Hello - I live in Arizona and am into "dry" landscaping. One of my favorite native shrubs is "brittlebush" - it's flowers are so beautiful in the spring... but it goes "drought deciduous" in summer, leaving long, brown, "brittle" sticks with brown seed pods all over them.
I want to convince neighbors and friends to let me mattock a few divets/mini swales in their xeriscaped "lawns" and then broadcast native desert seeds there. I have been able to substantially green my yard while turning off all landscape irrigation using this method.
But normies and HOAs complain that the plants look too dead/brown during the summer - what's an easy (and preferably low tech) way to snap off a good portion of the"brittle" seed stalks of this plant, leaving the still-green interior of the bush intact? I'm looking for a low-maintenence procedure of pruning that my neighbors won't balk at. This could be seed collection, or the material could be just left on the ground. I can tell you it's no fun going out with clippers in the summer in AZ to do this one or 2 sticks at a time... and I want to put these bushes everywhere!!
I'm talking about this plant:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encelia_farinosa
Thanks for any ideas you guys may have!
