Yucca filamentosa ‘Color Guard’
(variegated yucca)
You don’t have to adopt a Southwest desert garden style to grow yuccas in your garden. They lend great architecture and magical four-season interest to beds and borders with their stiff, sword-shaped leaves (also commonly called Spanish bayonet). Some of our customers think yuccas look out of place in the rolling, pastoral landscape of the Hudson Valley, but we think they are indispensable.
Yucca filamentosa ‘Color Guard’ is one of our favorite yucca selections at Loomis Creek. Tony Avent, owner of Plant Delights Nursery, says ‘Color Guard’ is the best golden yellow-centered variegated yucca on the market,” and Dan Hinkley, founder of Heronswood Nursery, rates it in his Top 10 most indispensable plants. Now those are endorsements!
‘Color Guard’ grows to 20 inches tall and the foliage is edged in hundreds of curly, filamentous white hairs, which softens its bold presence. In cooler fall weather, the yellow leaf variegation is blushed pinkish red for added interest. Mature 3-foot-wide clumps sporadically punctuate borders with 6-foot-tall stalks of white flowers in spring. After flowering, the parent plant slowly withers to make room for baby plants nestled at its base, so don’t despair.
We love to plant yuccas with spurges (Euphorbia myrsinites, E. palustris), wine cups (Callirhoe involucrata), and Korean feather reed grass (Calamagrostis brachytricha). They work with lots of plants–so be adventurous!
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