Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

The last time we were walking around Knutsford I noticed an intriguing tree in bloom in the tiny front gardens of one of the row houses. I recognized it as a mahonia and told AJM, “We can grow those in Texas.”

Well, sort of. Maybe we saw M. fortunei (Chinese mahonia) in England which was introduced there from China by Robert Fortune in 1846. The University of Arkansas confuses the matter–well confuses me. Mahonia swazeyi (Texas barberry) and Mahonia trifoliata (agarita) are both native to Texas. However, the mahonia I brought home from Barton Springs Nursery was M. bealei (leatherleaf mahonia). I purchased a gallon-sized plant for $6.79. I was initially attracted to the yellow flowers because yellow is a color lacking in my garden and I really need something to cheer up all the blues. The flowers are said to be fragrant. I also like its leathery, holly-shaped leaves–a definite bluish cast there. And I can’t resist plants that hint of an intelligent designer with a Seussian sense of humor. Best of all leatherleaf mahonia is a shade plant. Sounds like the perfect match for my yard.

I’m in awe of the tales Susan Harris tells at Takoma Gardener of moving plants hither and thither. I don’t think of myself as a weakling but it took me most of the day to plant my one gallon leatherleaf mahonia. First I had to clear a spot in the north border to dig the hole. There’s a lot of bindweed, smilax, and even some poison ivy in that spot. Then I had to decide exactly where I wanted to plant it. I have to be able to see it from the kitchen and bathroom windows. And since it’s where the path turns the corner, it should look good from both approaches. Finally, it has to be spaced well from the existing larger plants in the area.

Digging the hole took most of the time (about 2 hours). Luckily there weren’t as many rocks as in other spots of the yard. Nor as many tree roots as I was expecting. The advice these days is to dig the hole wide but not deep. There is a lot of mucky clay here so I dug the hole about 24 inches wide and 15 inches deep.

Because the drought has left the ground dry far below the surface I filled the hole with water twice. The first time it drained well in about 5 to 8 minutes. The second time it didn’t. It took almost 30 minutes to drain. I went to lunch to allow the water to soak in.

Although current wisdom says to refill the hole with native dirt, my native dirt was almost pure clay. So I spent some time sifting the compost pile and refilled the hole with a mix of the more loamy dirt and compost. I watered in the plant and then mulched it with some Texas native hardwood mulch.

Now for that glass of wine.

Garden History

2006-11-10. Planted.
2007-01-18. First flower. (May have flowered earlier during the ice storm but this is the first day I see it.)
2008-01-06. First flower.
2017-07-18.
Suddenly, after eleven years in the garden, this plant (which had gotten quite large over the winter) died. I think it’s because the cedar elm that was shading it is gone and now it’s getting too much sun. I was really surprised to see it turn brown and die. I’ll be digging it up sometime this month before the large brush collection.

Thompson & Morgan Seed Catalog 2007 is the first catalog to arrive this season. Joy! If it weren’t 88F degrees outside, I’d curl up next to a fire and lose myself in dreams of spring.

My batting average for growing things from seed is pretty low. The last few years I’ve been content to let those things that I had luck with self-sow and then transplant the seedlings where I wanted them. Yet in gardening all things run in cycles and now I feel the itch of curiousity again, the desire to explore and experiment.

A cheery British optimism runs through its pages. Seedsmen who would include ginkgo and wisteria (5 seeds/$4.95 for either) assume a certain respect for their customer base. As purveyors of “Quality English Seeds Since 1855” they must be onto something. Reading these pages I always feel like I’m scanning the garden forum seed exchange notices. And I’m fond of the understated tone common to British companies. “Some of the varieties featured in this catalog are so rare that we have secured the world’s supply–please order today to avoid disappointment.”

The catalog’s is small (9×5 1/2″) on glossy paper with full color photographs. The plant descriptions terse but informative. Botanical names? Natch. A coding system is used to pack as much information into a small space as possible. This is a seed catalog that I can use as a reference book. My favorite feature is the suggested temperature ranges for germination in Fahrenheit. Another feature I like is that they indicate how many seeds are in a packet rather than sell by weight.

Seeds are gathered from all over the world, shipped to England where they are cleaned and packed, and then sent to New Jersey for distribution in the USA and Canada. Since September 2001, new regulations have made it difficult to buy or exchange seeds from overseas. As a member of the RHS, I used to participate in their seed exchange, once free but now too expensive for me to play around with. So I appreciate Thompson & Morgan for a peek into what’s popular abroad.

T&M states that they will “not knowingly offer endangered species from the wild.” And because of the backlash against genetically modified seeds in the UK and the EU they state in bold print on the inside cover, “We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that none of our seeds have been genetically modified and never will be.”

Wish List
* Lathyrus grandiflorus: ‘Elegant Ladies’ sweetpeas. I do have a weakness for sweetpeas even though I’ve really only had success with the heirloom ‘Cupani’.

* Nigella damascena: Love-in-a-Mist. My ‘Persian Jewels’ continue to self-sow but each year the flowers get smaller and their colors muddier. Maybe the very dark ‘Oxford Blue’ to celebrate AJM’s alma mater. Not like I need another blue flower in the spring meadow garden though.

* Nicotiana sylvestris: ornamental tobacco. I’ve been meaning to try this fragant white southern flower forever and still haven’t gotten around to it.

* Viola: I’ve always preferred the diminuitve violas to their cousins the pansies. Of course I’m drawn to the blue Sorbet hybrid ‘Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow’. I didn’t have luck growing violas from seed before so I’ll probably just by some six-packs from the big box store.

* Tomatos: T&M offers both hybrids and heirlooms. I’ll have to compare these against Hanna’s descriptions and against other seed catalogs. My standby tomato is ‘Sungold’–it’s the one I’ve had the most luck with over the years and I love it’s bright citrusy flavor. However, I’m always up for trying a new variety, even if I’m forced to grow them between the roses now just to find a spot of sunlight.

You wouldn’t be writing about your own garden if you weren’t an inquisitive sort of person, curious about what’s going on in your garden and why. Each of us knows our garden experience is unique and we blog about it to share our collective knowledge. In our frustration with garden books written for the general case, we observe and document and experiment and compare our experiences with our gardening friends.

Instead of simply documenting the development of the garden, what if you set up systematic trials to see what methods, plants, and soils work best for you? That is, what if you approached gardening (if I may use this word in 21st century America) scientifically. This ideal appeals to me because my attempts to grow plants is primarily about experimentation and only secondarily about decoration. Even in my actual landscapes I think of the world as a giant laboratory.

Lois Levitan’s Improve Your Gardening With Backyard Research give you ideas to explore and methods to explore them with. One important element of experimentation that I frequently lack is to have a “control”–something to use as a basis for comparison. For example, how do you know what ratio of brown to green materials heats up best in a compost pile unless you try different ratios?

And there are so many topics to explore in the garden. Compost. Weather. Comparing varieties of plants (like this year’s wonderful Hanna’s Tomato Tastings). Methods for dealing with pests. Composition of the soil. Companion planting. Methods for sowing seed.

My favorite discussion is on the energy efficiency of various crops–that is, does the amount of energy (in consumable calories, available proteins) exceed the amount of energy you put into growing it?

I found this to be a very inspiring book. Now if I can only get over my lazy tendencies and take action.

When I hear the ground abuzz this time of year I get down on my knees to confirm that my mystery weed is blooming.

Weed in the sense that I didn’t plant it and it grows where it will. And yet I’m quite happy to have it because it is a bright luscious green almost all year around, even in the worst of the heat and drought. It pales a bit in the heat but the slightest sprinkling of water reinvigorates it. In a freeze any part of it exposed will turn brown. But it comes right back again.

By structure and habit I would guess this is a kind of miniature wandering Jew (Tradescantia pallida). The juicy stalks are jointed the same way and it sprouts easily wherever you break a piece off and put it in the ground. It forms a dense mat four to six inches thick. And if you decide you don’t want it somewhere it’s easy to remove–the roots are very shallow.

Once you have it you will always have it. Where to get it. I don’t know. I don’t know where mine came from and I’ve never seen it anywhere else.

What is it?

Update: 2006-11-05, Mystery Solved!
Valerie at Larvalbug identifies my mystery weed as Callisia repens from a clump I gave her a couple of years ago. It is also known as Tradescantia minima which seems to be a very appropriate name since it’s like a miniature Tradescantia pallida. It is indeed part of the spiderwort family, Commelinaceae.

Flora of North America says it flowers in Texas in early spring but my experience is that it flowers in late autumn.

Hawaiin Ecosystems at Risk lists Callisia repens, or inch plant, as a plant of Hawaii and has a nice photo…although the leaves on mine are more closely spaced. In contrast, the Aggies have a photo which looks nothing like my plant; they give the common names Bolivian Jew or Turtle Vine and recommend it as a houseplant.

Several sites that list it a houseplant say it has purplish in the leaves and show leaves much more ovate than lanceolate. Mine are a bright chartreuse without a hint of purple even on the underside of the leaves.

During Austin’s heated debates over banning smoking in bars and require helmets on bicyclists (in a state where it is legal for motorcyclists to go without), people often ask tongue-in-cheek, if the Daddy State will start outlawing Mexican food because it’s bad for us po littl’ citizens who aren’t adult enough to take responsibility for our actions.

Well, take your tongue out of your cheek because if any city is likely to follow New York City’s attempt to outlaw trans fat in restaurant food, it’s Austin.

One positive story coming out of the trans fat controversy is today’s story that KFC (the restaurant that changed it’s name because its middle name is FRIED) has abandoned hydrogenated fats in favor of soybean oil.

That’s good news right? Not so fast. Read further down the article and you’ll discover restaurant owners are worried that the demand for soybean oil might outpace the supply. And who is the supplier? Why Monsanto Corp and its magic beans.

Dedrick said KFC and the creator of the new oil, the Monsanto Corp., had to work with seed oil processors to persuade farmers to grow more of the special soybeans used in the product. Among other things, farmers were offered a price premium to grow the new soybeans.

Monsanto spokesman Chris Horner said he expected the farmland devoted to the company’s new seed to triple next year to 1.5 million acres, up from 500,000 acres this year and 100,000 in 2005.– (Emphasis mine.)

Let’s see…replace “special soybeans” with “genetically-modified soybeans” and you might get the feeling that the reporter is guilty of lies of omission. As of 2002, nearly 70% of US soybeans were grown from genetically modified seeds.

The new soybean, dubbed VISTIVE produces a low-linolenic soybean oil. This new soybean is being offered to American farmers first. As Monsanto’s Executive Vice-President explained on March 3, 2006…

“We will continue to grow our global business, but we cannot forget that U.S. agriculture is the foundation of our success,” Casale said. “In this country we have the benefit of serving the most technologically advanced farmers, who appreciate innovative new products. Because of this, we can offer U.S. farmers some unique advantages as we all strive to compete globally.”

Japan and the EU won’t import them but it looks as if Monsanto has a new market for its product state-side.

In other dubious news for farmers, Monsanto genetically modified seed is patented and it sues American farmers who save a portion of their crop for seed. They are also suing farmers who don’t even grow Monsanto products if pollen from neighboring GM-planted fields contaminates a field by cross-pollinating with a non-GM crop; this pollution is considered patent infringement.

Dateline: 2010
A cold front settles in and we wake up Monday (9/27) to a mere 58°. Second fall has arrived with its dry air and icy blue skies.

I begin sowing greens in the winter vegetable garden.

The Lindheimer senna, the coral vine, and the four o’clocks are the most striking flowers. Quite a few oxblood lilies are still blooming. The red spider lilies are coming up all over the yard. Unfortunately I dug up most of them in the last year because they hadn’t flowered well in years–not even in rainy 2007.

We had a tremendous Mexican plum crop this year. I should have done something with it.

Bluebonnets, baby blue eyes, and false dayflowers are popping up everywhere. So are the less desirable plants like horseherb. I’ve seen a few cilantro, too.

Dateline: 2006
We fast-fowarded from August to October, with only one day of September weather two weeks ago Sunday (9/17) when it rained. The October weather (lows in the 50s, highs in the 80s, dry and perfectly blue skies) is gorgeous. I’ve been busy in the garden every day dividing irises and oxblood lilies and generally setting the garden right. But (the gardener’s lament) we need more rain. By the end of this week, the rain-softened iris beds were already becoming dusty dry.

During this exhilarating week I wondered what happened to me last year? Why did I wait so long to divide the irises? Why are the roses just inches from death? Why have I been so neglectful?

Then I looked at last year’s stats: the hottest day of the year was September 25th…we hit 108. Hurricane Rita swung east and drowned east Texas but left us with out a drop of water. And afterward, no rain. Not in September. Not in December. It was pretty much a downward spiral of drought for an entire year now and I gave up. For awhile…

I’m typing this with dirt under my fingernails. Yep. I’m back in the garden.

First flowers: Oxalis drummondii (9/25); crape myrtle (9/25) fall rebloom; Oxalis regnellii (9/27); Lantana montevidensis (9/27); Mirabalis jalapa (9/28) fall rebloom; Salvia greggii (9/28) fall rebloom.

The crape myrtle, cypress vine, and plumbago are fighting it out for the honor of most flowers this week. Still a lot of pink rainlilies and garlic chives blooming in the meadow, but the oxblood lilies are almost at an end.
Read the rest of this entry »

Dateline: 2006
Summer hung on tooth and claw with Friday’s (9/22) temperatures near 100. Despite a lousy ending, the rest of the week was everything we can hope for this time of year. The week began with a drenching rain which interrupted Tom Petty’s set at the ACL finale but left gardeners cheering. We received upwards of 1 1/2 inches–we haven’t seen rain like this since the 4th of July when towns all around Austin were forced to cancel their firework displays. The early part of the week, the lows were in the 50s, highs in the upper 80s, low 90s and gorgeous blue October skies.

The garden responded immediately. By Wednesday (9/20) the oxblood lilies were opening en masse. The meadow was covered in rainlilies. (I usually have them throughout the summer and even after the flowers fade, their leaves tell me where they are. But this summer there has been no sign of them.) Bluebonnets began sprouting everywhere in the meadow. The salvia began reblooming. The rose ‘French Lace’ (which had no leaves whatever) put out a flush of new growth). They hyacinth bean vines are about 5 feet tall. The esperanza and plumbago are heavy with flower. The chili pequin is bursting out with tiny white flowers.

I’ve been rushing around all week dividing irises and oxblood lilies and transplanting cosmos in the meadow. More rain is forecast for the weekend and even better, El Nino is coming our way for the fall and winter. That means more rain for Central Texas and a good year to get those replacement bushes and trees in.
Read the rest of this entry »

September 19, 2006
I suppose that even when non-gardeners think of gardens the first flower that comes to mind is the rose. As a teenager I used to help my mother with her roses and I still remember that she had ‘Mr. Lincoln’, ‘Tropicana’, and ‘Queen Elizabeth’. Every Easter morning before Mass she took a photo of us five girls standing in front of the roses in our spring finery.

However, I did not plant roses at Zanthan Gardens for many years. I had tried growing roses when I first moved to Texas and compared with Las Vegas, I found it difficult. In Austin the ground might be dry but the air is often humid causing the roses to be easy prey to black spot or mildew. And here the bugs are terrible. Plus, in my garden there is the ever-present issue of the trees. I didn’t have enough sunny spots for roses–they were all being used by tomatoes.

Eventually both sunlight and roses came into the garden. Influenced by a Christmas present I received from AJM’s mother, For Love of a Rose, the story of the family who developed the ‘Peace’ rose, the first rose I planted was ‘Peace’. It remains the only hybrid tea rose in my garden.

Austinites are lucky to be near the Antique Rose Emporium. Most of our local nurseries carry their roses. So I had plenty of opportunity to become familiar with heirloom roses while reading owner G. Michael Shoup’s Landscaping with Antique Roses and Roses in the Southern Garden. If you live in central Texas, it is well worth a trip to Brenham or San Antonio to visit the wonderful display gardens at the Antique Rose Emporium.

Given that I could buy an entire rose shrub for the same price as one iris rhizome, I found it easy to abandon my former passion for a new love. In addition to their scent, I loved the way roses could be integrated into hedgerows, as I’ve seen in England. I have chain link fencing on two sides of my yard and I wanted to cover them with roses. So I don’t have a rose garden or a rose bed–almost all my roses are shrubs or climbers and integrated into some other planting.

I seem to have begun my rose kick in 2000 and killed quite a few right off. I planted ‘Sombreuil’ in May 2000; it was poorly sited and never did well but took several years to die. I planted ‘Marie Pavie’ in June 2000, three months before we hit a string of all-time record-breaking highs which she did not survive. (Yes, I know better than to plant in June but sometimes I succumb to impulse. I planted “Caldwell Pink” at the same time and it didn’t die until 2005.) I planted ‘La Biche’ in November 2000 and she did not survive a year.

The rest of this entry I wrote in February of this year. We were already six months into the drought with six even worse months to come. Since then I’ve lost ‘Ducher’ and the prognosis for ‘Madame Joseph Schwartz’ and ‘Buff Beauty’ is questionable. However, I’m not the least put off growing roses. There is so much variety and each rose is so individual in its personality that I will run out of time and garden space long before I’ve had a chance to try all I want to grow.

Pam/Digging asked me if I had ever tried to propagate roses from cutting. The answer is yes…and three of them are still alive!
Read the rest of this entry »

AJM’s mother has a photo of ‘Champagne Elegance‘–the first named iris I ever grew successfully–in her guest room so that I feel at home when we visit. Our older neighborhood is filled with heirloom irises that bloom every year any apparent effort on the part of most homeowners. I have a pale yellow variety that blooms later than the white and purple flags–usually in mid-April around tax day. This iris is unkillable. I have seen small ones left in a pile (because I’ve never gotten around to replanting them) send down roots and plant themselves. They lead me down a pretty path thinking irises are a breeze to grow.

And so they can be. Bearded irises are drought-tolerant, lime-tolerant plants. They need little attention except keeping the rhizomes free of weeds (and in my yard leaf litter). Let their rhizomes get covered and you’re asking for rot when Austin’s weather turns hot and humid. When it’s hot and dry their fans brown and they look messy. They have a fairly short bloom period and individual flowers last two days at most in our heat. In bloom they have no scent (connoisseurs will disagree) but when the blooms fade they give off a somewhat unpleasant scent of ammonia.

Despite this I fell hard for irises. They come in every color except true red (which is why they are named after Iris, the goddess of the rainbow). They have more variety of blue flowers than any other species I can think of. I’m a sucker for blue flowers.

In 1997 I sent off to White Flower Farms for three rhizomes of ‘Champagne Elegance’. I don’t remember the price but at the time it was the most I’d ever paid per single bulb. When they bloomed the following spring, the flowers looked like something from a catalog shoot–not something I’m used to seeing in my garden.

I found Schreiner’s Iris Gardens online and began a buying spree that lasted four years. I amazed a friend once when I showed her Schreiner’s glossy print catalog (the large one they send you if you’ve ordered from them before). She pointed out one she liked and I glanced over and said, “Oh, ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Yeah. It’s gorgeous, isn’t it.” She thought I had the name of every iris in the catalog memorized…I almost did.

I fell in love with an iris called Seakist which was selling for $35.00 a rhizome at the time. I bought other things while waiting for the price to come down and when it selling for $15.00, I bought three.

Unlike my heirloom irises, my bought irises increased for a year or two and then waned. They want to be divided more frequently than I have time for and they demand the best spots in the garden then spend 50 weeks of the year not in bloom. The number of irises that I bought that never bloomed at all or only bloomed once, give me pause. I notice now that my extravagant iris buying stopped the same year I lost my job. If I were wealthy and if I had hired men to dig deep trenches for my picky plants, I’d keep trying iris after iris. As it is, I moved on to something that gave me a lot more flower for the same amount of money…roses.

Question for central Texas gardeners: if you have bearded irises do you divide them after they bloom in the spring or do you wait until fall when they start growing again?
Read the rest of this entry »

That first year, after a 40 foot cedar elm split in half during a summer thunderstorm, we saw something in our yard that we’d never seen before. Sunlight. The entire north third of our backyard (about 30×60 feet) received glaring afternoon sun. I transplanted some canna near the house. They baked to a crisp in the reflected heat off the wall. The St. Augustine lawn died.

I decided to fill the space with annuals until I could think of what to do. Bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas, were a natural first choice. Drive the highways of Central Texas in March or April and you can’t help but be amazed by the carpets of blue planted by the road crews after construction and then left to reseed on their own. (Thank you, Lady Bird Johnson). Bluebonnets belong to the lupine family which means they have nitrogen-fixing nodules on their roots–they enrich the soil.

Yes, I thought. If those roadsides can grow beautifully on their own, then I need to do something similar; provide the correct conditons to get a meadow established and then sit back and watch it grow. So grows the theoretical landscape. Are you laughing yet?

At least I wasn’t silly enough to buy one of the “meadows in a can”. Wildseed Farms is only 90 miles west of Austin in Fredericksburg and they supply all the local nurseries with wildflowers seeds. I’ve had the best success with bluebonnets, larkspur which come back every year. I planted short flowering bulbs, rainlilies, fall crocus, and species tulips. For a meadow to be meadow it has to have grass–so I planted the buffalograss ‘Top Gun’ which greens up early and stays green long into fall.

From the beginning the meadow suffered from two big problems. First, I considered it a garden and other people considered it a lawn. Other people were always stepping on seedlings and bulbs that they did not recognize as flowers about to make their entrance. I made paths based on where we walked, first with hay and then with mulch. I didn’t want it to look too defined, too artificial. When mulched paths didn’t work I began defining the beds with wood from a demolished privacy fence and rocks.

The second problem was that the meadow looks fantastic in April and May. In June it looks weedy as the seeds for next year mature. The other nine months of the year it looks like a vacant lot. I wouldn’t mind the lack of flowers but the buffalograss has been shaded out.

2003-09-16. Fall rains bring out the flowers on rainlilies and garlic chives but otherwise the meadow looks like a vacant lot. In the photo, I’m trying to decide whether to plant out the potted sago. I did.

2006-04-16. Notice how the original back half of the meadow is plunged into deep shade when the cedar elms leaf out in March.

To deal with the death of the buffalograss I turned the far end of the meadow into flower beds lined with irises. Again, borders of the beds and the paths through them change as the light changes over the years. It’s amazing to watch plants jump a path and establish themselves where they’re happiest. I try not to fight them.

2006-04-24. By 2006, what had been the upper meadow was coming into its own as a perennial bed. Unfortunately, it gets too much shade most of the year except July when it’s in full sun all afternoon.

In the midst of my meadow adventures I began receiving print catalogs from Marilyn Barlow’s Select Seeds. About the same time I was reading about Celia Thaxter’s Island Garden and I met Felder Rushing and bought his book (cowritten with Steve Bender) Passalong Plants. I could not resist the charms of those cottage garden plants which Marilyn Barlow referred to as the flowers grandmother grew.

I became enamoured of sweetpeas, poppies (corn, Shirley, California, and Icelandic), hyacinth bean vine, moonvine, morning glory, selected daturas, apple of peru, black-eyed Susan vine, feverfew, heliotrope, four o’clocks, clammy weed, clove pinks, viola, love-in-a-mist, amaranth, cosmos, and sunflowers.

The ones that succeeded best over the years were the overwintering annuals…in the south flowers planted in the fall that grow through the winter and bloom in the spring.

My one complete failure has been ornamental grasses. I love the look but I can’t keep them alive for more than a year or two. I even killed Mexican feather grass which seeds like a weed for everyone else.

Lessons Learned

I am already in the process of changing the meadow. Because the garden elsewhere has grown and grown, I’ve spent less and less time experimenting with plants I have to grow from seed. However, I’d like to go back to that approach. I miss the sweetpeas, especially and there are many flowers still to try. In fact, two weeks ago I sprouted some hyacinth beans and they are already two feet tall. I’ve seeded some cosmos in hopes of having some flowers in the meadow this fall.
Read the rest of this entry »