, Eriogonums – also known as Buckwheats – deserve a place in pretty much every sunny garden in the Rogue Valley! Eriogonums are one of those plants that check all of our boxes here at Shooting Star. Drought tolerant? Check. Good pollinator plant? Check. Native plant? Check. Really, really pretty? Check. We are frankly amazed that we haven’t featured it as a plant of the week before this!

In general, Eriogonums prefer full sun and well-drained soils. They’re a perfect plant for that hot spot in your yard that gets blasted by afternoon sun. Despite their toughness and resilience, they are covered with showy displays of delicately beautiful-looking flowers from mid-summer into early fall. They look great in a mixed planting combined with other sun-loving, drought-tolerant plants like Salvias, Agastache, Zauschneria, and Monardella, and Ceanothus.

They’re also one of the best pollinator plants around; providing larval food for butterflies and moths, and abundant nectar for a truly dazzling variety of pollinators: tiny native bees, bumblebees, honeybees, butterflies, and beetles. Seriously - one of my favorite things to do with Eriogonums in the garden is just sit next to one on a sunny day and watch who comes to visit!

We regularly carry the following varieties:

Eriogonum compositum (Arrowleaf buckwheat): To 2’ tall by 1’ wide. Soft grayish-green, arrow-shaped leaves. Flowers – which are borne in clusters up to 3” across - are white, tinged with a soft pink, and fading to a rusty red. E. compositum is somewhat more tolerant of heavy soils than E. umbellatum – although it would still prefer well drained soil. As an extra bonus, f you leave the seed heads on the plants in the fall, you will be extremely popular with seed-eating birds like goldfinches!

Eriogonum umbellatum (Sulphur-flower buckwheat): As the name suggests, these plants feature bright, sulphur-yellow flowers. Their leaves are a darker green than E. compositum, and more rounded. Plant size can be variable: they get between 6-12” tall by 1-3’ wide.

Kannah Creek: A cultivar of E. umbellatum, slightly more compact and consistent in size and shape. Kannah Creek gets about 12-15” tall by 15-24” wide. As an extra bonus, they provide outstanding fall color, with foliage turning a bright burgundy color as cold weather moves in.

Thinking of creating a small, shady oasis in the middle of your drought-tolerant garden? Chilopsis ‘Bubba’ might just be the tree you are looking for!

Desert Willows are native to desert washes throughout the southwestern US and northern Mexico. Despite its common name, Desert Willow is not actually a willow (its closely related to Trumpet Vine and Jacaranda), but its long, narrow, dark green leaves are reminiscent of willow leaves. ‘Bubba’ has large, fragrant pinkish-purple flowers that begin blooming in early summer (ours are blooming now) and last well into fall. These plants really come into their own during our summer heat, when other plants start to slow down.

‘Bubba’ is a small (15’ by 15’), fast growing tree with an open growth habit and attractively textured bark. It prefers a hot, sunny location and is hardy to at least Zone 7. We have seen it growing at the Denver Botanic Garden though, so we’re assuming that mature trees can withstand even colder temperatures. Plants are quite drought-tolerant once established, but will also tolerate deep, infrequent summer watering. They do need well-drained soil. If you have clay soil in your yard, consider planting it on a mound or a berm.

‘Bubba’ combines beautifully with other drought-tolerant, heat loving plants like Oenothera, the Salvia ‘Mirage’ series, Callirhoe, Penstemon pinifolius, Zauschneria, Monardella, Hesperaloe, and Perovskia to create a vibrant, colorful garden that really shines during the heat of summer. Even better, think about placing a bench under your Desert Willow, so you can enjoy its dappled shade and watch the hummingbirds and other native pollinators that flock to your mini-oasis!

Teucriums – also known as Germanders – often get overlooked when folks are planning their gardens, and here at Shooting Star Nursery we’re on a mission to change that! 

If you’re not yet familiar with Germanders, this is a great time to get acquainted. These versatile evergreen groundcovers and subshrubs thrive in full sun, are drought tolerant and deer resistant, and are absolutely beloved by pollinators (maybe because their flowers smell like honey!). 

All Germanders will take well to light shearing throughout the year, making them good candidates for a low, formal border. In fact, this feature made them extremely popular as border plants in formal Elizabethan knot gardens. 

Shooting Star regularly carries the following varieties of Germander:

Gray Creeping Germander (Teucrium aroanium): Narrow soft gray foliage with pinkish-purple flowers; 2-3’ tall by 1.5 – 2’ wide. Both foliage and flowers are fragrant. See photo above. 

Wall Germander (Teucrium chamaedrys): Glossy dark green leaves topped with small spikes of rosy lavender flower. Shear after blooming to help maintain shape. 1-2’ tall by 2-3’ wide. Photo on right. 

Dwarf Wall Germander (T. chamaedrys ‘Prostrata’): Same coloring Wall Germander, but plants only reach 6-8” tall by 18” wide at maturity.

‘Summer Sunshine’ (T. chamaedryas ‘Summer Sunshine’): New leaves are golden green, darkening to chartreuse later in the season; rosy purple flowers; 6-8” tall by 12-18” wide. Photo on left.

If you’re looking for a compact, easy care evergreen shrub that provides year-round interest - and will thrive in a dry shade garden - consider Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’!

I like to think of Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’ as the gentler, more approachable relative of our beloved native Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium). Like Oregon Grape, ‘Soft Caress’ is a drought-tolerant evergreen shrub with fragrant sunny-yellow flowers. However, unlike Oregon Grape, its leaves and stems are thornless and soft rather than sharply poky and leathery.

‘Soft Caress’ is a great plant to use if you’re looking to bring a bit of texture into your dry shade garden. Its leaves look a bit like palm leaves – with slender, thread-like leaflets arrayed along a graceful central stem. For maximum effect, try planting it with some of the broader-leafed shade loving shrubs like Hosta, Hellebore, Osmanthus, and Viburnum davidii – or underplant it with dry shade-loving perennials like Epimedium and Heuchera.

From late fall to early spring, flowers appear in long ‘candles’ held above the foliage. These flowers not only help to brighten the winter garden, they’re also a great source of nectar for pollinators and other beneficial insects during the winter and spring, when few other plants are in bloom. The flowers are followed by decorative silvery-blue berries that add to the visual interest of the plant – and are popular with songbirds.

Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’ gets about 3’ by 3’ and maturity. It prefers part shade (morning sun is ok) to full shade and well-drained soils, and does well in containers as well as in the ground. This graceful, low maintenance shrub will be a welcome addition to your shady garden!

Zauschneria - aka California Fuchsia - is one of the most drought tolerant, heat tolerant, pollinator-friendly, beautiful perennials you can grow. We're not sure why this western native is not used more: the hard to pronounce name, or that fact that you can kill it with kindness, perhaps? In any case, this lovely plant deserves a place of honor in more gardens here in the Rogue Valley! Ours begin blooming in early to mid-July and keeps going strong until we get a hard frost in late fall; putting on quite a show for us and the hummingbirds!

Zauschneria’s hot orange to deep red flowers are the quintessential “hummingbird flower”: long, nectar-rich floral tubes just perfectly shaped for a hummingbird’s slender bill. This is one of a handful of flowers I’ve seen actually hummingbirds bypass a feeder for! Plants bloom continuously and don’t seem to need any deadheading; the spent blossoms just neatly drop off the plant. In addition, the vivid orange-red flowers contrast beautifully with soft silvery gray foliage that fits perfectly into a drought tolerant garden. They look great when planted with Salvia, Agastache, Perovskia, Gaura, Eriophyllum, Monardella, and other drought-tolerant perennials.

This western native perennial is happiest in a well-drained soil (you see them naturally growing out of rock outcroppings), with full sun and infrequent water. They do especially well on slopes or at the edge of a rock wall. We like to leave up any dormant stems over the winter, to help them survive our wet winters and clean them up in early spring. The stems can be cut back after all danger of cold weather is past and the plant will grow back quickly to be full and vibrant by summertime.

When you see Zauschneria available in the nursery, grab them fast. We don’t carry them all year long and they sell out quickly! They are best planted in spring and summer, when they can have some time to get settled in before winter hits. Most varieties we carry are cold hardy to at least Zone 7b, about 5 to 10 degrees F.

Here’s a short description of a few of the varieties we carry:

Z. c. 'Calistoga'- 1' tall by 2' wide, one of the darkest orange (almost red) varieties with thicker, larger, more silvery leaves than most. Best planted on a slope.

Z. septentrionalis 'Select Mattole' - 10" tall and 24" wide or so. Very silvery, large leaves with a great spreading habit

Z. garrettii 'Orange Carpet' - 6" tall x 18" wide, a green leafed form that can take more afternoon shade and a bit more summer water. It is one of the first to bloom.

Z. ‘Everett’s Choice’ – 6” tall x 2-3’wide, with large vividly red flowers

Z. arizonica – 2-3’ tall, by 2’wide, with gray-green foliage and orange-red flowers¬. Hardy to Zone 5.