Somehow, the belief that crape myrtles should be brutally pruned by cutting off their tops persists, even though it's inaccurate. Crape murder is a term that has been coined to describe this severe ...

When you close your eyes and think of a Southern summer garden, the first image may be an ancient live oak with low, sweeping branches, but the second image is puffs of sunset sky-colored crepe myrtle ...

I am biased when it comes to crape myrtles. I just don’t love them. I find them messy; they drop tons of useless berries and flowers that blow around everywhere, and since they are non-natives, they ...

Apparently winter has decided it’s time to make her frigid presence known, arriving in Southeast Texas for an extended period…the entire week! Fortunately for us all, winter is most often fleeting — a ...

I usually wait until mid-January to write something on this topic but this week I saw my first severe pruning of a crape myrtle for this dormant season earlier this month. So, instead of visions of ...

We all enjoy the colorful blooms of flowering crape myrtles in the summer. But it’s those same trees that all too often fall victim to a misguided winter ritual known as “crape murder,” the aggressive ...

For vibrant summer color, few flowering plants can compete with the crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica). Just look around your neighborhood. Nearly every street in the South is lined with these ...

Also known as "Lilac of the South" due to its popularity in zones 7 to 9, crape myrtle is a deciduous shrub or small tree that explodes with white, deep rose, or magenta blossoms from July to ...