Japanese maple puts on another excellent show
December 17, 2020 The show is over now, but during the past two weeks I watched the Japanese maple at the front corner of the house blush redder and redder. Looking up through the leaves was like gazing through stained glass. I’m sure I looked odd staring up at the ...
Farewell, fall flowers; hello, first freeze
December 01, 2020 So long, ‘Grapes’ gomphrena. It’s been a grand fall. But with a first freeze of 29F predicted early this morning, I expect your button-like flowers will soon look pale and freeze-dried. Well, it was time, I guess. Sayonara, forsythia sage. You were absolutely beautiful for two solid ...
Flowers for a warm Texas fall
November 24, 2020 Aside from forsythia sage, which is STILL going strong after nearly a month of flowering (you can see its yellow flowers in the background), let me highlight a couple other plants that have been putting on a show into late November. Philippine violet (Barleria cristata), while nearly ...
Fall flowers, foliage, and change-ups
November 11, 2020 Ah fall, how I love you. Even though our fall weather is comparable to summer in northerly regions (low to mid-80s F), and colorful foliage rarely occurs, it’s still my favorite season. After all, autumn is our second spring here in Texas, and fall perennials like Philippine ...
Fall garden scenes
November 06, 2020 Fall color is subtle in Austin, but I’ve been enjoying the flowering of autumn perennials like our native fall aster (Aster oblongifolius). Purple sunbursts! This aster grows like a groundcover and benefits from an early summer trim, by about half, to keep it from flopping by fall ...
Autumn comes in yellow and purple
September 30, 2020 The yellow spider lilies (Lycoris aurea) are up 3 weeks earlier than last year, perhaps due to our cooler than usual early fall, and I am here for it. Each afternoon the sunlight slants under the live oaks and hits the lilies like a spotlight, an effect ...
Oxblood and rain lilies bloom after late-summer rains
September 08, 2020 Oxblood lilies add a dash of hot color in the raised bed behind the house. It’s oxblood lily time, baby! That excitement you hear is my delight over the early and unexpected end to break from Texas’s interminable summer. Late last week, two inches of rain and ...
Cinderblock succulent wall deconstruction
September 03, 2020 I hesitate to say this, since some of you mourned my stock-tank pond more than I did, but I’ve taken down the succulent wall made of cinderblocks. Here’s how it looked in March 2011 — almost 10 years ago! — freshly stacked and planted. It visually enclosed ...
David’s top 10 plants in our garden
August 31, 2020 First Tamara’s husband, David, guest-posted about his favorite flowers on his wife’s blog Chickadee Gardens. Then Loree at Danger Garden interviewed her non-gardening husband, Andrew, about his top ten favorite plants (not limited to flowers since her garden is foliage-centric), and included his haiku-like descriptions of each ...
TGIF
August 28, 2020 Happy Friday, y’all! Here’s a little Yucca recurvifolia in flower to celebrate the weekend. __________________________ Digging Deeper Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, authors, and gardeners a few times a year in Austin. These are ...
Late summer stars of the garden
August 26, 2020 Like a starfish clinging to a rock, this soap aloe (Aloe maculata) I stuck in a pie-pan planter has grown more beautifully than I expected. It seems to love the crevice life. Snaking stems of ghost plant (Graptopetalum paraguayense) add their flower shapes to the composition. A ...
Outdoor lights bring house to life at night
August 19, 2020 This isn’t a post about how to install landscape lighting (click for that tutorial). It’s just me enjoying our front-of-house lighting so much that I took a few pics of it again last weekend. Sometimes it’s the basic stuff that makes you happy. Looking along the dry ...
Circle Garden’s shades of green
August 18, 2020 Our elevated deck offers a nice overhead view of the Circle Garden. And as I recently discovered, when you climb a stepladder on the deck, you can get almost the whole garden in the frame, including the new rose and salvia planting at the base of the ...
Potted succulents don’t ask for much (and that’s the way I like it)
August 10, 2020 Potted plants green up my patio, deck, and porch, and I often plunk them into garden beds as focal points. But being in Texas, mine aren’t packed with flowering annuals or perennials that require daily or twice-daily watering. Instead they showcase water-thrifty plants like succulents, cacti, even ...
Midsummer garden walkabout
August 08, 2020 Whale’s tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia) Midsummer has never been my favorite season in the garden. It’s hot and humid. Mosquitoes are fierce. And yet this summer, perhaps because I’m spending more time at home and in my own garden than usual, I’m also appreciating it more. Here’s ...
A critter season like Where’s Waldo?
July 27, 2020 This summer I’m living a Where’s Waldo? book. Every time I step into the front yard I can count on a fawn and myself mutually scaring the bejeesus out of each other. I’ll obliviously walk by or close a car door or pull out the hose, not ...
