Arboretum Spotlight: Color Guard yucca adds its own rainbow to dry garden
This is one part in a new weekly series featuring the UC Davis Arboretum’s “40 Plants You (Probably) Have Never Heard of – But Will Love,” 40 can’t-fail, easy-care, low-water plants well adapted to our region but hard to find.
Color Guard yucca
Yucca filamentosa “Color Guard”
Size: Up to 2 feet tall and 5 feet wide
Exposure: Full sun to partial shade
Bloom season: Midsummer
Pruning needs: None
Water needs: Medium to low-water; once established, water once or twice a month.
Snapshot: With colorful striping, this yucca is extraordinary. A wonderful accent to mounding green perennials and shrubs, this dramatic architectural plant features sword-shaped leaves with a central stripe of bright canary yellow contrasting with a neon green edge. In winter, this yucca adds more color as its leaves become tinged with pink. In summer, it sprouts clusters of nodding, creamy-white bell-shaped flowers, attracting bees and hummingbirds.
▪ For more on 40 Plants, click on arboretum.ucdavis.edu.
This story was originally published February 20, 2015 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Arboretum Spotlight: Color Guard yucca adds its own rainbow to dry garden."