Make a stacked paver pedestal for your garden
March 04, 2023 Need an inexpensive yet eye-catching pedestal to show off a container or elevate a piece of garden art? Get some concrete pavers in two different sizes, and stack them in alternating layers to create a contemporary plinth. I made this one using 12-inch and 18-inch square pavers ...
New pipe planters create a focal point in front garden
June 20, 2022 Me and my pipe planters! I have three new pipe planters in my front garden, which I installed last fall (pre-house painting) but never got around to sharing, thanks to all the New England-down-to-Virginia travel posts I slathered on the blog. (My fellow heat-wave sufferers, click the ...
Getting rid of a good thing: Saying goodbye to the stock-tank pond
February 11, 2020 The emptied-out stock tank is rolled out of the garden. Goodbye, pond! Photo courtesy of Lori Daul. I’m consciously unponding*, and people are freaking out — friends, family members, attendees at a recent Garden Spark talk, and even our young exchange student. By freaking out I really ...
How to prune a crape myrtle
February 27, 2019 Guest post by Allen Owings, senior horticulturist at Bracy’s Nursery, a wholesale nursery in Louisiana. This article appeared on Bracy’s Nursery’s Facebook page and is republished here (with light editing) with permission. A mature, properly pruned allee of crape myrtles at Dallas Arboretum Crape myrtles are among ...
Don’t smother your tree trunk. Let it flare!
February 05, 2019 How many times have you seen a tree trunk that looks like this? It looks nice and neat, right? The trunk is tidily surrounded by mulch that’s layered right up against the bark. Maybe under that mulch there’s also a layer of soil added when sod was ...
Protecting the garden from a Texas deep freeze — or not
January 05, 2018 We’ve just recovered from a bad case of winter here in Austin. From New Year’s Eve through Wednesday, a long deep freeze — by Central Texas standards, anyway — had us huddling by the fireplace night after night. Lows in the mid-20s rose only to around freezing ...
How to prune clumping bamboo
April 24, 2017 I’ve known many people who are afraid to plant any kind of bamboo, even a clumping type, for fear it will take over their yard — and with good reason. Here in Austin, many a back yard is clogged with running bamboo, which is often planted for ...
New galvanized wall planters hold succulent cuttings
March 03, 2017 Spring fever has hit! For me, that manifests as refreshing my many pots of succulents, some of which have been inside all winter, others huddled against the house, and others (too big to move) left to weather as they will. If they took a winter hit, I’m ...
Planting an agave is a thorny endeavor
February 17, 2017 Last weekend, after creatively wrestling this bad boy out of the car, my family helpers and I slid it onto a utility cart and rolled it into the back yard. This new whale’s tongue agave to replace Moby, while far from mature-size, is still large enough at ...
Install low-voltage outdoor lighting and create a welcoming glow
February 01, 2017 It’s only taken us 8 years to install outdoor lighting along the foundation of our house, and now that it’s done I’m wondering why on earth we waited so long. I love the warm, welcoming glow that a few wall-washing low-voltage lights creates. What a change from ...
Time to repot agave bulbils — i.e., Moby spawn
November 11, 2016 Two months ago Moby, my big whale’s tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia), bloomed and sent up a tree-sized flower stalk, on which hundreds of bulbils (baby agave clones) eventually formed. You can read all about that here and here. I kept them misted through the last weeks of ...
Potting up agave bulbils
September 22, 2016 My whale’s tongue agave, Moby, came down last week. This week I’ve been sorting and planting bulbils (baby agave clones) from the bloom stalk. I’ve never had an agave bloom before, much less harvested its bulbils, so I looked online for advice and found Len Geiger’s helpful ...
Goodbye, Moby: Removing a dying agave
September 16, 2016 It was time. Moby, my 11-year-old whale’s tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia), valiantly hung on for months after flowering, eventually making bulbils at the top of the bloom stalk. I’d been anticipating the leaf collapse that has occurred with every other agave I’ve ever seen in bloom, and ...
Got a pot with no drainage hole? Drill it, plant it, enjoy!
April 27, 2016 Wrinkled skin and all, this green elephant pot caught my eye at Barton Springs Nursery a few weeks ago. As I looked it over, I noticed it lacked something important: a drainage hole in the bottom. A drainage hole is essential to a potted plant’s health, even ...
New mirrored trellises add depth to a blank wall
March 22, 2015 There’s something new in the side garden. Yes, the Texas mountain laurel (Sophora secundiflora), my favorite native ornamental tree, is blooming and wafting the sweet fragrance of grape Kool-Aid through the air. Does anything say springtime in Austin as much as that smell? But something else is ...
Fixing a floppy Will Fleming yaupon for Foliage Follow-Up
April 16, 2014 ‘Will Fleming’ yaupon (Ilex vomitoria ‘Will Fleming’), a fastigiate cultivar of our native yaupon holly, is one of my go-to vertical accent plants. It’s a green punctuation mark, ideal for adding height to a flat bed or using in multiples as a narrow hedge to screen an ...
