Sagebrush: Maybe your next garden solution

Alastair and I had the wonderful luck to travel to the eastern Sierra and give a little eyeball to Mt. Whitney before the recent snow very likely capped it in white. It’s one of my favorite places to travel and only about three hours from our house. I should go far more often.

I love the large gray carpets of sagebrush that cover the eastern Sierra, all peppered with rabbitbrush and volcanic rock.

On the last trip I wondered why more people don’t plant this in their yard, especially during these drought years in California when people are replacing lawns with drought-tolerant plants. Sagebrush is surely one to consider.

Admittedly, the plant does have a very scrubby look, but even with a touch of water it actually softens up quite nicely and, even in its scrubbiness, it goes very well with the other chaparral-type plants people are adding to the front yards. It is a fairly fast grower and grows in gardening zones 4-9, tolerant of both quite a bit of heat and quite a bit of cold.

Before a year ago, it had never occurred to me to plant this herb on my acreage deliberately. Now I have two thriving plants. You may want a plant or two yourself.