Ask the Expert: Choosing drought-resistance plants

It is the time of year, so we have brought in our expert horticulturalist Kath Smythe to talk about growing in our climate. We’ve had beautiful, sunny, warm weather. Now we’re going to have a little bit of snow and rain and then it’s going to be a little bit cooler. It is difficult to grow here, but you’ve got some tips for us, Kath, on, on things that we should be thinking about growing, including some bulbs that are tubers. Tubers. OK. Your beloved Peony in your garden is a tuber. It’s a tuberous root. It stores a lot of its energy in there and it’s really valuable. And I mean, they they’ve got to have something to them. There’s some peonies in Red Deer that are 140 years old, and that’s even older than us. Yeah, didn’t think that was possible. OK, good point. And also succulents. And that is the other reason, one of the things you do look at for drought tolerance, this succulent leaf is full of water. And that’s right. So planting sedums in your garden, planting hens and chicks, any of those types of plants, really, really valuable. Like this little guy isn’t that beautiful. It is. And and you know, it’s it’s so interesting to me, the bulbs and the tubers, like this is a native and this looks like a pussy Willow, but purple, purple. And the pollinators, the insects just are drawn to it and it’s very valuable in your garden just for that reason. OK, we’ve got some pics of some other drought resistant plants that you say are good bets. Yes, exactly. Let’s talk about those. All right. Well, the reason they’re chosen, most of them are chosen from the again, the foliage, the type of leaf the leaves are. Oh, that’s that’s blooming right now that is hepatica. And they are an Evergreen. And they start, you know, the foliage doesn’t look great, but they flower 1st and then the foliage just stands back up and keeps going, oh nice. And that’s going to be a cool one. Now this is a relation of the silver mound plant which is so popular and it is particularly Hardy and it’s chosen from the fact that the leaves are silvery grey and they’re hairy and that is going to hold that, that’s going to hold the moisture, It’s going to stop the sun rays from filtering, filtering through. And that particular plant is Rebecca Goldstrom, native. It is very, very Hardy. And it too, although the yellow flowers stand up the way they do, they have the centers of the Daisy, is very drought resistant and will keep the petals. And the leaves are hairy. Oh, so hairy seems to be what we’re looking for. One of the hairy silver and succulent. Hairy silver and succulent. OK, what is that one? That is estrantia, and it is a later season flower. It’s another one that has a type of tuberous root. OK, so you know, when we’re ordering, when we’re picking plants, we’re choosing for root system, hairy leaves, succulent leaves, flowering. Hardy. Look at you. Oh, my son. Preserving water. So you brought the snow inside. That actually is from the snowfall. That happened about the 26th of March and I decided to see. That’s a 10 inch boss. I filled it with snow and then I left it on the counter for three or four hours and it produces produced a cup of water. Every single drop counts. It does, doesn’t it? And that is part and parcel of trying to get water wise. I mean and there’s always the spring flowering plants and the most of them are growing because they’re drought dollar like creeping flocks is from north, the far north, the flocks is in the flocks from the north is here. Yeah, exactly into Calgary. Oh, we like that. And we like your tips and you’ve got an event coming up where we can all learn something about gardening. Yes. And it’s our garden market. It is presented at the ATCO building. It has this new ATCO campus and we’re going to have 10 speakers. All the booths are sold out. The vendors were so excited to come back and do stuff with us. So it’s really good. And Leslie’s going to be a contestant in our container. I’m building something gardenish. I’m not sure what it is. Well, it’s part of our seat to table program and the chefs are going to coach, OK, So it could be really fun. Oh, and they’re gonna do cooking class. That’s really quite interesting. Well, I’m always up for a cooking class. Well, a little of this in Chef and a little of that in and we can all that’s right end up with something in edible like mine usually are. Cal hort.org is the website For more information. Cath, thank you for coming in and thanks for bringing the tulips and the daffodils. It’s nice and springy and that’s a nice reminder heading into some poor weather. Cath Smite from the Calgary Horticultural Society.