Diana C. Kirby, Author at Diana's Designs Austin

About Diana C. Kirby

Diana Kirby is a lifelong gardener and longtime Austinite, who loves the Central Texas climate for the almost year-round opportunities it offers for active gardening and seasonal splendor. Known as an impassioned and successful gardener, Diana began by helping friends design and implement their landscapes. Soon, she was contracted as a professional designer by a popular local landscaping installation firm, where she designed landscapes for residential and commercial clients for several years. In 2007, her new passion blossomed with the launch of her own firm, Diana’s Designs. ... Diana is a member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers, the Garden Writers Association of America, and she writes a monthly gardening column for the Austin American-Statesman. Diana teaches the Landscape Design classes for several county Texas Agrilife Extension Service Master Gardener certification programs and speaks about gardening and design for garden centers and other groups. Learn more about presentation topics, availability and speaking fees.

Landscape drought damage requires long lens on camera…

With the worst drought in Texas history and 80 days with temperatures over 100, plants and people and pets are struggling this summer.

It’s 10 degrees cooler here today — 92 instead of 102 — and we have gusting wind cooling things down as well. Sadly, there are a half dozen wildfires in the Central Teas area around us. We’re safe for now, but 500+ people have lost their homes — burned down to the ground, 2 people have died, and today’s winds are spreading the fires ever further. 25,000 acres have burned. This is the back side of Katia. Instead of the rain we so desperately need that is flooding thousands of other people, we got wildfires. We’re praying for everyone in the path of these terrible fires.

While we are safe from the fires, we are at the mercy of the drought. But with a LOT of hand watering to supplement because we are under water restrictions, the garden looks o.k. overall. The secret? The long shot!

My mother-in-law was visiting two weeks ago and wanted some photos of our house and the gardens. I took lots of long shots, and realized as I looked at them that I rarely post photos like that. And it’s one of my great disappointments when reading other garden blogs — I really want to check out the big picture.

So here are photos of everything in the garden — showing of the bright and colorful and much too far away to see the dead and dying plants.

Come take a stroll around the garden with me…

These plants in the front bed are highly xeric and doing pretty well considering they were planted this spring and have endured this drought while trying to get established. There are dying narrow leafed Zinnias and Euryops and adwarf yaupon holly, but you can’t see them from here.

Yellow Esperanza (Yellow Bells) on the right are native to Mexico and very hardy. They are used to the heat.

The veggie garden needs protection from bunnies and our dogs, hence the fence INSIDE the other fence that keeps the deer out!

This is along the path in our woods that leads to the fenced back yard. This is where we feed birds and water the deer, squirrels, foxes, bunnies and mice! With this drought, we have 3 birdbaths and countless little bowls scattered around to provide constant drinking water for anything that needs it. With less blooms, hummingbirds really need our feeders this year, too.

The play scape, the cutting garden, the greenhouse and the xeric rock path.

The back corner of the yard got a few new plants this summer along with an old, worn out bistro table and chairs and a stunning Filamentosa yucca for a focal point. Even rusty metal furniture looks good from far enough away!

By Diana C. Kirby|2017-11-29T23:27:20-06:00September 5th, 2011|Blog, cutting garden, drought, drought damage, esperanza, front bed, greenhouse, landscape project, long lens, new bed, pathway, Sharing Nature's Garden, water restrictions, xeric, xeric plants|0 Comments

Garden decor and displays at Dragonfly Farms close the 2011 Seattle Fling

The last stop on the Seattle Fling was as fabulous as each of the previous outings. The entire trip just kept getting better and better. We got to tour the beautiful display gardens of Dragonfly Farms and nursery and look through their amazing plants. Heidi Kaster of Dragonfly Farms & Nursery was our garden hostess with the mostest.

Some bloggers were able to take plants home with them because they’d driven. And some bloggers who’d flown to Seattle packed their suitcases full of dirt and botanical booty and crossed their fingers that the plants would survive. I was lucky; Jenny of Rock Rose and her husband were camping and my plants were treated to a scenic drive across the countryside in their airstream camper before making their way here with Jenny yesterday!

The display gardens meandered all around the large nursery and house, delighting us with secret pathways and unique garden art at every turn.

Panning the nursery tables, so many colorful plants invited us in to browse.

There were many beauties I would have loved to take home with me like these Dahlias.

The intricate pattern on this pottery caught my eye. Isn’t it cool?

Plants and pots and trees… oh my!

There were many fabulous specimens through out the display gardens, like this poppy.

Intent on finding the next brilliant photo, bloggers Jenny of Rock Rose and Pam of Digging troll the eye candy.

So many majestic plants provided vertical interest in the garden.

I wish I knew the name of this luscious little blossom and its berry neighbor.

The Clematis in the PNW were all blooming their little heads of while we were there, thanks to a cool, wet spring. I was glad to see them before I had to return home to my brown, crispy ones.

What a selection of succulents! Now THIS table was really hard to pass up.

This quaint shed with its assortment of garden decor was inspiring. Now, garden “stuff” I could put in my suitcase!

The earlier rains of the day left the gardens dewy with droplets of rain.

This huge vase, tucked into a nook in the garden, makes for a fabulous focal point for visitors coming down the path.

Even exotic animals graced the display gardens.

The house hidden behind the display gardens is as whimsical and entertaining as the rest of the nursery.

After shopping and touring, we were all treated to the wonderful Punch Drunk in Love with the PNW happy hour. Our hosts, Proven Winners, put out a spread of food, blackberry punch cocktails and gave away their new Blackberry Punch Calibrachoa, which has been voted one of Sunset Magazine’s “25 Hot Plants to Grow Now.”

It was great to see the sun come out after our rainy morning at the Bloedel Reserve, and to relax with our hosts and blogging friends one last time before venturing back on the ferry and back to reality on Tuesday.

By Diana C. Kirby|2019-07-15T19:14:20-05:00August 28th, 2011|Blog, dahlias, display gardens, Dragonfly Farms, garden bloggers, garden bloggers fling, nursery, Seattle, Seattle fling, Sharing Nature's Garden|0 Comments

Garden insects a hot topic: Learn their organic antidotes

Most of the time I think of my garden as a peaceful place, full of beautiful flowers and fresh, juicy vegetables. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? But there are also days when it seems as though my garden is a war zone. Like other gardeners, I’m fighting battles on many different fronts – there’s the heat, the drought, the weeds…and last but not least, pests. There are many beneficial insects that help protect and pollinate our plants. But there are also plenty of insects can plague a garden and turn gardeners sour. There are approximately a million known different kinds of living insects. Thank goodness less than 100,000 live in the United States, and approximately one-third of those can be found in Texas.

Many gardeners that I’ve visited with this summer are seeing unusually high numbers of insects in their yards and gardens. Many insects are suffering from the drought just as we are, and are thus much more visible as they look for moisture from gardens and watered lawns.

Insects are just a part of gardening. Some I just live with. For example, the caterpillars attack my Texas Mountain Laurels in the spring, but my trees are mature and while they might not look good for a while, the caterpillars don’t do any long-term damage to the plant because they are well established. And I know I will end up with so many beautiful butterflies and moths.

Some insects I feed. I usually have parsley and dill in my vegetable garden to attract specific kinds of caterpillars, like the beautiful black swallowtail.

But some insects are not so nice.

In the vegetable garden, many pests are drawn to tomato plants. Last year, my six 8-foot tall tomato plants were under siege by leaf-footed bugs.

Leaf-footed bugs

Leaf-footed bugs attack many different fruits and vegetables, including cotton, peaches, tomatoes, beans, and black-eyed peas. They also feed on the stems and tender leaves of plants like potatoes. Leaf-footed bugs have piercing sucking mouthparts, which enable them to feed on plants through the sap flow in their leaves and stems. They chew on leaves, stems and roots or suck the juices out of buds, fruit or other plant parts.

By the time I discovered them last year, there were platoons of adult pests with marching orders to reproduce, seek and destroy. And destroy they did. I tried everything organic that I could – neem oil, orange oil, insecticidal soap. Sadly, according to conventional wisdom, there are no completely effective organic solutions for an infestation. If caught very early, the bugs can be picked off by hand or sucked up with a tiny bug vacuum. But once they’ve laid some eggs, it’s all over but the crying. And cry I did, as we ripped out all the giant tomato plants. With nothing left but empty wire cages, I was still able to count more than 200 that I squished by hand (with gloves on!) – as the bugs left behind roamed around the cages or crawled on the ground. Still makes me shudder to think about it. (Okay, I have a personal vendetta against leaf-footed bugs.)

Tomato Hornworms & Caterpillars

Tomatoes are also the favorite of Tomato Hornworms. The giant lime-green squishy caterpillars can chew through tomato leaves in record time. Luckily, the easiest treatment for them is to pick them off because they don’t multiply like other pests. I quit squishing them when I realized that these caterpillars grow up to be sphinx, hawk, or “hummingbird” moths. I generally relocate them to our woods to something green that I didn’t plant. Watching a Hummingbird Moth is an amazing sight. If you don’t want to get that close, you can use BT, Bacillus thuringiensis. BT kills only caterpillars and doesn’t affect other beneficial insects. But remember, using BT to kill caterpillars will mean that you will miss out on beautiful butterflies and moths.

Grasshoppers

Grasshoppers will eat just about anything. They are part of the order that includes crickets, katydids and thousands of other insects. Katydids will eat both plants and other insects, but grasshoppers are usually only interested in your plants. Grasshoppers have strong jaws to chew their food.

Grasshopper infestations are particularly bad this year thanks to the drought. Grasshoppers thrive in hot, dry conditions. One of the things that holds down the grasshopper population is the growth of fungus in the spring. But with no moisture, there has been very little fungus growth and that has helped grasshoppers thrive.

A swarm of grasshoppers can fly up to 15 miles a day. Females can lay up to 120 eggs in a mass, and can lay between eight and 25 masses in her lifetime.

Neem oil, garlic oil or a blend of molasses, orange oil and compost tea are recommended organic treatments to control grasshoppers. Another product used to control grasshoppers in the spring when they are in their nymph stage is Nosema locustae, which is sold as Nolo Bait. This contains a parasite that specifically kills grasshoppers, but is safe for use around humans, pets, birds, and wild life and won’t contaminate waterways. It won’t harm beneficial insects and is widely approved for organic use. But it must be used in the spring before the grasshoppers reach adulthood to work well.

Spider Mites

Spider mites are the some of the most prolific insects in the garden. They are brown with eight legs and they lay their eggs on plants. Lucky us — they like dry climates. With conditions like our current drought, they can double their numbers in only 4 days. They pierce plants and suck off the juice, causing leaves to curl and turn silver or yellow and covering them with fine webbing. The key to controlling spider mites is to keep applying treatments every few days for 2 weeks. Organic controls include orange oil, garlic pepper tea, insecticidal soap or liquid seaweed.

Pill bugs and sow bugs

Roly-polys are often the first experience young children have with bugs in the garden. Many a child has been delighted watching pill bugs crawl around in shady places — picking them up to watch them curl into little balls.

These insects like shady and moist conditions. Young pill or sow bugs can live up to eight years.

Cayenne pepper, diatomaceous earth powder, and citrus oil can all help eliminate pill bugs. Or, try the old home remedies of beer or grapefruit. Cut in half and hollow out grapefruits or oranges. Set them out like cups and the bugs will collect in them overnight. The next day, empty the bug-filled rind into a bucket of soapy water to kill them. Or, you can place some beer in a very shallow dish in your problem area overnight and you will awake to find dead pill bugs floating in the container. At least with this method they will have died happy!

Aphids

Aphids are teensy little bugs, usually green, that feed by sucking plant sap. They will attack most plants, usually on the underside of leaves and stems on new growth, causing leaves to curl and stunting new growth. They can multiply by as many as 50 generations in a year.

There are many ways to combat aphids, including a good, simple spray with the hose. Orange oil, garlic spray, insecticidal soap, and liquid seaweed are also effective.

Thrips

Thrips, often confused with invisible, biting no-see-ums, are actually plant pests. They are not no-see-ums. They are less than 1/25” long and barely visible light green or yellow insects. They suck the juice from plant cells and leave silver streaks or speckles on leaves. On flowers, they will cause the edges to turn brown and stop opening. Heavy rainfall can help control them, but in lieu of that, you can treat them with garlic tea, orange oil or neem oil. They are natural predators of spider mites, so you might want to put your plants together to eradicate your mites before you kill the thrips. (That would just be too much to hope for.)

Our extremely hot temperatures make it very difficult to treat plants for pests in the garden right now. Applying any of these remedies at any time other than first thing in the morning will surely burn your plants and cause more damage than you started with. Holding off until the weather cools just a little bit would be the safest approach.

There are many natural and organic treatments to control pests in the garden without harming the environment or other beneficial insects. Chemical pesticides in kill beneficials, upset the balance of nature, and leach harmful chemicals into wildlife habitats and our groundwater. Using organic methods can help preserve our families and our environment for generations to come.

By Diana C. Kirby|2020-06-15T11:28:03-05:00August 20th, 2011|Articles|0 Comments

A garden surprise around every corner…

One of my favorite Seattle private garden tours was that of Denise Lane’s garden. We all enjoyed a break and a nice lunch in her wonderful outdoor entertaining area.
We spent quite some time in this amazing garden and were able to stop and visit and admire in many cozy seating areas throughout the garden. Here, Layanee of Ledge and Gardens and Cindy of My Corner of Katy spend a quite moment talking plants.

Denise Lane shared her garden’s history with us with a photo album chronicling each step of the process.
The flowing garden curves were all filled with beautiful border plants.
The garden’s secret series of paths led us to many different sculptures and works of art. I know you see the metal heron, but did you notice the lime and brown cat tails in the background? I almost missed them myself.
My favorite scene in the garden was this water feature flanked by Doric columns and covered with vines and plants from every angle. It was so packed with texture and color and sounds and scent…it was very hard to capture it all in a photo.
Austin blogger and my travel mate Jenny, of Rock Rose, was as taken with this garden display as I was. I managed to pull her away from her photography for just a moment.
Another lovely place for bloggers to rest and contemplate the garden.
I love this little birdhouse with the green roof. Makes sense – birds are far greener than we are!
This Greek column just popped up out of nowhere in the garden.
Several beautiful pieces of pottery adorn the garden, or maybe the garden adorns several pieces of pottery.
It was hard to choose among all my photos because so many of their subjects are so interesting like the pairing of these succulents.

This was a delightful garden, full of surprises and creativity and beauty. I could have spent an entire day there.

By Diana C. Kirby|2017-11-29T23:27:21-06:00August 5th, 2011|Blog, garden bloggers, garden bloggers fling, garden tour, Seattle, Seattle fling, Sharing Nature's Garden, Spring Fling 2011|0 Comments

Garden’s bountiful harvest can feed the community

In the spring, so many gardeners get excited about the prospect of planting a vegetable garden. But right about now, many of them are passing out veggies faster than they can pick them – neighbors, relatives, friends, and friends of friends. Sometimes the summer veggie harvest yields far more than one family can possibly eat at a time.

It happens to me every year, and when I run out of recipients, I hate to see it go to waste.

Now, it doesn’t have to.

Whenever we have a big party at our house, we get boxes from the Capital Area Food Bank and ask guests to donate cans of food. Most people who donate to the food bank through donation drives give non-perishable items.

But I never knew that the food bank also welcomes donations of fresh produce until I stumbled upon a website called Ample Harvest.

This organization created a database to enable home gardeners to easily find local food banks and pantries eager to receive their freshly-picked fruits and vegetables. And it allows food banks and pantries to register and provide information to gardeners. There are more than 30,000 food pantries in the United States. There are currently 3,956 food banks and pantries registered in the database.

When I searched the database for Austin, I learned that the Capital Area Food Bank in Austin is one of those registered with Ample Harvest. And I was surprised to learn that it provides as much fresh produce as it can to all the local food pantries, soup kitchens and other non-profits it serves.

Last year, the food bank distributed more than 25 million pounds of food to feed the hungry in the Austin area.

Of that, approximately 22 percent consisted of fresh produce and dairy products. Most of that comes from commercial food rescue operations. Retailers like HEB, Sams, and Walmart donate perishable food that is close to, but not at, its sell-by date. The food bank carefully inspects the food for quality and freshness and makes it available to its recipients.

And while the scale of individual donations certainly can’t match that, the food bank happily takes fresh produce from local gardeners who have an overabundance of fruits and vegetables in their gardens at the height of the growing season. On average, they receive approximately 500 pounds of fresh produce a month from local gardeners. Because many of the non-profits that the food bank serves are small providers, a bag of tomatoes could easily be the base for the day’s soup in a soup kitchen. Your harvest doesn’t have to feed thousands, but combined with other donations, it all adds up.

So, I decided to make a donation of fresh vegetables from our garden. My daughter and I picked our overabundant veggies, washed them, and boxed them up and drove to the food bank.

We were met by eager staffers who happily showed us around the facility. We went with them to weigh the produce and were then taken to the enormous cooler that houses all their perishable items. Our box of greens went right up on a big shelf with lots of other small and large quantities of fruits and vegetables.

Then they showed us their teaching garden, where volunteers and employees plant a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs. They use the teaching garden with groups – particularly school children – to show them how food grows before it reaches the store, to educate them about the importance of fresh foods, and to emphasize the need for a balanced diet. The food bank has a dietician on staff and works with nutritionists – going into classrooms to help teach those lessons to children.

Next year, the food bank will expand on these programs as they break ground on a new building, significantly larger than their current facility.

According to John Turner, Senior Director of Marketing and Branding for the food bank, “One of the great features of the new building is that it will drastically increase the size of the cooler and freezer to four or five times the size of our current ones. This will enable us to provide much more fresh food to the community through our programs and other providers.”

While the food bank receives high volumes of donations around the winter holidays, the bank serves hungry people and families year-round, not just during the holidays. In the summer, they have additional needs as they help support summer food programs for children who get breakfast or lunch assistance in their schools throughout the school year – assistance that isn’t available when school lets out.

So, if you are looking for some way to make use of your overabundance of tomatoes or cucumbers, consider sharing your harvest with the Capital Area Food Bank. You don’t need great volumes of produce to make a contribution. They are happy to take what you can give them. Tell your gardening friends and neighbors; take your kids with you. It’s a great way to share your love of gardening and make a difference in someone else’s life.

The Capital Area Food Bank at 8201 South Congress is open weekdays from 8-5 and Saturdays from 9-4.

By Diana C. Kirby|2017-11-29T23:27:22-06:00July 30th, 2011|Articles|0 Comments

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