Garden Gal

Many mountain trees offer spectacular autumn colors, but glowing fall leaves light up only one of our four seasons. The best landscape trees shine in every growing season. Maples provide some of the best fall colors. Several are outstanding shade trees through summer, others a great source of sap for syrup, and the smallest flame maples have exceptional drought tolerance in a desert landscape. Tiny trees for tiny yards don’t take up much space. Most offer stellar autumn foliage, and their fragrant spring flowers are an added bonus.

Ground cover plants are beneficial in so many ways. The foliage provides visual interest across hills, between boulders, and down slopes. They also reduce yard maintenance by fighting erosion and suppressing weeds.

Here is the definitive list of local groundcovers grown in the brutal sun or dense shade. Many offer an evergreen solution to bare landscape plots.

It’s frustrating to design a new flowerbed around your favorite perennial flowers, like delphiniums, Shasta daisies, and pincushion flower, only to see them peter out after three or four years. Here is a list of perennial flowers notorious for their longevity. These are the bloomers you see in old neighborhoods, planted when the homes were first built and still blooming decades later.