spring

Spring in full swing at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

It was a beautiful morning.  Drizzling, foggy, chilly and damp.  But, I was at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center spring plant sale with my friend, Laura, of Wills Family Acres, with a smile on my face and money in my pocket!

Modified for Covid protections, reservations were required and the sale has been stretched out over multiple weekends.  While there were less plants in a smaller space, that wasn’t surprising given the winter we just had and the spreading out of the event time.

As is often the case in the spring, we were greeted by one of the baby owlets that are hatched each year.  For the last 10+ years, the entrance to the center has been home to a pair of great horned owls.  The mom’s name is Athena, and she and her little ones can be seen high above the entrance arch for 6 to 7 weeks in spring.  Can you see the little one peeking over the ledge just under plant on the right side?   Learn more about our iconic feathered friends here

They still had lots of great natives in 4-inch pots and gallons.  Sun plants, shade plants, trees, agaves and grasses and yuccas.  As always, I was fascinated to learn about natives new to me, and a few of them ended up in my cart.  (Surprise, surprise!)

I’m trying Geum canadense, a woodland herb that grows as a ground cover in a woodland setting, it has strawberry-like evergreen foliage and a sweet little white bloom April – June.  Also new to my garden, I bought a Solidago – I admire them every fall and have said for years that I’d like to have one.  Well, now I do!

I also picked up several of my annual sale favorites – Helianthus maximus, calylophus, Henry Duelberg salvia, and Datura.   Having a new garden helps me rationalize my purchases these days.

 

After our retail therapy, we treated ourselves to a leisurely walk around the grounds.  The spring wildflowers and other bloomers blanket the beds, filling them with a patchwork of colors and textures like a beautiful quilt.

Engleman’s sage clusters brightened the beds all through the grounds.

Winecup makes a beautiful border.

Several windows create a secret garden effect, allowing visitors to peek from one part of the garden into another.

I’ll try to keep up my blogging momentum and post the rest of my pics this week, so pop back over!

 

 

 

 

 

 

My garden and design photo faves of 2019

It’s a new year and I’ve just passed the 6 month  milestone in a new garden.  I miss so many things about my previous garden – an acre and a half that I nurtured and loved for more than 16 years.  I’m also excited about having a new challenge.  A BIG new challenge!

So, I’m recapping some of my favorite 2019 photos of my gardens, both old and new.

This Japanese flowering quince always joined the daffodils and hellebores as the first harbingers of spring.  These are plants I will definitely incorporate into the new garden.  I’ve already planted several varieties of daffodil bulbs.

The row of Mountain Laurels lining the old driveway was heady with grape-y goodness when they were all in bloom.  Luckily, there is a Mountain Laurel in the new garden.

I dug up and brought several hellebores from my collection to the new house and they are thriving.  I lost one in the process (I might have been too busy to take good care of them in their pots for months before I began creating a bed for them).

These lyre leaf sage also came with me.  They provide lovely ground cover all year and put up these delicate blooms in the spring.

All of the Austin Garden Bloggers will recognize this as Lucinda’s iris – passalongs that I believe we all share.

Rest assured, Lori, the ditch lilies you brought me back from Wisconsin in a bucket traveled with me to the new house, too.  I’d never leave those behind!

Dianella and loropetalum were building blocks in the previous garden and the will be again when I start building some big beds.

I think I’ll find a home for another ebb tide rose, too.

The current yard (it’s not a garden!) is covered with ivy.  I hope to craft a happier habitat for beneficials and pollinators and birds.

I loved the hot, confetti pops of color in the front bed at the previous house.  This is the one I jokingly called the hideous bed.

Swedish ivy always perked up the shadier nooks and crannies in the garden.

I fell in love with crocosmia at many Garden Bloggers Flings and was happy to add some to my garden two years ago.

I always made room for cordyline in the garden and in ornamental pots.

Of course I brought all of my pots with me.  I think we moved 75 of them – yikes!  Having them all here made us feel right out home on the big back deck and outdoor living areas.

This eyesore area at the new house needed an overhaul.  We had to regrade, take out trees, build a French drain and dig out a dozen trashy shrub volunteers.  As a small project, it was my first garden creation.

I started by giving some curves and shape to this part of the French drain to define a new bed area in this square space.  Then I painted the dilapidated concrete.  This area is the view out of the dining room French doors that open onto a courtyard.  I designed these steel panels and had them custom built  to surround the AC units at the previous house, but don’t need them here.  They were perfect for adding interest to this odd space.

Plants and a bird bath were the crowning touches!  The wrought iron table and chairs in the courtyard offer a lovely spot for morning coffee.

Lots of fun projects are on tap for 2020.  I hope you’ll come see how things are progressing.

Happy New Year and Happy Gardening!

Spring flowers scattered around my garden on Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

We’ve had a tumultuous winter and spring.  Well, it isn’t officially spring, but here in Central Texas, spring starts in February.  We’ve already had a 91-degree day, then a week or so after that we had a low of 21.  It was the first hard freeze of the winter in my garden.  Of course, everything had already started to sprout and put on buds. We love the warm days, but then we pay for it.

Today is Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens, so we can see what’s blooming around the world today.

I covered for the 21-degree freeze.  I normally don’t do that any more — it’s just too much work.  But we’re getting things ready to put our house on the market and move up to northwest Austin and I’d really rather not have to replace plants and fill holes.  (And, I want to take some of the great plants with me!)

Nonetheless, there are things blooming in the garden, in spite of the yo-yoing weather. I planted these Ostespermum, African daisy, late summer last year and I’m getting another round be beautiful blooms.

These pass-along white cemetery iris bloom first among all the iris in the garden. They’ve made the rounds among most of the Austin garden bloggers so they brighten gardens all around town.

I can always count on the bulbs and love the daffodils in my garden.

I’ve had these in the garden for a long time.  It’s called yellow fortune.   The contrast of the almost orange cup with the bright yellow makes a colorful display.  I’ve taken to collecting different varieties of daffodils over the years.  It’s fun to see who comes up each year.

These ice follies have naturalized and definitely need to be divided.  Hmmm…a good opportunity to take some with me to a new garden once we find a house.

The flowering quince makes a lovely backdrop for these frilly, delicate daffodils, called double campernelle.  She’s getting lost in the quince and the primrose jasmine beside her, so I may have to rescue her and bring her with me as well. (See how I keep adding to my list?)

 

The native Texas Mountain Laurels continue to bloom – only the open blooms succumbed to the cold.

Some of the trees hadn’t even produced buds yet, so I will get to enjoy the Kool-Aid, grapey-goodness scent of these beautiful evergreen trees for weeks to come.  And, when brought into the house as part of a cut flower bouquet, I can continue to appreciate Mother Nature’s air freshener!

It was hard to cut back the roses when I had several blooms on Archduke Charles, but I brought them inside and pruned the rest.

The four roses in the new rose parterre aren’t all the same height at maturity, so keeping them similar requires careful pruning.

Livin’ easy, grandma’s yellow and ebb tide show no signs of emerging buds yet.

 

Catmint remains one of my garden favorites.  Mostly evergreen with a compact, clearly defined form, it stays orderly in places where I want a small mounding plant.

‘Walkers low’ makes a pretty, reliable border plant, getting only about 12-14″ in my garden.  Advertised as getting up to 24″ tall, that’s not my experience and I’ve had them for several years.

I’ve enjoyed them in the front bed and last year expanded their reach into a few other beds as well.

The Mexican honeysuckle on the trellis behind the green goblet agave is awash with coral-y/salmon-y blooms.  They grow up into the air and over the fence, draping delicately onto the side of the greenhouse roof.

Hinkley’s columbine has started blooming and brightens up the woodland path garden.

The prairie verbena loves this spot by the street.  Hot and dry, this bed bears the brunt of the full, scorching Texas sun.  The perennial verbena provides a beautiful, soft contrast to the ginormous squid agave next to it.

I think we’re finished with freezes here in Central Texas.

I’m ready to start working in the garden and soaking up the spring sunshine.

How ’bout you?

 

 

Spring has sprung in the garden…

It feels like spring here in Central Texas, with sunny, 85-degree days dotting our early February weeks.  That might sound  more like summer to gardeners far north of here, but it’s heavenly spring for us.

The Japanese Quince has been blooming since the cooler, late-fall days, drawing butterflies to the sole flowers in the winter garden.  I’ve had a few white cemetery irises bloom and the peach irises opened up this week.  When I checked early this morning, I did detect the faintest sweet scent in the peach ones.

A few daffodils have opened.  A labeling failure two years ago is to blame for my not knowing each variety, since I do collect new ones each year.  But I recognize the Tete-a-Tetes and they’re starting to open in different parts of the garden.

Then yesterday, the Mountain Laurels burst forth.  I’d been eyeing the buds for several days, and trying to catch a whiff of the grape Kool-Aid aroma they dust on the breeze.

I banned myself from Facebook this morning because it’s been eating my mornings.  So, what do I do then?  I take the scissors outside and look for blooms to bring indoors!  I tried to put a peach iris with this little posie, but it was too big and didn’t work with these delicate little flowers, so I put it in its own vase.

Now, spring has sprung in my kitchen and it smells delicious — just like grape Kool-Aid!

Dazzling color in the spring garden…

We all love the spring garden — the awakening of plants that herald the arrival of spring and provide a foreshadowing of more  to come.

As the sun shifts in the sky and the breezes begin to warm up, I’m enjoying some rejuvenating time in the garden.

I bought these sweet glass daffodils to bring a pop of color into the garden before the daffodils were ready to open up.

The ‘Kate Izzard’ irises are loaded up and several of them are opening every day.  You can tell that I should have divided them last fall, which I fully intended to do, but I seriously need to do that this fall.

Just gorgeous.

Even though traditional tulips aren’t in our Central Texas plant palette, these species tulips, cluisana ‘Lady Jane’ are sweet substitutes in my garden. 

This little patch of phlox disappears entirely in the head of summer, but I can count on it to emerge in spring with loads of little blooms.

My cemetery irises are also popping open all over the garden.  Our winter clearly made the irises happy.

Bluebonnets are covering my decomposed granite path, and even Kallie’s playground filled with pea gravel.  Fletcher enjoys a peaceful moment with them here.

While most of the buds on my monster wisteria were frozen in our last freeze, there are still some opening up and draping delicately from the fence.

And then there is the homestead verbena.  What a powerhouse.  In the cooler spring and fall, they thrive and liven up any spot in the garden.  They will shrivel and look poor in the heat of summer, but just shade your eyes and pretend not to see them until they return again in the fall.  Even though many of our bloomers start now and run through the fall, homestead verbena is well worth it’s little summer break.

Now that the threat of freezing is past (I have my fingers crossed as I type this), it’s time to fill in the rest of the garden with new and exciting plants that will herald the summer.

Signs of spring in the garden…

Like all gardeners, I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring.  While the calendar won’t declare it spring for some time, here in Central Texas, the signs of spring abound with the recent above-average temperatures.

 These aren’t new spring plants popping up, but I love the color in the winter garden.

 If you look closely, you can see the buds forming on the Mexican plum tree.

The new bark is emerging on my lacebark elm tree.  Beautiful bark is a wonderful sculptural element in the garden.

The bluebonnets are growing quickly now – getting ready to put on a real show in my crushed granite path.

My loropetalum has hundreds if not thousands of teeny tiny buds, waiting to turn into pink fringe flowers.

The hellebores are starting to bloom.  I have to go out and lift them up to see these delicious drooping flowers. Even though I can’t see them easily when walking down the path, the lure of these mysterious blooms makes for a fun garden game of hide and seek.

This one’s in full bloom.  It’s limey-green petals camouflage this flower even more than the others.  Helleborus ‘green gambler,’ is a fast grower and usually has some burgundy spotting, veining, or picotee on each bloom.   The picotee is the edge that is a different color than the flower’s main color.

These are very special little specimens — muscari golden fragrance. Unlike most muscari, these are not the tell-tale purple, but rather a soft yellow and they have a wonderful scent. They are very low to the ground – about 5 inches high – so I literally have to get down on the ground to get a whiff of them. But it’s worth it!

The primrose jasmine is about to burst forth beautiful yellow blooms.  This one is about 5 feet tall, so it will be brilliant when it’s covered.

These little daffodils are looking good.  Soon it will be time to blow away the blanket of leaves and let the flowers shine.

The deer have been checking things out in the almost-spring garden as well.  It’s ok, maybe they pushed down my newly planted bulbs since I know I probably didn’t plant them deep enough. (I don’t really worry about that, though, since they seem to come up and perform regardless of my late and lazy planting!)

My cemetery passalong irises are already blooming.  I believe these came from my garden blogger buddy, who blogs here about her garden, which is filled with many kinds of iris.

The loquat tree is sporting new foliage.  I love this tree and the lime-colored new growth that contrasts with the glossy, established dark-green leaves.
And, one last bloom – I bought 3 lovely glass daffodils at the nursery last week and put them next to the emerging real ones.  I wonder what the growing daffodils will think when they come up to find these imposters in their garden.
What’s coming up in your garden today?
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