Every home garden or patio benefits from cascading plants that spill over the edge of raised beds, tall pots, retaining walls or hanging baskets.
Such plants also are ideal for planting on mounded and sloped areas.
Here are some of the best for the Tucson area:
● Purple Queen (Setcreasea pallida "Purpurea") is a thick-stemmed, succulent-leaved herbaceous plant with vivid deep-purple leaves and small pink flowers. It can be grown as a ground cover, but it looks best trailing over the edge of planters, raised beds and hanging baskets.
In unprotected spots, Purple Queen will freeze back in winter, but it will recover rapidly in spring. If grown in containers, plants can be moved to protected locations during winter cold snaps.
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Purple Queen makes a striking patio accent plant. For the best leaf color, grow Purple Queen in light to medium shade. Water daily during hot weather.
● Firecracker Plant (Russellia equisetiformis) really should be called "the fireworks plant" because it explodes with bright-red bursts of flowers atop bright-green streaming stems.
This is a great plant for hanging baskets or tall pots. But give it room so its 2- to 3-foot-long stems can hang over without splaying on the ground.
These plants have wispy, green leafless branches and clusters of bright-red tubular flowers that bloom throughout the warm season. They need plenty of water and a growing spot shaded from the hot midday sun.
Firecrackers perform best in raised beds, tall containers or flowing over the front of terraced walls.
● Trailing Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis "Prostratus") is one of several spreading/cascading rosemary cultivars.
Others include Huntington Carpet, Irene, Lockwood de Forest, Santa Barbara and Corsican Prostrate. Rosemary is well suited to the desert, with good drought and heat tolerance. It can be grown in full sun or partial shade.
In deep shade, however, plants become leggy and are prone to pests such as the spittle bug — small, mothlike creatures closely related to aphids.
Trailing forms of rosemary are great for growing in raised beds, over the edge of retaining walls or as a spreading ground cover. Besides its attractive and aromatic needlelike foliage, rosemary produces bursts of small lavender flowers throughout the year.
● Hearts & Flowers (Aptenia cordifolia) is a type of ice plant best suited to growing in containers. It has little, heart-shaped, succulent leaves.
Plants mound to 6 inches in height and spread 2 feet with dense, shiny green foliage and small but showy raspberry-colored flowers.
Hearts & Flowers is great for hanging baskets and medium-size patio pots, alone or in combination with taller-growing plants.
This plant requires full to nearly full sun and plenty of water. But as with other succulents, let the soil dry some before watering thoroughly. In the heat of summer, it's still likely that the plant may need daily watering, especially when grown in containers.
● Asparagus Fern (Asparagus densiflorus "Sprengeri," aka the Sprenger fern). Although there are many kinds of ornamental asparagus, Sprenger is the one best-suited to planters and containers. Its loose, cascading stems with bright-green needlelike leaves spill over the edge of pots. The flowers are not showy, but the plant develops large clusters of bright-red berries at the ends of its branches.
A compact variety, "Sprengeri Compacta," is best used in hanging baskets.
Grow asparagus fern in full sun to moderate shade, and water it thoroughly when the soil feels dry.
Gardening
Advice by John P. Begeman
» Garden demonstrations
"Citrus: Selection, Care and Fall Planting" will be the topic for this week's garden demonstrations. They will be presented 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Murphy-Wilmot Library, 530 N. Wilmot Road, and 1 p.m. Friday at the Oro Valley Public Library, 1305 W. Naranja Drive.