Just 8 hours before my garden class/tour began (the first Garden Spark Tour, a new offering from Garden Spark), the sky was falling in parts of Austin, dumping up to 7 inches of rain in just a few hours and washing out low-water crossings. Thankfully, here in northwest Austin only 2-1/2 inches fell, with little wind debris and no washouts. By 9 am, when my first visitors arrived, the garden was sparkling (if a little damp), and the cactus, succulents, and woody lilies had responded to the downpour by bursting into colorful bloom.

The little cactus above with a sparkly orange blossom was a freebie from the Tucson GWA conference seven years ago. No idea what kind it is.

This brown-spined beauty, a mammillaria cactus, wears a crown of pink flowers several times each summer.

This new cactus, with a crown of dark-pink flowers, was given to me by a nice couple in Lakeway whom I met via a Facebook Marketplace purchase. You just never know where you’re going to acquire your next cactus.

And really I should stop. These little beauties live on a sunny table on my deck, and I do have to bring them indoors during winter freezes. Any more and I’ll have to get a greenhouse.

Also on the deck, in a galvanized pot by the dining room window, is a new-to-me hesperaloe, ‘Desert Dusk’. It’s just starting to bloom, and I expect to see lots of hummingbirds from that window soon.

A pink ice plant blooms in a pot by the pool. A baby ‘Macho Mocha’ mangave is getting started here too.

More hesperaloe blooms! This is the yellow variety of our native red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora), which got a lot of comments on the tour yesterday — as did the massive rock slabs in the lower garden. “Worth their weight in gold,” one visitor told me, and I think she’s right. I’m glad to have visitors who appreciate rock, since I have a lot of it! Yucca rostrata got a lot of love too, deservedly so. I love those blue-green Koosh balls.

The trio of flowering soap aloes (Aloe maculata) is just past peak but still looking good, as is the flowering ‘Burgundy Ice’ dyckia behind them.

For a change of pace, here’s a nighttime photo of the luminous paleleaf yucca (Yucca pallida) flower spike in the front garden. As I pulled into my driveway last evening, a deer stood eyeing me from the neighbor’s front yard. I imagined she was thinking, just wait until you go inside. I’m going to eat every blossom. So I took a commemorative photo. But hey, they’re still there today!

A huge thank-you to everyone who attended my first Garden Spark Tour yesterday! I enjoyed talking plants and design with you and hope you got some good ideas and had a fun time. One out-of-towner told me that, the night before the class, during the torrential rain, he got stuck on the road between two raging low-water crossings and ended up having to spend the night at a stranger’s house. Wow! That shows the lengths we passionate gardeners will go to in order to visit gardens, does it not? I hope to offer another tour — at a different garden — in October, so join my mailing list to get early notifications.

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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 limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance; simply click this link and ask to be added. Season 8 kicks off in fall 2024. Stay tuned for more info!

All material © 2024 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.