A Sonoran Desert native with dense, leathery gray-green leaves that stay put all year. It makes a sturdy, natural-looking screen on very little water, and it fits easily into native and desert-modern gardens.
Living with it in the Phoenix Valley
Watering
Follow the shrub schedule in our Landscape Care guide while it establishes. As a desert native, it should be kept lean after that. Heavy watering pushes weak, spindly growth and can turn a tidy shrub into a sprawling one.
Pruning
Less water means less pruning. An established plant needs only a light shaping every year or two to keep its natural form. It can be sheared as a hedge, but the branches are brittle and look best with a softer, informal shape.
Cold
A typical Phoenix winter does no harm. A hard freeze can burn some leaves on young plants, which grow back in spring.
How our designers use it
Informal screens and hedges
Planted in a row, it forms a dense, evergreen screen along walls and property lines without the water a non-native hedge would need.
Native and transitional gardens
Its muted gray-green color settles easily into native desert areas, under palo verdes and mesquites, and along the edge between a landscape and open desert.
Foundation plantings
Kept to 4 or 5 feet, it softens the base of a wall with year-round foliage. It is not suited to narrow planters, where it soon outgrows the space.
Good to know
Around the pool
Litter is low and there are no thorns. The leathery leaves handle reflected heat off decking well, though it should be placed where it has room to spread.
