Zanthan Gardens
Category: Plant Highlights

Dateline: 2005
I received ‘Mystic’s Muse’ as a bonus iris with my Schreiner’s order in 2000. It produced one perfect scape of flowers in 2001, was set upon by spring cankerworms in 2002, then fell victim to rot. I transplanted 1 small rhizome, which tried hard to flower on multiple scapes in 2003. No bloom from the offsets in 2004. And this year, one rhizome sent up two short (20″ and 11″) stalks which produced four smaller (4″) than average flowers which I cut and brought inside right after taking this photo.

Now there are three rhizomes left that might produce flowers next year. Or rot. I just can’t predict what will happen with irises in my shady, humid garden. They are irresistibly beautiful and so fleeting. That’s why I love them, I suppose.
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Forget what I said yesterday about giving up on named bearded irises. Today, two stalks of ‘Cloud Ballet’ began blooming and they are everything bearded irises should be. Each thick stalk is tall and straight and bears half a dozen substantial flowers. The falls don’t…well, not much. They’re fairly horizontal.

At least I think this is ‘Cloud Ballet’. I bought one from Schreiner’s in 2001. It is a pale blue, which leans toward lavender, self. The center is pale, almost white, which reflects the light in such a way that makes it look more contrasty in the photo than in real life. From a distance it appears to be the same shade as the bluebonnets beneath it. The beards are white with yellow tips.

There is a chance that it might be ‘Altruist‘.

Whatever it is, it’s bloomed three years in a row: 2003, 2004, and 2005, but it didn’t bloom it’s first spring, 2002.
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My yard came with a tall, bearded iris. The pale, golden-yellow flowers are old-fashioned in form and usually bloom in April. I think of them as my tax-time irises. They aren’t as fully-ruffled and showy as modern irises. They can’t even stand up straight, but have very wavy stems. But they multiply faster than I can give them away and bloom reliably every year.
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I popped over to Garden Spot which hadn’t been updated in almost a year to find a new post on St. Joseph’s lily. And there was the answer to the mystery bulb which is blooming in my garden these last two weeks. I figured it was some kind of amaryllis. I’d found two very small bulbs when rescuing oxblood lilies from a construction site on South 1st street several years ago. They began blooming for the first time this year on March 31st.
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Valerie shared some seeds for baby blue eyes and now in their second spring in my garden they have really spread themselves around. Like the bluebonnets, larkspur, and Love-in-a-Mist, in central Texas they grow over the winter and flower in the spring.

2005-03-25. Nemophila phacelioides. Austin, TX

I’ve learned recently that there are various species of baby blues eyes. My plants are descended from seeds gathered, I believe, along the roadways of south Austin. Given that information, I realize it is probably our Texas native Nemophila phacelioides. The N. insignis (aka N. menziesii) sold by some seed companies is native to California and Oregon. This is one time that the Latin names prove more confusing than the common ones.

2005-03-30. Baby blue eyes in front of a mass of spiderwort. Another week or so and this section of the yard will look very weedy.

Update: 2018-03-12

I notice that the self-sown baby blue eyes in the pond path garden are large, bushy, and covered with large flowers. They look stunning this year. In sharp contrast, the ones by the back fence, which had looked nice in years before, are stunted, yellowed and not started to flower.

Is it the acidic sifted pine bark mulch from the paths. I covered this area with it in the fall when I was moving path. It was too much for the bluebonnets causing them to get moldy (or something) and wither. So maybe baby blue eyes like a rich humusy mulch.

Although I tend to disregard them, they can be very beautiful in a well-mulched drift.

2004
This Brugmansia just gets better every year. It’s almost 5 feet tall now, and would no doubt be happier if it got more summer sun. After the fall equinox, when the sun begins to shine on the south side of the house, the brugmansia produces its first flowers of the season. I’d like to move it, as it is strangled by two climbing roses and a hyacinth bean vine. I’ll try to root some more cuttings instead. (Wow, having a better camera than I did two years ago is nice, too.)
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Gardening has its fashions. One year it was pentas. Then it was Tecoma stans. This year commercial landscapes all over Austin, planted Dietes vegeta, the butterfly iris. The long graceful spears are attractive even when the plants are not in bloom. But when they are bloom, it’s magic; single flowers flutter above the leaves.

Seduced, I bought a gallon pot of some at Home Depot several months ago. Since I was going to be away at the worst part of summer, I decided not to plant them then. Today I finally got around to it.
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I was surprise when AJM pointed out a bearded iris about to open last week. Our season for bearded irises is April and I’d have sworn I’d never seen one blooming this late. Must be all the rain. Looking at my garden journal, however, I see I was surprised when this same iris bloomed in early June, 2002 and then again on July 15, 2002. Well, this is why I write things down.
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Maybe because my Mom wore “White Shoulders”, I love the scent of the flowers old South: jasmine, gardenias, and magnolias. AJM, too, is impressed by magnolias and wanted me to plant one. But they grow into huge trees, casting a dense shade. I also worried that a magnolia would get chlorotic in our chalky soil and need special treatment, like azaleas (another plant I’ve avoided so far). This winter, however, I was impressed with some magnolias in an apartment landscaping along Victory Drive behind the Target on Ben White Blvd. They seemed green and healthy and the trees had a beautiful conical form.

So, after a little research on the net, I decided to buy ‘Little Gem’, a “dwarf” magnolia that is supposed to grow only to 12 to 20 feet tall. I found one at Floribunda Nursery and planted it last January. Today, although still quite young and only three feet tall, it produced three creamy flowers, each five inches across. The leaves are glossy green on the upper surface and a velvety-textured russet underneath. And the scent! sweet but also sharply lemon.

Zanthan Gardens History

2004-01-10.
Bought 3-gallon ‘Little Gem’ magnolia at Floribunda.

2005-01-09.
Fed, weeded and mulched with compost. Topped with cuttings from the Christmas tree and put the cover of flat rocks on top.

Dateline: 2004-04-23
Yesterday two flowers open on ‘Buff Beauty’ finally. She and the other hybrid musk roses (‘Prosperity’ and ‘Penelope’) suffered the most from the attack of the spring cankerworms. If not for that, I think she would be covered with flowers this spring. I planted ‘Buff Beauty’ three years ago, and although she’s produced the odd flower or two, she’s yet to prove her worth in my garden. But I really like the apricot color of the flowers. ‘Gruss an Aachen’ has flowers somewhat similar in both form and color, but has only been in my garden six months and has already out-performed ‘Buff Beauty’. She’s highly-rated by many other gardeners, so she might just be in an incompatible location. I’ve also heard that she’s a slow-starter.
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