Central Texas Landscape Plants

Agarita

• Create a privacy screen around your home with the agarita shrub, while providing a home and food for small mammals and birds. The rigid branches spread out to form thickets 3 to 8 feet high. Each blue-gray to gray-green, holly-like leaf ends in a needle-sharp tip that's useful for keeping the deer away. Clusters of yellow, cup-shaped flowers bloom from February to April, releasing a pleasant fragrance. The flowers are followed by small, red berries May to July. Agaritas are drought-tolerant, thriving in full sun or partial shade. They grow well in the alkaline, limestone soil found in the Fort Worth Prairie and Lampasas Cut Plain sub-regions of the Cross Timbers in Central Texas, which include Tarrant, Denton, Erath and McLennan counties.

Firewheel

• Brighten a flower bed or border near a walkway with colorful firewheel annual flowers. It's a mounding, multi-branched plant with stems 18 to 36 inches tall and short cultivars make a good groundcover at 14 to 24 inches high with a 12-inch spread. The hairy stems may deter deer, whether you grow them in full sun or partial shade. The flowers command attention from May to August with 1- to 3-inch-wide flower heads that have three, toothed rays colored red and yellow, orange, copper scarlet, yellow or crimson. Plant them in well-drained, loamy, sandy soil in the Post Oak Savannah near Austin and Cross Timbers regions. Firewheels are drought-tolerant and need average soil, because too much organic matter will cause the plants to become floppy and produce fewer flowers.

Confederate Jasmine

• The small, white, pinwheel flowers pack a punch with their sweet jasmine-like scent during warm nights in early summer. As spring begins, confederate jasmine, an evergreen vine, has dark-green foliage mixed with new, glossy, light-green growth. It prefers full sun or partial shade, but isn't picky about the soil, as long as it's well-drained and has some organic matter in it. Confederate jasmine can reach heights of up to 40 feet on a trellis or other structure. Its clinging tendrils help the vine hold onto walls. Drape it over a low wall or fence to decorate with nature. Cover a bare spot in the landscape as a 1-1/2- to 2-foot-tall groundcover with a spread of up to 5 feet.

Texas Redbud

• The colorful flowers and foliage of the Texas redbud tree make it ideal as an accent tree in the landscape. Young trees prefer partial shade and mature trees, which can reach a height of up to 20 feet, can tolerate full sun or partial shade. Texas redbuds need well-drained soil and are happy in any soil type found in central Texas. It tolerates heat, cold and drought with ease. The small, glossy, green leaves appear in the spring after small clusters of rose-purple flowers begin to bloom along the length of the branches in March and April. The foliage turns red or gold in fall, along with the appearance of 4-inch-long, red-brown to red-purple seedpods that stay on the tree for birds into the winter.