What actually survives in a Fort Polk yard
Just PCSed to Fort Polk? Whatever grew at your last duty station, the Louisiana piney woods plays by different rules, zone 9a in the piney woods, nearly 60 inches of rain a year, humidity that fogs your glasses in June, and sandy acid soil under the pines. Here's the straight list, from Sprigwise, a veteran-founded app that matches plants to yards for a living.
Every plant below is one of the 500 species in our fact-checked database, no guesses, no filler.
Ten that make it here
Full disclosure: "makes it" still means you water it through its first summer. After that, these mostly fend for themselves.
🌲 Bald Cypress
Louisiana's state tree, it takes standing water, drought, and everything between, with feathery rust fall color.
What to buy and when to plant it here →
🌳 Southern Live Oak
Give it room and two summers of water; the humidity and rain here are exactly what it grew up on.
What to buy and when to plant it here →
🌿 Southern Wax Myrtle
The native screen of the Gulf pinelands, fast, evergreen, and fine with both the rain and the sand.
What to buy and when to plant it here →
🌿 Yaupon Holly
At the warm edge of its range but bombproof here, evergreen structure that takes wet feet better than most hollies.
What to buy and when to plant it here →
🌾 Pink Muhly Grass
A native coastal-plain grass, happy in sand, just give it a spot that drains between the downpours.
What to buy and when to plant it here →
🌴 Cabbage Palm (Sabal Palm)
The Gulf's honest palm, hurricane-proof, wet-tolerant, and it makes the PCS to Louisiana feel official.
What to buy and when to plant it here →
🌼 Confederate Jasmine (Star Jasmine)
Thrives in this heat, it sulks its first year, then needs pruning to stay off the carport.
What to buy and when to plant it here →
🔥 Firebush
Firebush pumps out red tubes for hummingbirds all summer; a rare freeze cuts it back and it returns from the roots.
What to buy and when to plant it here →
🐝 Summersweet
Summersweet is built for that damp low corner, July flower spikes with real fragrance where little else blooms.
What to buy and when to plant it here →
🌺 Crape Myrtle
At the warm edge of its range but still the best flowering tree on the block, full sun keeps the mildew off.
What to buy and when to plant it here →Five that will break your heart
All five get sold around here anyway. The nursery isn't lying to you, the label just wasn't written for the Louisiana piney woods.
🍎 Apple
Rated only to zone 8 and needs winter chill Louisiana can't provide, you'll get leaves, humidity diseases, and no fruit.
🔵 Blue Fescue
A zone 4–8 cool-season grass in swamp humidity, it drowns and rots even faster than it cooks.
🪴 Hens and Chicks
Succulents that survive Rocky Mountain winters die in one wet Louisiana summer, 60 inches of rain rots them at the crown.
🌲 Rocky Mountain Juniper
It's rated to zone 7 and built for dry air, the piney-woods steam bath takes it out in a season or two.
🪴 American Boxwood
Zone 8 tops, and this humidity is a blight buffet, yaupon gives you the same clipped look without the funerals.
Every yard on post is different.
Shade from the trees, drainage, which way your fence faces. Run yours through the matcher and get odds for YOUR exact yard, free.
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