Hesperaloe
Hesperaloe parviflora
Drought is the easy part — winter wet in heavy ground is what kills it, so plant it high and sharply drained.
Spacing & sowing
- Plant spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- Between rows
- 3 ft 8 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
Growing
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Sunlight
- Full sun — essential.
- Watering
- Almost none once established — thoroughly drought-tolerant.
- Feeding
- One light feed in early spring is plenty.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- Cut out the spent flower stalks in autumn, and tidy dead leaves as they come.
Through the year
- Mar–May Bud Break
- May–Dec Flowering
- Dec–Dec Dormancy
- Jan–Mar Dormancy
Pests & problems
Garden allies
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Vine weevil
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Frogs & toads AnuraHunts Vine weevil
A resident toad works the beds every night for slugs, cutworms, and weevils. Recruit them with water — even a sunken basin pond — plus damp shade and an upturned-pot toad house; skip the slug pellets that poison their prey.
- Ground beetle CarabidaeHunts Vine weevil
Fast, glossy night hunters that patrol the soil surface for slugs, cutworms, and root-fly larvae. Give them daytime cover — thick perennial edges, stepping stones, a log — and skip the tillage that wrecks their burrows.
- Hedgehog Erinaceus europaeusHunts Vine weevil
A European animal, and worth saying so plainly: there are no hedgehogs in North America, and the ally that does the same night shift here is the toad, the opossum or the ground beetle. Where they do occur, cut a gap in the fence and skip the pellets.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Scale insects
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com