Delosperma Iceplant Mesa Verde

Next year, I’m using more water-savers in place of the annual water guzzlers.  Iceplants are one of these durable plants for harsh spots.   They are ever bloomers, taking on the hottest, driest conditions these sultry summers can throw at them.  And they are perennial so they will survive and thrive year after year.

Since they are low-growing groundcovers, they can even be used in pots as spillers for the edges or at the top of rock walls as tumblers to soften the wall face.  They are at home in rock gardens.  Some are even evergreen in the warmer climes.  If they happen to be out of bloom, which isn’t often, their chubby needle-like foliage is deep green and attractive.

Iceplants absolutely will not take any coddling.  They thrive in poor, dry soil in broiling sun.  Their flowers tend to close up if they are shaded and do close at night, seeming to need just a wee bit of sleep to get them flashing again come morning.

Delosperma Iceplant Mesa Verde

Mesa Verde® is only 2 inches high.  This doesn’t keep it from filling in the sunny border edges for up to 3 feet.  Hate dragging hoses?  This one won’t need supplemental watering.  If you feed and water it, your reward will be a dead plant!

If you think that its sunny disposition makes it a wimp for the cold garden, think again.  It is hardier than other delospermas, rated from USDA Zones 4-8.  (After all, it grew up in the Denver Botanical Garden.)

As popular as this little gem will be with gardeners, it has not been so with the deer populations.  They don’t seem interested in even a taste.

Iceplant Mesa Verde® is for the non-nurturers among us and for those of us who have more than enough nurturing duties elsewhere in the garden.

---Posted by Coach Anne, July 23 2008---