Zanthan Gardens
Category: Garden Essays

I began the stump garden on April 29th of this year to solve several other problems. First, I needed to move bulbs from an area which I had used as a nursery but which is slated to be a patio. I decided to move them to a wild spot under a cedar elm tree on the edge of the lawn in the back. That spot is too dark for most wildflowers and the shallow roots of the cedar elm suck moisture and nutrients from the ground, making the soil very poor indeed. Worse, the site is on a slope, so the water tends to runoff rather than soak in.

The other problem was I have a lot of bits of sawn tree trunk leftover from the tree which fell on our garage last November. I decided to use some of these pieces to create a structure on the slope and plant bulbs and other shade-loving plants between them. I placed the tree trunks close enough together that I can jump from one to another to water or weed. Then I planted garlic chives and oxblood lilies which bloom together in the fall; the rest of the year the garden would be various textures of green from palm grass, liriope, monkey grass, and ferns.

Last weekend our first fall downpour, a gift from tropical storm Fay, caused all the oxblood lilies to burst into bloom this week. The effect is better than I ever hoped it would be. But although the flowers will fade in a week or so, the arrangement of stumps provides a structure that has made this little garden pleasant all summer.

I didn’t spend much time in the garden in July. We had enough rain during the first couple of weeks that I didn’t need to spend every morning watering. Then we were away on vacation. Although the garden looked like a jungle before we left, I was unprepared for the explosion of green that greeted us on our return. Other than immediately mowing the lawns, I avoided going into the garden all last week.

Like many of life’s overwhelming tasks, weeding is best tackled a bit at a time, but with consistent effort. I figured that the yard has done allright without me for over a month, so rather than be distracted by the massive amount of work to be done, yesterday I started weeding just one bed.

I worked at it an hour and then quit. Today I did the same on the bed adjoining. A wonderful feeling of accomplishment comes of controlling the weeds in two small spaces. Tomorrow I’ll do another.

Any gardener with a small garden learns to borrow visual elements in the landscape beyond the garden’s borders. When I look up from my desk, the path through the meadow leads my eye to the trunk of a huge live oak tree in the yard behind mine, and to the screen of mixed green shrubbery beyond. In front of the chainlink fence, I’ve planted a mix of flowering shrubs that disguises the boundaray rather than a hedge that would call attention to it. This creates an illusion that the back yard is twice as deep as it is. The neighbor has a old stucco outbuilding that complements the scene.
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Two weeks ago, the garden was awash in the yellows of three different kinds of daffodils blooming at once. This week it is a sea of blue: bluebonnets, Spanish bluebells, grape hyacinths, false dayflowers, and Dutch irises. In a couple of weeks there will be even more blues as the bearded irises and the Nigella damascena opens.

I have a weakness for blue flowers. Whenever I see a photo of one in the seed or plant catalogs, I’m immediately attracted to it. However, an all blue garden is somber. Even the boy, S., said, “It needs more colors.”

So I have planted the yellow daffodils, white, pink, and yellow roses, pink evening primrose, species tulips, and pale golden irises. Had it not been for the freeze at the end of February, the roses and the larkspur would be blooming now. But this year, the garden is once again going through a blue period.

I’m on the lookout for more flowers. Frequently azaleas bloom this week, and although I’m attracted to them, I don’t want to fight their environmental requirements for a much more acid soil than I can provide naturally.

If you live in zone 8, especially in central Texas, let me know what non-blue flowers are blooming in your yard this week.

The trouble with spring in Austin is that the gardening bug bites at a time when it is almost too late to plant anything. We have a growing season of about 90 days, counting from our last freeze date to the time the temperatures reach the high 90s.

I don’t grow a lot of summer annuals from seed because it takes too much water to keep them growing through the summer–my water ration is for the roses and the vegetable garden. I’ve switched to perennials (crape myrtle, esperanza, Rose of Sharon, vitex, ruellia) to provide summer color.

However, there are some annuals that I’ve found easy-to-grow from seed. I usually start them outside in a special bed and then transplant the seedlings where I want them.
* cosmos
* sunflowers (a great variety now available in all heights and colors)
* gomphrena (southern batchelors buttons)

Flowering annual vines provide a lot of color and are easy to grow because they usually have large seeds.
* dolichos lablab
* luffa
* morning glory
* black-eyed Susan vine
* cypress vine

I sometimes find it more economical to simply buy the 6-pack flowers from Home Depot.
* marigolds
* pentas
* coleus

Bulbs for summer that can be planted now.
* canna
* caladium
* asiatic lily
* zephyranthes (rain lily)
* crocosmia

As a Christmas present my English father-in-law gave me a membership to the Royal Horticultural Society. Last December I received notice of a surprise benefit. I could choose 30 packets of seeds from the RHS gardens at Wisley. These are excess seeds that the RHS shares with its members. I quickly filled out my first choices and alternates, looking up many Latin names (the RHS always refers to plants by their Latin names), trying to stick with plants that were easy to grow from seed and that had a chance of surviving the shock of moving to Texas.

The seeds arrived today! Now to research how to grow them.
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One of the most difficult tasks for the beginning gardener is to remove healthy plants. I’m so grateful for anything that is happy to grow in my garden that I’ve been known to let all sorts of plants considered rank weeds by others, flourish here. As long as it looks green and lush and fills in the blank spaces, I’m content to live and let live.
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In a couple of weeks, we will begin pruning roses here in Austin (zone 8). To prepare, Rayford Clayton Reddell suggests that we defoliate the rose to encourage the growth of new eyes (from which new roses will grow). With the roses defoliated, it is also easier to see how the rose should be pruned and a good time to spray them.

This idea makes a lot of sense in Austin. Almost none of my roses have lost their leaves from last year. These leaves are tattered, bug-eaten, and in the case of a couple of roses, beginning to suffer from black spot and mildew.
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It’s not just my imagination; there really are more leaves than ever this year. I realized that the red oak tree is now three times as tall as when I moved here eight years ago. Then it was just a little taller than the privacy fence.

More signs of the coming spring. I saw two tips of Tulipa clusiana peeking their noses up in the meadow.

There’s nothing like receiving a gardening catalog to stir up a gardener’s blood. As soon as I began to leaf through the 2002 catalog from the Territorial Seed Company that came in today’s mail, I felt urge to go out and clean up the mess of last year’s garden. Yes. I’m terribly behind. I’ve been so busy on other gardening projects that the vegetable garden has been neglected, almost since we came back from England last summer.
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