Section
Native and drought-tolerant plants
Regional plant choices for the Front Range, Wasatch Front, high plains, and northern New Mexico, plus trees that face alkaline soil.
A drought-tolerant plant from a national list is a hypothesis. A plant with a record on the Front Range, the Wasatch benches, the Wyoming steppe, or the high desert around Santa Fe is evidence. This section keeps those geographies apart. Blue grama is at home on the high plains and still a strange choice for a shaded north foundation. Ice plant cultivars trialed by Plant Select can sail through a Denver winter in a gravelly bed and rot in a Park City snowbank. Apache plume belongs in the southern part of the region in a way Norway maple never will.
Two words get confused in nursery signs. Native means the species occurs in the wild in the region, or in a stated part of it. Adapted, or regionally trialed, means the plant has survived local soils, sun, and cold in plantings even if its wild range is elsewhere. Plant Select, the collaboration of Denver Botanic Gardens and Colorado State University, is a trial program, not a nativity claim. Several of its best-known introductions, including certain ice plant cultivars and red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora), are not Colorado natives. They can still be the right plant for a Front Range parking strip if drainage is sharp and you are honest about what you are growing. The Front Range plant page labels origin for that reason.
The same honesty applies in the other direction. A Colorado native moved to a low, hot, heavily irrigated valley can sulk. A Wasatch native such as bigtooth maple (Acer grandidentatum) is a better street-tree conversation in northern Utah than another silver maple, which CSU and PlantTalk Colorado both flag for iron chlorosis on high-pH ground. The Wasatch page stays with that valley-and-bench climate, including the salt and compaction of older neighborhoods, and it does not pretend Park City’s season matches Salt Lake City’s. USU Extension’s own tables put a median last frost near the end of April at the Salt Lake City airport and, in a separate 2019 note, a last frost near June 9 at Park City with a frost-free stretch on the order of 92 days. Plant lists that ignore that split are catalogs, not guidance.
East of the Rockies the stresses are wind, hail, chinook swings, and alkaline prairie soils. The high plains page is about grasses, sagebrush-steppe shrubs, and the perennials that re-sprout after a June hailstorm because their growing points sit low. Arborvitae sheared into a wall is the planting that fails this test. It browns in winter wind, splits under snow, and was never a steppe plant.
Northern New Mexico is high desert and mountain valley at once. Santa Fe sits near 7,200 feet. Taos is a cold pool relative to its neighbors, which is why a 2005 NMSU Southwest Yard and Garden column has county agents telling Santa Fe gardeners to wait past the average last frost for warm-season crops, and Taos gardeners to wait later still. The ornamental side of that climate, piñon and juniper, chamisa, Apache plume, and penstemons, is on the northern New Mexico plant page. The vegetable timing is on the New Mexico calendar, where NMSU’s zone-based frost windows from Circular 457B are quoted as statewide zone ranges rather than fake city guarantees.
Trees are where alkaline soil becomes expensive. A chlorotic maple is a removal waiting on a budget. CSU Extension’s iron chlorosis fact sheet lists a sobering set of woody plants with high susceptibility, among them maples, pin and red oak, aspen, birch, honeylocust, and many fruit trees. Susceptibility is not a death sentence on every lot, and “tougher” species still fail in compacted, overwatered clay. The tree page is about that choice at planting time, plus the western habit of winter sunscald on thin bark. Fruit trees have a second problem, winter warm spells and spring frost on blooms, which is handled in the fruit section rather than repeated here.
Water ties the lists to the soil section. Almost every plant below is drought-tolerant only after it has rooted. The first one or two summers are irrigation summers. After that, a hydrozone is a promise: the penstemon bed does not sit on the lawn valve. Denver Water’s xeriscape principles, summarized on the xeriscape page, are the design step. Mulch that will not blow away is the maintenance step, covered under mulch.
Wildlife will edit the list whether you plan for it or not. A “deer-proof” label is a marketing sentence. In a hard winter, deer browse plants they ignored in June. Daffodils and alliums are less interesting to them than tulips and hostas. The reliable tool is a fence of the right height and mesh, described in deer, rabbits, and voles. Choose plants for soil, sun, and season first. Fence for the animals second. A planting that satisfies both will still look spare in April. That spareness is the region, not a failure of the design.
Articles in this section
- A Front Range planting palette
Natives and Plant Select introductions that fit Front Range sun, clay, and hail, with origins labeled so a trial plant is not called a native.
- Plants for the Wasatch Front and northern Utah valleys
Valley heat, bench cold, and alkaline soils along the Wasatch, and why Park City is not Salt Lake City's plant list.
- High-plains plants for Wyoming and Montana
Wind, hail, chinooks, and alkaline prairie soils. Grasses and shrubs that fit Cheyenne, Casper, Billings, and the open eastern plains.
- Northern New Mexico high-desert plants
Piñon, juniper, chamisa, and penstemons for Santa Fe, Taos, and the high desert, with the cold-valley caution kept separate from Albuquerque heat.
- Trees that face alkaline soil, wind, and winter sun
Why maples and pin oaks yellow on Western soils, which trees have a better record, and how to plant them so the root flare survives.