A lovely annual for growing in pots or raised beds with light soil.

This plant is hardy here in zone 9a, but I don't recommend growing it as a perennial. The flower spikes die at the lightest frost, and it stays ugly and dead-looking until the next warm spell brings another flush of flowers. With so many evergreen options in the sub-tropics, there's no reason to be staring at ugly brown twigs 1/3 of the year.

Also, the roots will not penetrate clay soil at ALL. I wondered why this supposedly drought-tolerant plant got drought-stressed so easily. After growing several plants for two years in a raised bed of amended clay soil, I pulled them up. They slipped right out of the original planting holes as though from pots. Not one root had left the original potting soil, even though I had cut any circling roots before planting. That's a new one to me.

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