Native Plants

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Friday - May 23, 2014

From: Batson, TX
Region: Southwest
Topic: Container Gardens, Ferns, Herbs/Forbs, Shrubs
Title: Hanging Baskets for Batson, TX
Answered by: Larry Larson

QUESTION:

What plants can I put in hanging baskets for my shady porch?

ANSWER:

This Mr Smarty Plants just finished a rather large answer for a relatively equivalent question from Austin. It has lots of references to "How-to" articles and to even further previous Mr Smarty Plants questions and answers. Rather than pulling all that right back in, I'm just going to reference you to that answer [be ready for LOTS of references] and then go on to look at Shade Plants for Hardin County.

Here is that answer: Hanging plants for Austin, TX

The general process for selecting plants for a specific climate and area is to use the “Recommended Species” lists from the Native Plant Database. This link is to the “Pineywoods Collection”.

One can further reduce this list to specific characteristics by sorting for them. When I selected “Shade” for Light Requirement and heights of 0-1 and 1-3 feet, I was left with 23 results. You can do this yourself and review the results for your favorites. I found the following suggestions to be good possibilities for your baskets:

Herbs: Mitchella repens (Partridgeberry), Phlox divaricata (Wild blue phlox), Rudbeckia hirta (Black-eyed susan), Ruellia nudiflora (Violet ruellia)

Ferns: Onoclea sensibilis (Sensitive fern), Polystichum acrostichoides (Christmas fern), Pteridium aquilinum var. pseudocaudatum (Bracken fern), Thelypteris kunthii (Wood fern)

Shrubs: Ceanothus americanus (New jersey tea), Symphoricarpos orbiculatus (Coralberry)