The berry good season
I’m calling it. We’re over the hump of Death Star Summer and sliding into mellow fall. I know, it’s not exactly mellow out there yet, but I can feel it coming. Can’t you?
The beautyberries do. In the lower garden, black beautyberry (Callicarpa acuminata) is laden with rich purple berries that’ll darken with age.
Closer to the house, American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) shows off magenta berry clusters amid chartreuse leaves (brightened by a shaft of sunlight). Blue plumbago blossoms mingle too.
Out front, a Texas dwarf palmetto (Sabal minor) that bloomed earlier this summer is now sporting an arching wand of berry-like fruit. These should blacken later in the season.
Summer’s end sees an abundance of pale pavonia (Pavonia hastata) blossoms.
Pale pavonia is a Brazilian cousin to our native rock rose (Pavonia lasiopetala).
On the front porch the other day, I spotted a young Texas spiny lizard stretched out on the wheel of a cart. I wasn’t sure if it was dead or alive. It was quite still when I leaned down for a photo. Suddenly it panicked and shot into the garden. I guess it was just enjoying a nice stretch!
Around the corner, the gravel garden is looking tidy since I pruned up the overgrown ‘Alphonse Karr’ bamboo. What a beast! But it’s so beautiful when pruned up to show off its yellow-and-green-striped “legs.” In the rusty steel “floating” containers, from front to back, are red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora); toothless sotol, or Mexican grass tree (Dasylirion longissimum); ‘Jaws’ agave; and ‘Frazzle Dazzle’ dyckia.
Galvanized steel, rather than rusty steel, dominates the back garden, including this trio of IKEA GRÄSLÖK pots planted with four of my xeric favorites for containers: Mexican feathergrass (Nassella tenuissima), ‘Chocolate Chips’ manfreda (Manfreda undulata ‘Chocolate Chips’), rock penstemon (Penstemon baccharifolius), and blackfoot daisy (Melampodium leucanthum). All are native to central Texas except the manfreda from Mexico, but you could substitute our native Texas tuberose (Manfreda maculosa) to similar effect.
The view from the deck reveals a few more galvanized containers, including the 8-foot diameter stock-tank pond and three spiraling culvert-pipe remnants planted with squid agave (A. bracteosa).
Now that fall is on the way, it’ll soon be planting season in central Texas and throughout the South and Southwest. Do you have any projects planned? Do tell!
I welcome your comments; please scroll to the end of this post to leave one. If you’re reading this in a subscription email, click here to visit Digging and find the comment box at the end of each post.
_______________________
Digging Deeper: News and Upcoming Events
South Texans, come see me at the 2nd annual Planta Nativa festival in McAllen, Texas, on Saturday, October 22. I’ll be delivering the keynote talk, “Local Heroes: Designing with Native Plants for Water-Saving Gardens,” that evening. Tickets go on sale soon at Quinta Mazatlan. I hope to see you there!
Do you review? Have you read my new book, The Water-Saving Garden? If you found it helpful or inspirational, please consider leaving a review — even just a sentence or two — on Amazon, Goodreads, or other sites. Online reviews are crucial in getting a book noticed. I really appreciate your help!
All material © 2006-2016 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Hey Pam – been following for years. I have three enormous Alphonse Karrs that did nothing for years but are now probably 12 or 15 feet tall and flopping everywhere. How are you pruning yours? Just thinning out canes? How do you keep it from being so sprawling? I’ve been considering building a Japanese screen to place in front to keep in place. Also – I am randomly having new canes bend over and croak when they make it to about 5′ height. Nothing big but want to nip anything in the bud that might be devastating later. Any thoughts? Thanks!
Hi, Chris. Thanks for reading! AK is a naturally arching bamboo — which I struggle with in my own garden, where I’d prefer it to be more vertical and not as much of a real estate hog. I have two, and I prune them differently. The one pictured here has more room, so I keep a wire cage around its base (it’s nearly invisible) as a pruning guide, and I cut to the ground any culms that pop up outside it. Then I strip the remaining culms — hand-pruning sprigs of growth, leaves, side branching — up to about 6 feet. Any remaining culms that are arching so much that they’re leaning into other plants’ air space, I remove at ground level.
As for my other AK, which is in a much tighter space, I do a serious thinning of culms twice a year, as well as the stripping of the lower canes.
Always cut culms at ground level, never halfway up, or you’ll get a mess of new growth at the cut, which doesn’t look good. They take some work, but they look so good when you stay on top of it. —Pam
Those beautyberries are gorgeous! I’d never heard of nor seen them before. I’m a huge fan of galvanized containers – just picked up a few fairly big buckets for a steal the other day & they’ve been added to my stash.
This year I decided to take a break from fall planting – it’s been such a hectic summer and the heat really slowed us down, so now it’s more about catching up on what should have already been finished rather than doing anything new.
Hi, Margaret. I wonder if you have any native beautyberries in Canada? American beautyberry is native through a large swath of the southern U.S. I also grow black beautyberry, also known as Mexican beautyberry, which does well in central Texas. I’m pretty sure there are other varieties as well, but maybe they’re Asian. Anyway, yes, it’s a wonderful fall-berrying shrub. —Pam
Oh my gosh I hope so- I am ready for a mellow fall! :0) Just got back from Boston where things are turning colors- it’s on it’s way….. All your photos are stunning as usual.
Thanks, Katherine, and I envy you the early taste of fall in Boston! I wish you could have brought back cooler temps with you. —Pam
Your garden looks like it has enjoyed this summer. It looks quite nice. I do have a garden project going. At least a quarter of it is a mess. I am redoing two flower beds at one time. It feels quite messy to me.
Messy…but exciting, no? I’ll be engaged in a bed redo myself soon, once Moby is removed. —Pam
Everything is looking good but I really love that side garden with the gravel and rusty containers. Low maintenance drama!
The only thing that’s not low maintenance there, Linda, is the bamboo. Well, it’s not a TON of work, but it does require a couple of hours of thinning and trimming up at least twice a year. —Pam