During our evening event here on the 8th, both Mike Darcy from KXL and Kym Pokorny from the Oregonian fairly gushed about their love for crape myrtles  (Lagerstroemia indica) – Kym was impressed they are tough enough to live in an area of her garden where she can’t get much else to grow, and Mike loves their year-round interest.  You will find lots of good reasons to include one or two in your garden this year, as they:

• do very well in dry sites, once they are established
• thrive in containers, allowing you to move them to different locations of your garden
• have attractive bark, which makes for an interesting focal point in the winter, when the leaves have fallen
• have multiple trunks, particularly nice when they are pruned up so as to show them off
• can be trained espalier-fashion against a wall or fence
• are usually less than 25 feet tall, so are perfect for understory plantings or a focal point in a small garden
• provide a profusion of summer blossoms
• will usually bloom for 4 weeks or longer

What’s not to love about all that?!