Scenes from the Wildflower Center's Garden Tour

 

This garden's standing cypress was stunning.

While we were on the Great Nursery Tour of 2013 (last week), I commented to my friend that we should definitely go on the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s next Garden Tour. It was sure to have many interesting gardens, and would feature lots of native plants. 

Later that day, I popped open Facebook, and a notification jumped out at me:  the Wildflower  Center’s tour was the coming weekend (May 11). Mind you, my entire family was coming to celebrate my dad’s 75^th birthday on this day.

I love this combination!

Did that deter me? Oh no.

Bright and early Saturday morning, we (Lona, my dad and I) jumped in the car and headed to Austin on a schedule. We were determined to see two, maybe three of the gardens and be home by lunchtime.

Detail of the fern wall (on the left under the porch
overhang in the large photo above). A/C condensate
provides water for this feature, according to the handout.

After a lengthy discussion, not only about which gardens to visit and in what order, but also about how much trouble we have making decisions, we made a plan and then executed it. We managed to visit three gardens, and had a lovely morning communing with plants and other gardeners.

And yes, we made it home by lunch and before the other guests arrived. I even had time to spiff up the bathroom!

Hope you enjoy a few pictures of what we saw. I really would like to visit more of the gardens on next year’s tour.

 

This area is beyond the pool in the photo above.

More detail from the same garden.
Because the lot was steeply sloped,
the garden required extensive terracing (left).
I really liked this bird watering station (above).

My dad, enjoying the deck. Behind him is a view of the Austin skyline.
We also liked the succulent garden centerpieces.

This succulent garden literally stopped me in my tracks. It greeted visitors at the last house we visited, which also was sited on a steeply sloped lot, with a wildflower meadow, orchard, vegetable garden, pond, buffalo grass lawn, etc.

Cool plant #1: Twist-leaf yucca

Today I bring to you the first in an occasional series on interesting plants endemic to my area, the Edwards Plateau located in Central to West Texas. What characterizes the Edwards Plateau? I’m so glad you asked! From the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department:

“The Edwards Plateau is an uplifted and elevated region originally formed from marine deposits of sandstone, limestone, shales, and dolomites 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period when this region was covered by an ocean. The western portion remains a relatively flat elevated plateau whereas the eastern portion known as the Hill Country is deeply eroded.”

We live in the Hill Country sector. What an odd idea, that we live in what was once an ocean. Proof is all around us, however, with sea creature fossils decorating many of the rocks we find – and we find lots of rocks here.

Our featured plant today is the twist-leaf yucca (Yucca rupicola). This is a cool little yucca with - you guessed it - twisty leaves! Its leaves are one to two feet long, with a colored margin, which can be light brown, yellow, orange, red or white (depending on the source consulted). Tiny sharp teeth march along those leaf margins and thin white curly hairs cover the leaf. The bloom stalk shoots up in the spring (April to June), and can be up to five feet tall, with large, heavily scented white or greenish white petals.

If you look closely, you can see the tiny teeth at leaf's edge. 
Also, notice yellow leaf margin on the upright leaf,
and red margin on leaf at bottom right.

And boy, is it tough. The twist-leaf yucca grows in full sun or part shade and on shallow rocky soil, is heat and drought tolerant, and is deer resistant (except for the blooms). Some years the deer leave the yuccas alone, but when food is scarce they will top them all. This is a sad sight to a gardener, but part of the natural cycle, after all.

These yuccas grow fairly commonly on our property. One has popped up in a flowerbed.  This could be an unwelcome addition, but the plant only gets up to two feet in size and is manageable in its volunteer location.

If you live in the Hill Country, I hope you have some of these neat plants growing on your property. If you don’t, maybe you can find one at a native plant nursery.

Favorite spot in the garden:

Well, I haven’t added this feature lately, but today I have such a spot. This area is outside the living room French doors, and catches the sun so prettily (though it is cloudy today). Newly planted snowdrops (Leucojum aestivum from my mother-in-law's grandmother's house) surround the area, with rich purple oxalis (Oxalis triangularis) and wandering Jew (Tradescantia pallida, I think) in the middle, backed by a lush spread of yarrow (Achillea millefolium).  I love this color combination!

Pruning my physical and mental gardens.

Rock rose (Pavonia lasiopetala) in front.

I’ve been tidying the flowerbeds and yard this past week.

It had crossed my mind in recent years that some of this work need not be done by hand, though of course that is the most peaceful way to accomplish the task. However, as my gardening time is limited this year, on Sunday I gassed up and restrung the weed eater and took the tops off of zexmenia, dried out grasses (trying to avoid the little bluestem), blue mistflower, live oak seedlings and anything else in my path.

Yes, it’s faster, and yes, it’s less peaceful.

I’ve trimmed by hand, also, cutting back the lantanas, flame acanthus and autumn sage. There is more to be done, and I’m looking forward to getting back out there.

Narcissus (Narcissus tazetta italicus) with
Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) behind.

I really enjoy this time of year in the garden. Removing brown, shrubby, messy foliage and leaving behind bristling clumps (a.k.a. dormant plants), variegated brown mulch, and small sprigs of green poking their heads up here and there is rewarding. After cutting back a large area of new gold lantana, I discovered the narcissus bulbs planted a few months ago have come to life, with leaves several inches high. Big smile.

I can see clearly the limestone outlines of the beds, rocks painstakingly collected and arranged. Later in the year, plants will spill exuberantly out of the beds obscuring those borders.

I wish I could enter my mind and clear it as effortlessly.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if one could prune the mental deadwood away?

(One would have to use hand clippers; a weed eater would be entirely too ruthless for this job, and the noise would echo off the inside of one’s skull.)

The sticks you see are new gold lantana (Lantana 'New Gold').
Cutting back the deadwood exposed violets (Viola missouriensis -
I think) and oxblood lily foliage (Rhodophiala bifida),

Imagine cutting away dead limbs of imagined insults, useless worries, baseless grudges, unpleasant memories. Imagine leaving only useful knowledge,   hopeful plans and lovely memories, in a clean, organized and peaceful mental garden. Imagine hauling all that ugly stuff far away to decay.

Imagine a brain like a Zen garden.

Stepford wives probably had Zen garden brains.

All that ugly, unpleasant stuff contributes to who I am, of course. The trick is to encourage that stuff to compost internally and enrich my little brain. To keep it from poking and prodding here and there, interfering with healthy, positive thoughts.

When next I am working on cleaning the garden, I think I’ll visualize tidying my mind, also. I won’t try to clear-cut either one, but will prune and neaten as necessary to encourage beautiful growth.

I know this works in the garden. We’ll see if it works in my head, as well.

Rounding up the year - garden projects completed.

Can't wait to see if cleaning and amending
the iris bed pays off with spring blooms!

It is gray, foggy and drizzly outside, and a cool 58 degrees: perfect weather for reflecting on garden accomplishments of the past year. 

Nearly a year ago, I posted about my garden plans for the year 2012. Four projects were on my list, some in varying states of completion.

You know how these New Year’s Resolution lists are. Generally they end up making one feeling inadequate, lazy or incompetent. Take your pick.

I blogged about the completion of this project in September, You just can't rush these things.

I am pleased to post, however, that I actually completed every project on my list.

This is probably the first time in my entire life that a New Year’s Resolution list has been fulfilled completely. If I had known this would be such a successful list, I could have added additional, important items to it:  GET A JOB  (oops, sorry, did not mean to shout that), finish a cross-stitch project (underway since at least 2010), write a novel.

Completed rock garden out front;
apparently I never blogged about this!

More of the rock garden, which extends
across the front yard and parking area.

Bed populated with blue mistflower. If you are familiar with this plant,
you know that it will fill in the bare spaces very quickly!

Perhaps it is best to keep the list small and manageable.

I hope you were equally productive with your projects. Even if you weren’t, I hope you had a wonderful time dreaming about your projects and spending time in your garden. After all, that is the most rewarding part of gardening, is it not?

Full disclosure ahead . . .

We bloggers have the luxury of showing the best points of our garden on any given day. A reader might think that my garden looks great year round, if she were to judge by blog pictures alone. 

Inspired by the need for full disclosures during this heated political season, I will offer full disclosure of my garden during this heated gardening season.

My lawn!

Wonderful pomegranate (Punica 
granatum 'Wonderful') - yes, I've watered it.

Tropical sage (Salvia coccinea) - not irrigated.

As I bare my garden, let me enumerate the gardening conditions.

Artemisia (Artemisia 'Powis Castle" and
Texas lantana (Lantana urticoides) - poor babies!

One:  Most of my yard is in full sun. Related to that, it’s been in the upper 90s for most of the last two months.

Two:  Our water comes from a well, so watering plants is low on the priority list. I do water; however, it is done on an emergency basis.  As in, “Yikes, that’s about to bite the dust!!” Our last good rain was almost two months ago.

Emaciated giant spineless prickly pear.

Three:  Central Texas.

Oh, you want more on that last one? Here in Hays County, we subsist from drought to flood and back to drought again. The plants had better be able to live with that cycle. As you can see on the right, we are in moderate drought according to the U.S. Drought Monitor and we just turned red on the Texas A&M drought monitor (which measures forest fire potential).

The weathermen are forecasting rain for the next few days.  My little plants surely need it, as you can see.

Favorite spot in the garden:

Well, I’ve already told you how the garden looks. So my favorite spot today is a hardscape area. In an effort to spiff up the front entry, I bought some tumbled glass and tumbled it among the paving stones already in place. I love it and plan to obtain more. The grass is native volunteer, suffering from the heat like everything else.

You just can't rush these things . . .

This weekend, thanks to my husband, we finished a long-term project.

Several years ago, Dan bought a fountain pump and peripheral equipment for my birthday. However, my original plan for its placement required still more peripheral equipment – a longer cord. Six months passed before I obtained said cord.

Before . . .

Now the job had turned into a big, complicated electrical one. These types of jobs require lots of planning, perhaps an environmental study or permit.  Maybe it would require the blessing of a uniformed officer of the electrical code.

Six more months went by, with the equipment residing on the laundry room counter.

Then came a Eureka moment:  I should put a pond right outside my living room window in a bed still to be developed! This would be much closer to the house, ergo closer to the electrical outlet thereby simplifying the job.  I rushed out to buy the pond, lugged it home and set it in place.

Six months passed. The pond collected water from roof run-off and became home to some minnows, dead bugs, an occasional waterlogged toad and green pond sediment.

Look, I even used tools!

In early spring, something moved inside my soul. I knew it was time for the next step in this project. My husband finished moving rocks. I moved dirt and plants to surround the pond. Now, it was a flowerbed! A flowerbed with a pond! Maybe now . . .

No. Six more months elapsed. The plants grew, the minnows swam, but alas, the sound of tinkling water did not fill the air.

Sometime during this period, I saw a cool idea on Pam Penick's Digging. She had visited another gardener and seen her fountain, and then copied the idea for her own garden. These two gardeners had rigged a fountain to run water through a hose bib. I found a discarded hose bib and decided to follow in their footsteps (the sincerest form of flattery, right?).

Labor Day weekend arrived. While discussing what projects we could undertake, I suggested that perhaps my dear husband could get the fountain up and running. I pulled up Pam’s page to show him how her husband had managed this engineering feat.

My husband hemmed and hawed, then struck out for the hardware store. Like Pam and Cat, he bought metal plumbing pipe and elbow joints. He assembled the pieces of pipe and set the unit in a one-gallon plastic plant pot, then mixed some concrete and poured it in. The bottom of the pipe stuck out the side of the pot/concrete. When the concrete was dry, he cut off the pot, connected plastic tubing from the pump to the bottom of the pipe, and set all in the pond. He did a little hocus pocus electrical work, and then plugged in the whole apparatus. Water began splashing gaily into the pond! Hurrah!

This little fella was in the
pot I moved - the first new
resident of our revamped pond!

I placed a sad little water plant from the other pond beside the concrete block – I’m hoping the cooler water and shade will provide it a better home. Four big beautiful goldfish now populate this more upscale pond.  

Now we are eager for cooler weather so we can open the windows and hear the soothing sound of water splashing right outside.

. . . and after! The bed is home to Turk's cap (Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii),
heart-leaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata) and a white potato vine (Solanum jasminoides).

Hope springs eternal.

The weather has been nice on the hill, and when that happens, a gardener’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of new gardens (apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson). Several projects are on my list of 2012 objectives. The plan is to publish this list and thereby apply pressure to achieve said objectives.

The parking area is behind me, and the path goes up the right side.

For me, creating new gardens is much more exciting than maintaining old ones. This does not bode well for the condition of my existing flowerbeds, but it’s fact. Right now I am afire with enthusiasm for a new, ambitious undertaking.

I am working on the bones for a rock garden in front of the house. Visitors will pass through this garden on an existing stone path. I’m convinced the bed will take my yard and garden to a new level of sophistication and interest. (This type of thinking undoubtedly signals disaster)

Rock moved carefully by my son, with rain lilies
sprouting from dirt in the crevice.

Currently, I am in the rock selecting, digging, hauling and arranging phase. I roped my oldest son into moving two large rocks; the rest will be smaller. One day, when standing back to gain perspective, I saw that this garden could be expanded into a larger area that would tie in with existing landscaping. This will be so cool! (Cue “uh-ohs” from the audience.)

Even if it doesn’t turn out quite like I envision, I am having great fun working on it.

It will be pretty, it will!

Objective number two is halfway done. Last fall my husband and I laid rock framework for a long-planned bed under the living room window. The bed will be raised nearly two feet and will feature Turk’s cap and a vine of some sort. Two years ago I jumped the gun and bought a water container; the pump to make it tinkle sits on a laundry room shelf. The vine will grow on a rusty  structure that prior tenants used for outdoor showers. Now all we need is dirt - lots of dirt.

Objective number three is the easiest by far. My iris bed is looking oh so lovely right now after fall rains. The plan is to add garden soil and build up the rock border. Weeding is required. Also, my neighbor (thanks, Sheri) gave me a variety of iris bulbs awhile back that are lurking in a box on my porch. By awhile back, I mean several years. My daughter laughed at me when I mentioned these relics. They are most likely dead, but you just never know.

Fourth objective calls for transplanting blue mistflower seedlings to a completed bed that remains barren after seeds failed to sprout in the drought.

All of this is proposed with the understanding that I cannot water at all, as the drought is expected to last through the spring and our well is showing signs of stress.

Ah, hope springs eternal.