The Wilson Display Garden, located at the Agricultural Center at 1806 South Goldsboro Street is open for you to enjoy. The plants in the garden will surely stimulate ideas for your home landscape.

This month the plant that caught my attention is Yucca filamentosa, better known as Adam's-needle Yucca. Before today Yucca to me was sort of yukky plant.

Yucca gives the landscape a desert like feel, since this is where many of the species are native too. This plant came from a small one gallon container last summer and now is quite a large specimen. This might be a great plant for the gardening- challenged.

Yucca is a low evergreen shrub with stiff sword-like leaves. From the margins of the leaves thread-like filaments curl outward.

This plant is handsomely green even though the nights of 20 degrees F. But the real attraction of this plant come in May- June when the 3-6 foot high flower stalk forms. The flowers are white or yellowish-white.

Yucca is adaptable to most soils as long as they are not excessively wet. It is a native plant from South Carolina to Mississippi and Florida. It will grow in Hardiness zones 4-9. Wilson is zone 7.

There many different species of Yucca and many variations of Yucca in each species such as variegated leaves or two-toned color of flowers.

There is very little care or maintenance to this plant, merely remove the flower stalk once flowering is completed. Although, I would never plant a lot of Yucca's, they look best in small mass plantings.

Yucca is a plant that can create interest with its textured leaves or with the pretty flowers in the summer. Take a walk through the Wilson Display Garden this month to see that a garden really can have year-round seasonal interest if you plant a wide variety of plants.

Date Created: 12/06/00.

Updated: 8/25/03