Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

I posted a new plant profile on the Grand Primo daffodils that are blooming right now.

I’ve spent the last couple of days weeding some beds and transplanting the self-sown larkspur in them. The larkspur plants are about 4 inches tall. I’ve read in several places that they are difficult to transplant but I have never found that to be true. They do have a long tap root, so you have to be careful when digging them out. They don’t come up in bare earth; they seem to prefer the mulched paths and beds. This habit suits me as it is easier to clear out a bed, add some wood ash and superphosphate and then replant them about eight inches apart than it is to let them seed in place and then thin them. And if you want them to grow to any decent height, you have to thin them.

Related

For more information and photos, see the Zanthan Plant Profile.
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Although the bluebonnets, larkspur, and love-in-a-mist, are all green and growing, about the only flowers in bloom this week are the violas. Violas are a miniature relative of the pansy. Both are popular winter bedding plants here in the south. I prefer the more delicate viola.

Violas tolerate both cold and warm weather. Here in Austin they bloom constantly from whenever you plant them in mid-fall until late April or May; that is, whenever the temperatures rise above 94.

The viola series I find most often at Austin nurseries are from the ‘Sorbet’ series. I especially like the pale yellow ‘Sorbet Lemon Chiffon’ and the pale blue. Although these sometimes reseed, F1 hybrid will not come true from seed.

2002-03-27. Viola cornuta ‘Sorbet Yellow Frost’

Notes

Violas need dark to germinate.

• Viola cornuta (tufted pansy)
• Viola tricolor (Johnny Jump-up, heart’s ease)
• Viola x wittrockiana (pansy)

In 1998, the University of Georgia’s Horticulture Garden rated violas by series and color class.

I don’t know where my frostweed came from, but it has established itself in my north border among the nandina and it will not go away. I tried cutting it back to the ground for several years and it just kept coming back. During the summer the large coarse leaves suffer from heat and drought and look ragged. But come fall, it brightens the shady spot with large heads of small white flowers which attract bees and butterflies. With all the rain we had in 2001, it produced absolutely stunning flower heads with a scent reminiscent of alyssum.

So I’ve decided to live and let live.

As it turns out, frostweed likes the loamy soils by creeks or in the shade of large trees. So with a little more care on my part, it might become a welcome addition to the north border.
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Marilyn Barlow began Select Seeds to bring “the flowers that our grandmothers loved into our gardens once more”. Select Seeds sells the old, typically open-pollinated, varieties that were popular in gardens two or three generations ago. One advantage, of course, is that open-pollinated varieties will come true from seed. So you can save seed each year.
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I’ve never ordered from High Country Gardens but only because I prefer to get my perennials from a local source. However, if I lived in an area which did not have as many excellent sources of native and xeric plants, I would think that the expense of buying plants throught the mail would be worth it. I always put the catalog aside for someday…someday when I want a specific variety that is not available locally. For example, where else (in America) will you find eight different varieties of lavender?
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Dateline: 2007

“The 26 degrees was only 8 degrees away from the all time low of 18 degrees for that date at the airport, which was set in 1989 (which was a year that Austin hit the all-time low for December of 4 degrees. Yes, 4).” — AAS December 16, 2007

But in Clarksville, the low was only 30.6 between 7:02 and 7:11 this morning. It was only 32 or below between 4:43 and 8:02. I think the newspaper was being unnecessarily dramatic over what was a light freeze for a few hours.

There was ice on the birdbath but not on the pond or the metal wash basin near the house. All the Cosmos sulphureus in the lower and upper meadows froze but only about half of them in the west border. Some nearly sprouted Cosmos bipinnatus seem fine. The snap beans all froze; I picked the beans last night. Two small nasturtiums in the crescent bed look damaged but the larger ones in the west border look fine. The leaves on the banana trees froze (I’d wrapped them on Thursday) except for the two southmost ones which are closest to the house. The aloes next to the east retaining wall by the front door did not seem to freeze although earlier in the season they were nipped with cold.

Later in the week it is more obvious that the leaves of the white ginger and the coral bean are streaked with frost damage.

The leaves are finally of the cedar elms so the yard is sunny and cheerful. The leaves on the oaks are turning ruddy. My neighbor has an oak with burnt orange leaves that he says is a Spanish oak. By Tuesday (12/18) the high is 76°F; Thursday (12/20), 74°F; and Friday (12/21), 76°F. I spend these beautiful days planting Anemone coronaria ‘The Bride’ among the banana plants and transplanting bachelor buttons and larkspur in the meadow.

So many larkspur seedlings have popped up that I feel silly ever worrying about them. I have more than enough to fill the entire yard and to share, too. However, the bluebonnets are very sparse this year. If it were not for the score of bluebonnets that over-summered, I’d hardly have any plants. One began blooming on December 15th.

First flower: Narcissus tazetta v. orientalis (12/20); ruellia, Sally (12/20).

Dateline: 2006
Sunday December 17, 2006
By afternoon it was 80F. We eat the first cherry tomato with salad.

Dateline: 2001
The day is clear, dry, and not so cold as forecasted. In short, it is perfect for working outdoors. I clear the paths of weeds before laying down the mulch and AJM splits firewood.

Dateline: 2000
Sunday December 17, 2000
Damn. I manage to save all the plants against the ice storm last Tuesday and then, because success breeds complaisance, I let the tender perennials freeze back last night. The brugmansia, the Tecoma stans, and Pandorea are frozen back.

Dateline: 1998
Monday December 21, 1998
Morning is warm and wet and it is difficult to believe that winter is bearing down on us. But all the forecasts predict that a severe arctic cold front will arrive by this afternoon and stick around with ice and sleet for days. I take the afternoon off to take care of the garden. From the newspaper, “At 5 p.m., Austin posted a temperature of 74 degrees. About three hours later, it was 38 degrees in the city and still dropping.”

Wednesday December 23, 1998
The storm moves in with a light freezing rain, not very wet, but cold and too icy to drive. The plants are frozen solid and I don’t have much hope.

Dateline: 1997
Saturday December 20, 1997
Rains all day. Heavy thunderstorms and flood and tornado watches in the evening.

Dateline: 1996
Thursday December 19, 1996
After two nights of hard freezes, the garden has succumbed to winter.

I saw the house two years ago this weekend. That spring, after moving, I had neither the physical, mental, nor material resources to think about gardening. I was too spent getting settled. Instead that first year I watched the yard, learning where the sunlight fell and what had been done to it beforehand. A great deal really! The house is fifty years old and cedar elms tower a above all the houses in the neighborhood. We had eight cedar elms and have lost two to mistletoe and ball moss. We also have two pecans which have suffered from drought and are sickly. Apparently several other very large trees died before we bought the property. There are a lot of stumps in the yard. I believe they were live oak. Live oak wilt is killing magnificent old trees all over Austin.

The woman who had the yard before me did not have any sense of design. She seemed to be one of those people easily tempted by the bright annuals at the garden center or supermarket. “Seasonal color”. I’m still finding plastic markers of plants long dead.

Last spring, I had no gardening budget. However, I planted on Japanese persimmon (“Eureka”) to satisfy my Fall cravings for persimmons. I hope someday to have all the persimmons I can eat. Persimmons are suppose to do well here.

I spent last year learning about native plants, both by reading and by visiting specialty nurseries. I lost an old, established fig to the heat and drought. But last August, it began raining and it has been temperate and wet since. The plants have no idea what season it is. the temperature has only dipped below freezing a couple of times this winter. All the foliage is green and lush. And so, repressing memories of scorching dry Texas summers, I have gone plant crazy.

I have more money in the budget for plants. And I have the largest yard in the neighborhood. I have bought native ornamental trees: 2 Mexican plums and a Texas persimmon. And I’ve bought trees that probably won’t do well: a Japanese maple and Italian Stone pine.

I want my garden to flow naturally into the surrounding landscape. I’ve developed a dislike of the artifice of English and European gardens. Here, they would be too bright, too deep green and glossy, too fussy. The more I observe the Texas landscape, the more I dislike the man-made, geometrics of the formal, English garden. Garden books refer to my preferred style as informal. But I think in its spirit it more closely resembles the unnatural Nature of Japanese gardens than American casual. Or rather, my sense of garden beauty is more allied with Japanese values than European ones. I prefer texture to color. I love rocks, twisted, stunted trees, and crumbly fallen leaves. The lawn is a weedy, patchy mess–a battle that I’m losing or lost. I have no hedges, or borders. I want, instead, to plant a thicket of ornamental trees to block the sight of the neighboring houses. Being boxed in with hedges is the antithesis of the Texas landscape.

I’m reading a great deal about plants. For all my love of gardening, I don’t have much of a green thumb. And so, I’m trying to find plants, mostly ornamental trees and flowering perennials, that can survive on their own. As for flowers, I’m trying to plant a mini-meadow of Texas wildflowers and southern, naturalizing bulbs.

In keeping with this natural approach, I pretty much leave the yard to grow as it pleases. I only remove a plant if it is sickly or threatens something more delicate. Any plant that can survive a Texas summer deserves to be left to flourish.

I’ve identified two plants that are truly weeds, even in my yard: goose grass (a kind of bedstraw-it is a bright green beautiful, delicate plant when it first emerges, but then with sticky leaves and stems, it clambers over everything, forming thick mats that dry to a dull brown, and worse, produce millions of crescent shaped stickers that cling to socks and shoelaces); chickweed (another matting plant, succulent, with little white flowers).

I leave the henbit, the dandelions, the wild carrot, the sow thistles (except in the lawn). And I’ve identified spiderwort, summer snowflakes, pink oxalis, and oxblood lilies-planted by previous owners. The yard is so big that I need a 100 times as many plants to have any effect. So I’m trying to propagating perennials and bulbs.

I have dreams of brown-eyed Susans, Maximilian sunflowers, yellow native columbine, and bluebonnets, wine cups and bulbs. I have a long term plan and guess it will be ten years before anyone else can see the yard as I do, as a garden.