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WEST JORDAN — For its first and only time, a Parry’s century plant recently bloomed in West Jordan’s Conservation Garden Park.

For the next few weeks, visitors to the garden can catch the special sight. It often takes a Parry’s century plant, also known as Parry’s agave, decades to bloom, which is its grand finale.

“Once they are done blooming, they’ll die,” said garden manager Clifton Smith. “It expends all of its energy to create the flower, then at the end of the life cycle after the flower is done, it will grow what they call little pups off to the side of it, which are just new little agave plants.”

The blooming Parry’s century plant has been at Conservation Garden Park for about eight years. The plants are most frequently found in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, and typically live between 10 and 30 years before blooming, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Parry's century plant grew quickly. (Photos: Courtesy of Megan Hatch/Conservation Garden Park)

“(Our plant) was fairly large before we got it,” Smith said. “Someone had been raising it and then we bought it from them. It’s hard to say exactly how many years old it is, but (it is) at least 10.”

After starting to show signs of blooming in March, the plant quickly grew to be 17-feet tall. The garden manager said he hopes the plant will grow more than one offshoot to the side of it.

Parry’s agave is only one part of the garden’s interesting collection. The conservation garden exists to show people how to create landscapes that are water wise, according to Smith.

“Now is the best time to see everything in bloom and to see how beautiful you can have a landscape that actually uses less water and requires less maintenance overall,” he said. “It’s a great resource for people to come see and it can help them do their yards in a similar way.”

Conservation Garden Park is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday. In addition to having gardeners available to answer questions, the park offers classes for people to receive one-on-one help.

Contact the author at ncrofts@ksl.com or find her on Twitter.

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