Nolina - a most special plant for a dry climate garden

Is there an ornamental plant which makes it a most beautiful sculptural silhouette and the more unusual, requires practically no care and attention and is extremely modest in its water needs? The answer is Yes! This is the Palm of the bottle, Nolina recurvata.

Nolina, due to its thick trunk and counter leaves long, grassy, makes a very strong vertical emphasis, in the garden, amounting to a few metres of 3-4 and after very many years more. Its particularity is the inflated base from which rises the trunk. On mature plants, this can be up to one metre in diameter and resembles something like a giant onion.

Requiring little water, the Palm of the bottle is ideally designs landscape dry. It can be planted in a bed of decorative stones, for example, or in a wood chip mulch and marries well with other solid form as Dracaena and Yucca plants. In fact it could serve as a focal point, or the dominant element in a composition based on the ornamental grasses and plants like grass. For example, it seems large floating of a low growing carpet "weeds" as Festuca, Carex and Liriope.

Nolina must be used wisely. It will step in my view with large leaved plants and of course tropical, but associates well enough with fins Trues. It is sometimes grown as a vertical focus in a carpet of flowers. Personally, I think that this creates some confusion, as the colour of the flowers and strong lines of the Nolina attention. Good design involves the exact relationship between a dominant factor, be it a sculptural plant or a mass of colour and a factor of support as a green hedge or cover.

Nolina recurvata must be on the more easy to grow plant. It is also close to being free maintenance as possible. Nevertheless, it has its cultural requirements, which must be carefully noted.

* The most crucial is the need for excellent drainage. It is preferable to underwater Nolina to the alternate it. For this reason, that it should not be planted close to plants that require frequent watering, as annual flowers. In such cases, the bulb is liable to rot.

* Nolina requires full sun, but can get by in the light shade

* Do not forget that this plant grows very slowly. As he needs room to grow, it should not be crowded out with competing species. As always, patience is a virtue!