Native Plants

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Sunday - March 28, 2010

From: New Braunfels, TX
Region: Southwest
Topic: Deer Resistant
Title: Deer resistant, deciduous plants for New Braunfels, TX
Answered by: Barbara Medford

QUESTION:

I have three acres of filtered sunlight/mostly shade. What deer resistant, flowering, deciduous plants are best for the New Braunfels area. I have had split leaf phyladendruns for twenty years, but they all froze numerous times and are not budding out. I am afraid they are all dead. Some were four to five feet in diameter and four feet high. My place looked like a park. Now it looks like nothing.

ANSWER:

Monstera deliciosa, Split-Leaf Philodendron, is a tropical plant native to Central America from southern Mexico to Panama. To grow outside, it must be in USDA Hardiness Zones 10-11; Comal and Guadalupe Counties are approximately Zone 8b, plus we have had very unusual cold weather in Texas this year. This Floridata website, Split Leaf Philodendron, will give you more information. You should also note that is a poisonous plant. This is one of the reasons that the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is dedicated to the use, care and propagation of plants native not only to North America, but to the area in which the plant is being grown. Native plants are acclimated by millions of years of experience to the climate, temperatures and rainfall of an area, and can usually survive whatever the environment chooses to dish out. We will check each plant we recommend to be sure it will do well in Comal and Guadalupe Counties. Follow each plant link to our webpage on that plant for more information. You can use our same search techniques to make selections of your own. Remember that "deer-resistant" is not "deer-proof," but we will try to make selections that are "highly resistant."

Three acres is a lot of ground to landscape, so we suggest that you first read some of our How-To Articles, including A Guide to Using Native Plants and Meadow Gardening. Next, we will go to our Deer Resistant Species List in our Collections Section, and search it on Texas, "herb" (flowering herbaceous plants) and part shade (2 to 6 hours of sun daily) and shade (less than 6 hours of sun a day). We will repeat this search, focusing next on "shrub" and then "grasses and grass-like plants." We think that, considering the amount of space you have, you will find native grasses very useful and deer are seldom interested in grasses.

Herbaceous Blooming Plants Native to New Braunfels TX Area:

Argemone albiflora (bluestem pricklypoppy)

Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly milkweed)

Berlandiera lyrata (lyreleaf greeneyes)

Capsicum annuum (cayenne pepper)

Coreopsis tinctoria (golden tickseed)

Eryngium leavenworthii (Leavenworth's eryngo)

Glandularia bipinnatifida (Dakota mock vervain)

Melampodium leucanthum (plains blackfoot)

Shrubs Native to New Braunfels TX Area:

Amorpha fruticosa (desert false indigo)

Leucophyllum frutescens (Texas barometer bush)