Salvia guaranitica—love those blues!
I’ve been covering Gardens on Tour 2007 all week, and I have one more to show you tomorrow (my favorite of the bunch, actually), but I decided to give you a little tour of my own garden today. It differs from my Bloom Day post in that I’m including a few long shots, so you can see that I was telling the truth when I said that my garden is mostly green right now. Still, I’m not one to shy away from artificial color in the garden, as you’ll see. So let’s go.

More blues! Bottle tree and purple coneflowers in the back garden

A different view—peeking through the bottles

As you see, I’m enamored with the bottle tree. And, for that matter, with purple coneflowers, which are such cheery flowers with a wonderfully long bloom time.

‘Marie Pavie’ is enjoying a second spring bloom. The flowers open pale pink, then turn white, and are so deliciously fragrant that I can smell them throughout the garden on some days.

The roses open in clusters like this one.

And here’s a newly opened pink rose

For all you locals to whom I’ve given heartleaf skullcap divisions, here’s what you’ll have in just a year or so. I love its silvery, fuzzy, yet oily leaves and the lilac flower spires.

A closeup

Here’s the heartleaf skullcap paired with Salvia guaranitica , a great morning-sun/afternoon-shade combination. That’s Southern wax myrtle behind them.

The first lion’s tail is blooming in the kids’ flowerbed.

Bottle trees, coneflowers, and now daylilies—perhaps I’m just a very easy-to-please gardener. ‘Best of Friends’ is blooming its head off right now. It’s always the first daylily in my garden to open.

More ‘Best of Friends’ with my cattle-trough planter behind. The silver ponyfoot is happily cascading down the sides of the tank, just as I’d hoped it would.

A closeup. You look fabulous, darling.

The right side of the sunny front garden. See? It’s pretty green right now. There’s bulbine and a last pomegranate flower on the left, and coral honeysuckle blooming on the fence to the right. That big, round mound of green by the agaves will soon be covered in light-purple flowers. It’s Mexican oregano, and it would already be blooming if I hadn’t cut it back hard a few weeks ago. Otherwise, it gets too big for the space. I do that with a number of my native perennials to keep them neat looking.

Don’t forget the little guys: Sedum mexicana ‘Angelina’ grows at the foot of the pomegranate.

Too late for Bloom Day, ‘Belinda’s Dream’ opened the first rose of her second flush this morning.

The left side of my front garden is not as sunny as it used to be. The vitex tree has grown tremendously over the past couple of years and now shades about 3/4 of the space. It also shades our front windows, which is a blessing, as that hot, western sun in the summertime is brutal. A number of purple flower spires are tipping the branches of the vitex, and more are set to open in the next week. New readers will notice: no lawn in the front yard. More room for fun stuff.

More green. From the opposite side of the vitex, as viewed from the driveway, you can see the Texas mountain laurel growing in its shadow, plus pavonia and black-eyed Susan coming up under it. A prostrate rosemary is poking through the fence as well.

Oh, one more look at ‘Best of Friends,’ looking a little more orange than pink in the morning light.

‘Duchess of Albany’ clematis bud

And a couple of its lovely seedheads. I like these nearly as much as the flowers.

Back into the back garden—a long shot of the bottle tree. It’s the focal point of the far-back garden, which also includes the shed/greenhouse, the lawnette, and the trampoline that I’ve finally come to terms with. That’s a flameleaf sumac behind the red motel chair.

Panning to the right, you see the patio seating area and a line of evergreen Southern wax myrtles along the fence, which lost a few strategic branches in the ice storm last February. A cedar elm shades the seating area, and a Texas redbud grows behind it, near the playhouse. Red Texas betony and Turk’s cap will provide summer color under the cedar elm soon.

A last look to the left. That’s a Mexican plum in the foreground, with ‘Marie Pavie’ performing well even in its light shade. And, of course, the lawnette.
I hope you enjoyed the tour of my garden. See you tomorrow for the last garden of Gardens on Tour 2007.