| Hi dereks I love Joshuas a lot. Nothing speaks xeric like they do. They can do just fine here, with a little help. I've amended the soil with pea gravel and larger gravel and rocks. The most important factor in keeping hardy trunking yuccas, agave, etc. here is near perfect drainage. The sloppy clay soil we have will rot them from the bottom up - I've killed a few things! I'm also experimenting with hardy palms. Sabal minor, Needle palms and Windmill palms(trachycarpus fortunei); which all need a little more protection in the winter than the yuccas. The ones on the south side of the house mostly just get c-9 christmas around the base to prevent the soil from freezing - they need to be able to aspirate the fronds to prevent hard leaf damage, December through February. The other 75% of the year they're on there own. Best, Alan ps I bought the joshua from calplants, a steal at 100 bucks. I'll give you a couple of links and you can check them out. http://www.calplants.biz/yucca.html http://cabrillonets.com/calplants/plantlist.php?cat_id=23 | 
