Lagerstroemia indica, the summer-flowering deciduous tree that thrives in the western sun most plants dread, if you choose the right cultivar.
Lagerstroemia indica · Also known as Crape Myrtle, Crepe Myrtle Indian Summer
The crepe myrtle is the small deciduous tree that does its best work in the hottest, brightest corner of your block, flowering through the thick of summer when much else has given up and then turning the whole canopy amber and red before the leaves fall. People spell it crepe or crape myrtle interchangeably, and the modern Indian Summer cultivars are the ones worth planting.
It suits the way Brisbane houses actually sit, offering shade and colour on a western wall in January and letting the low winter sun back through the bare branches in July, which is exactly the trick a well-placed deciduous tree should pull off.
In a Brisbane garden
The one decision that makes or breaks a crepe myrtle here is the cultivar. Older seedling-grown types are prone to powdery mildew in our humidity, coating the leaves grey and spoiling the show, whereas the Indian Summer series (named for American cities, sold as Tuscarora, Natchez, Sioux and the like) were bred for mildew resistance and hold up far better through a muggy Brisbane summer. We specify a named resistant cultivar every time and size it to the spot, because they range from a three-metre shrub to an eight-metre tree.
Give it the western sun that scorches other plants and it rewards you, flowering for months where a fernery would fry, then dropping its leaves to hand back the winter warmth. It's genuinely low-maintenance once established, drought tolerant, and forgiving of our clay as long as the spot drains, so the only ongoing job is a light winter tidy to keep the canopy open and the peeling cinnamon bark on show.
Photo: Chihiro H, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
How we design with it
A crepe myrtle is our go-to shade tree for the compact courtyards and townhouse blocks where a jacaranda would be absurd, which makes it a mainstay of front yard landscaping on a normal-sized lot. One well-placed tree can shade a west-facing living room all summer and still keep the garden feeling open.
Because it earns its keep with so little fuss, it slots naturally into a low-maintenance garden design, and its clean lines and pale peeling trunk read beautifully against rendered walls in a modern garden design. Plant it where you'll see the summer flowers from indoors, underplant with something that copes with dry summer shade, and let the winter silhouette do its quiet work.
Where we write about crepe myrtle
Common questions
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