Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

I notice Salvia madrensis (Forsythia sage) for the first time last fall when some Austin garden bloggers make a field trip to the San Antonio Botanical garden. I was surprised to see a yellow salvia. I fell in love on the spot. It was blooming in dappled shade so I thought maybe I could grow it. When Renee (Renee’s Roots) heard I wanted one, she shared a plant from her garden.

I plant it in a new bed by the driveway with another acquisition from that trip, an Italian stone pine from Dan Hosage’s Madrone Nursery.

2009-11-19. Plant the passalong from Renee.

I protect it during freezes and it survives even Austin’s big freeze in January 2010. After that, however, I get careless and forget to cover it in a later milder freeze. It responds by freezing to the ground. I fear I’ve lost it. During the spring that bed was a mass of Nigella damascena from Lancashire Rose. When the Nigella dies down and I clear it out, I’m happy to see three salvia plants coming up from the roots.

2010-07-12. Three plant sprout from the roots.

Salvia madrensis struggled a bit in our very dry August 2010. Every day its large leaves wilt. I was relieved it was getting only morning light. I baby it with water more than most plants that month.

Now that it’s blooming, I know that it was worth the little extra effort.

2010-11-17. Almost a year later, looking fantastic and producing new sprouts.

Salvia madrensis is said to grow in part to full shade. Just this week, the tree it was growing under was cut back severely resulting in much more sunlight in this spot. In order to help it survive next summer, I’m going to transplant the offsets in another part of the garden. It’s great to find a flower that I like that is happy in shade.

Updates

Dateline: 2011-02-20.
I was afraid I’d lost the Salvia madrensis because (despite being covered) all the fresh new growth that had sprouted after I’d cut down the fading flower stems froze to the ground. Today, scores of little sprouts are coming back from the roots.

Dateline: 2017-07-17
They freeze back in a hard winter and die back in the heat of summer, but they have come back reliably every spring and fall.

Carol at May Dreams Gardens invites us to tell her what’s blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.

November 15, 2010

The day began gray and gloomy, real November weather. Mid-afternoon it finally cleared a little but the chill remained. We built our first fire of the season tonight.

Lots of forward-thinking Austinites are scurrying around preparing for our first frost. One of the earliest freezes in recent years was on November 17, 2005. I’m hoping this will be the warm, dry winter forecast; I have a lot of tomatoes hanging in the balance. The ‘Gold Rush Currant’ tomatoes open scores of flowers every day even though I pinch them back daily.

The leaves of most of the trees are beginning to turn. They aren’t dropping off fast enough to suit me, though. I’m anxious for the leaves to drop, so I can clean up, and plant my meadow flowers out.

Almost everything flowering today is new for this month. The Pacific chrysanthemum and the butterfly weed started opening today.

Pacific chrysanthemum, Ajania pacifica

Scarlet milkweed, Asclepias curassavica

The ‘Elves Blend’ sunflowers are in full bloom now. So is one wild sunflower. I planted another variety for fall but it hasn’t bloomed yet. Last year, Austin got its first freeze before the sunflowers opened.

Elves Blend sunflower, Helianthus annuus

I planted some other flowers for fall color but I forgot how bad the shade is still in November. The zinnias and cosmos were a complete failure.

The rest of today’s flowers were brought to me by other Austin garden bloggers. The white cat’s whiskers are a passalong from Robin at Getting Grounded.

Cat’s whiskers, Orthosiphon stamineus

The stunning Salvia madrensis is a passalong from Renee at Renee’s Roots.

Salvia madrensis

And now in its second year, the Mexican mint marigold is a passalong from Annie at The Transplantable Rose.

Mexican mint marigold, Tagetes lucida

November 15, 2010

The list of all plants flowering today, November 15th 2009, at Zanthan Gardens.

• Abelia grandiflora (2010)
• Ajania pacifica (2010)
• Aloe ‘Grassy Lassie’ (2010)
• Antigonon leptopus (2010) almost all gone to seed
• Antirrhinum majus (2010) rebloom, survived summer
• Asclepias curassavica (2010)
• Dianthus ‘Fandango Crimson’ (2010)
• Duranta erecta (2010)
• Galphimia glauca (2010)
• Helianthus annuus ‘Elves Blend’ (2010) wild
• Helianthus annuus (2010) wild
• Lantana montevidensis (2010)
• Lantana ‘New Gold’ (2010)
• Nerium oleander (2010)
• Nierembergia gracilis ‘Starry Eyes’ (2010)
• Orthosiphon stamineus (2010)
• Pandorea ricasalonia (2010)
• Parkinsonia aculeata, Retama (2010)
• rose ‘Blush Noisette’ (2010)
• rose ‘New Dawn’ (2010)
• rose ‘Red Cascade’ (2010)
• rosemary (2010)
• Salvia madrensis (2010)
• Setcresea (both purple and green) (2010)
• Tagetes lucida (2010)
• tomato (2010)

Thanks to rains through July this year, a lot of self sown Datura inoxia (I think) sprouted. Most of these were seedlings from plants passed along from Diana at Sharing Nature’s Garden. One of the plants she gave me survived two winters in the ground. It didn’t even die back in the warm winter of 2008/9. However, it froze to the ground in the severe freeze of January 2010. I wasn’t too disappointed because it had sown plenty of seed. I knew there would be no shortage of plants this summer. I was very surprised, though, when it came back from its roots.

In October, I was watering when I noticed a lovely lemon scent. I followed my nose to this datura. None of the other datura flowers had a scent. I looked more carefully and noticed that the flowers on this one plant were larger and that the petals curved back at the lip.

2010-10-04. The lemon-scented flower.

The flowers on the other datura plants did not open as fully and the petals didn’t curl back as much.

2010-10-04. The unscented flower.

The leaves were different, too. The leaves of the scented datura were much wider at the base. The leaves of the unscented datura were more lanceolate.

As the seedpods formed, I could see more differences.

The seeds from the scented plant were fat, round globes. When they split to drop their seeds, the bottom fell out of the globe.

The pods from the unscented plant were more elongated, more egg-shaped. When they split to drop their seeds, the four sides curled back like a banana skin.

The seeds inside differed as well. The seeds from the unscented flowers (left) were smaller and slightly darker brown than the seeds from the lemon scented flowers (right).

I’m not that surprised to discover a lemon-scented datura in my garden. Ten years ago I bought seeds for Datura metel ‘Belle Blanche’ because it was described as having the scent of lemon chiffon pie.

Note: Wikipedia says that Datura metel has fruits that are “knobby, not spiny”. Both of these seedpods look pretty spiny to me. So I’m still not sure I can tell the difference between Datura inoxia and Datura metel. And I don’t know where Datura meteloides comes into it. But at least I can see the difference between these two datura in my garden. If my eyes fail me, the nose knows.

Update: March 1, 2011

The lemon-scented datura is sprouting back from its roots after freezing to the ground during Austin’s two hard freezes in February 2011.

Update: April 5, 2011

First flower.

Do you have a signature plant? I always thought oxblood lilies were mine but quite a few people have told me that when they think of Zanthan Gardens, they think of larkspur. I grow a lot of larkspur because it grows itself. If larkspur put out a resume, it could justifiably claim, “independent self-starter and good team player.” Larkspur is a rampant self-sower (hundreds of free plants every year) and yet it has no bad, weedy or invasive habits. It blooms and is gone.

I picked up a packet of larkspur from Wildseed Farms the first spring I began my meadow. I didn’t know anything about larkspur. I’m not sure I’d even seen it growing. Larkspur is native to Europe, not Texas so it’s not a plant you see in roadside wildflower plantings. It has a long taproot and so isn’t a good candidate for a six-pack at the big box store either. So why was I drawn to larkspur? Credit Nancy Drew.

My introduction to larkspur was as a child in one of my favorite Nancy Drew volumes, The Password to Larkspur Lane. Ever since, I’ve associated larkspur with old-fashioned, slightly run-down mansion grounds full of mystery and perhaps a little danger.

Larkspur is the distinguishing characteristic which enables Nancy to find the hideout in the woods where the bad guys carry out their evil plans. Thinking about it now, it’s a good thing that the mystery presented itself to Nancy at the right time of year or she never seen the larkspur or found the mansion.

Nancy, who is always best at anything she tries, is an avid gardener in this book. It begins with her in the garden, cutting larkspur for “the annual midsummer flower show held for charity each year at the estate of some wealthy River Heights resident.”

“Why do they call them larkspurs?” Tommy demanded.
“I don’t know, I must admit,” Mr. Drew replied. “Nancy is the gardener. Perhaps she can tell you.”
“Why, I don’t know either,” Nancy exclaimed. “They are also called delphiniums, and I know why that is their name. They were the favorite flowers used by the Greeks to decorate the altar of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Larkspur is a quaint name, but I can’t figure out why it was given the flowers.”

If only the 1932 Nancy Drew had had access to Wikipedia which explains, that the spur on the back of the flower resembles the spurred claw of the lark. It’s also called lark’s claw or knight’s spur.

What Nancy calls larkspur, however, seems to be delphiniums. Larkspur has a fine, feather leaf compared to delphinium. Delphinium is perennial; larkspur, annual. As such, larkspur is sometimes regarded as the poor cousin to delphinium. Cheap and easy-to-grow larkspur is the flower of poor cottagers while perennial delphinium graces the more stately houses.

This year I’ve experimented with how I use larkspur in the garden. Rather than just plant it in drifts in the meadow, I created a new bed (where the front lawn died last year). The beds are rectangular and formal and the only thing growing in them are larkspur. These larkspur were all grown from saved seeds and transplanted into rows. There are almost 400 plants. Despite the more formal setting, the larkspur manages to look blowsy, wild and free. And that’s what I love about it.

I like to try new ornamental sunflower varieties every year. No matter how the breeders try to “improve” sunflowers, they remain an unfussy, straightforward flower. There’s something very egalitarian about sunflowers. This fall I was attracted to ‘Elves Blend’ (from Botanical Interests) because it was advertised as a dwarf variety, growing only 16-24 inches tall.

I planted them on September 13th in one of my future larkspur beds. I planned on them blooming in the fall to provide some interest until I could get the larkspur planted. Then after the sunflowers were felled by freeze, I’d put the larkspur seedlings in. I completely miscalculated when the leaves would fall. Here it is two months later, the leaves are still on the trees, and the sunflowers are in shade most of the day.

This is probably why they are only 6 to 12 inches tall! They aren’t happy but they’re trying their darnedest.They began blooming on Halloween.

If you like sunflowers but feel like you just don’t have the space for huge towering ones, ‘Elves Blend’ is just the ticket.

Friday Followup

This is one in a series of followup posts. We bloggers often write hopefully about new garden projects; I always want to know, “So how did it turn out?”

Dateline: May 4, 2008

Last Friday Vertie invited me along on her first trip to pick up recycled glass that the City of Austin has made available free to customers who want to use it as decorative mulch, for lining French drains, or to create a drainage layer under a raised bed.

I had seen pelleted glass mulch at the Springs Preserve and on the Travis County Master Gardeners tour and was interested in trying it–especially for free. The City of Austin doesn’t separate the glass by color so what you get is a mosaic of brown, green, and clear glass with the occasional blue shard and a lot of sand mixed in.

When we first saw it, we were both a bit surprised and disappointed. It seemed to be more sand than glass. We were told that over time the larger pieces rise to the top and the sand to the bottom. The photo below is how it looks two months later.

Although the glass has been tumbled in sand, there are still sharp edges. I hesitate to use it anywhere I’d have to weed and dig later (especially since I don’t wear gloves). I think in the future I will use it primarily in places I need to create good drainage.

The decorative glass mulch smells like a stale garbage can. A good rain should wash the scent and sand away.

How long do you think this will stay weed and leaf-free? At least when the revelers walking up from concerts at Auditorium Shores throw their beer bottles in my yard, it will blend in with the landscaping.

2008-07-05. The morning after Fourth of July celebrations at Auditorium Shores.

Followup: October 29, 2010

2008-05-02. I decided to put this batch along the front walk where I tore out the Spanish bayonets last January. I weeded the area and then put down weed blocker cloth before pouring about 3 inches of glass mulch on top. The yard drops sharply at one end and I rearranged the chunks of concrete I recycled when we remodelled our kitchen on the slope.

2009-05-03. A year later. The sand has settled and the large glass pieces risen to the top. I’m happily surprised that it does not collect leaves as much as rock mulch does. Generally it stays much cleaner looking.

2009-12-22. The agave is one of the most beautifully shaped ones in my yard. In the background, some recently-planted opuntia is already getting out of hand and flopping. Bluebonnet seedlings are salad plate sized.

2010-03-21. We had so much rain this fall and winter that the bluebonnets were spectacular. However, the agave was heavily damaged by the massive freeze Austin had in January 2010. It looks terrible and I’m so disappointed.

2010-10-03. The agave has recovered from the freeze damage ten months ago far better than I expected. The opuntia has grown and I’m now struggling to weed around the plants, put weed barrier down, put glass mulch around them. I know it’s much easier to put the weed barrier down first (really!); I just didn’t think the opuntia would be a permanent planting.

To sum up my experience, I like recycled glass mulch a lot. I’m no longer afraid of cutting myself on it. I use it to top off a lot of my potted plants. It has worn well and looks good even after a couple of years–which I can’t say for any other mulch, not even granite sand or decorative rock mulch.

How to Get Glass Mulch in Austin

Note: The location has changed since my original post.

“Color-mixed processed glass aggregate. Generated from the sorting of commingled materials picked up from the City of Austin’s curbside recycling program. Contaminants: Approx. 5%; includes paper and caps.”

1. Check out the website.

The City of Austin has moved the glass mulch from the Burleson Road location to the FM 821 Resource Recovery Center (south of ABIA). The city will load the glass mulch into a pickup for $9.64 per ton (no cash or credit cards, checks only). You can load it yourself for free.

2. If you are self-loading, be prepared.

Vertie and I brought every bucket and plastic container we could load into her car, our own shovels, and gloves. We brought a couple of containers that were almost too large for us to lift out of her car together when they were filled. Wet sand and glass is heavy! Also, we both foolishly wore our gardening Crocs. Wear tough boots! There is lots of large pieces of sharp glass all over the loading area.

3. Check in on arrival.

You will be asked to sign a waiver before entering the landfill.

Are butterflies like sergeants? the more stripes they have the higher their rank? From the top, to me this Queen butterfly looks like a Monarch stripped of its black veining. Both were all over the white mistflower, Eupatorium wrightii, with a score of other smaller butterflies and many bees.

On October 16, 2010, we visited the six gardens on The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program in Austin, Texas.

The two gardens on the 2010 tour which, based on their descriptions, one could assume were the most alike ended up being the most different, visually and emotionally. Both are built on steep hillsides west of Austin. Both are gardens of means, obviously expensive to build and maintain. Both are filled with unique collections of garden ornaments. Both contain extensive hardscaping and terraces. Both have swimmng pools. Both have outdoor living spaces where one can imagine serving cocktails to elegantly dressed guests. Yet, to me, the David-Peese garden feels personal and intimate. The Jones garden feels impersonal and public. Why is that? I studied my photos to see if I could figure out the differences.

The David-Peese Garden

This was my third visit to the David-Peese garden. AJM and I arrived a little early and were ushered in and given the opportunity to speak to James David a few moments before the tour opened. He said that, like many Austinites, they had lost trees to the drought and that he was replanting with more water-wise plants.

Although the largest garden on the tour, the David-Peese garden is intimate; it draws your gaze inward and pulls you into it. The garden is filled with hidden delights.

Even the most formal plantings have a wonderful sense of rhythm and motion to them. These curvy box hedges look like whimsical doodles. I love the tension between the straight formal line and the curves. It reminds me of dancers lining up for the Virginia reel.

All this stone and gray concrete could have felt heavy and lifeless. The narrow limestone steps flow down the hillside like a mountain rivulet.

For the most part, the David-Peese garden completely ignores conventional garden wisdom about building wide paths where people can walk two abreast. I think a great deal of the intimacy comes that the paths are narrow and winding. A fresh discovery is waiting around every bend in the path.

The hardscaping forms an impressive foundation. The forms and the weight are so beautifully proportioned that they support but never distract from the planting.

Most gardeners self-identify either as plant collectors or spatial designers. The David-Peese garden is one of those rare gardens which excels in both. The spaces from every angle are so balanced and harmonic and alive. However, the plants are never treated as just living filler, the “green element”, of the design. The garden shelters so many cool, wonderful, unique plants that it would take days to see and learn about each one of them. I’m glad one of my favorite trees survived the drought.

The Jones Garden

The Jones Garden is situated on a hill which overlooks Austin and the Colorado River. With the a view like that, it’s little wonder that the garden is used to frame the view, to draw the eye out and beyond.

What a place to party! However, as a rather introverted, inward-looking person, I’m much more attracted to the promise of secret gardens.

I love the idea of something hidden around just out of sight.

AJM was drawn to this soapstone urn and the way it caught the morning light. My eye travelled immediately to the planting and I was disappointed. It would have been better with no flowers at all than half-wilted mums from a big box store. (They looked worse in real life than in this photo.)

We continued down the bend in the path, past the greenhouse and into the swimming pool area. I felt that the promise of my secret path had fizzled. We exited around the back of the house, and then….

…a walled garden. I gasped with delight at that curve of green. Unfortunately the sun was just coming over the house and the contrast between light and shadows meant I couldn’t get a good photograph. This little garden was circles and curves punctuated with a beautiful round pond in the center. The room that overlooks the garden must see nothing but cool, green relief in Austin’s horrible summers. Oh! How I dream of a 20 foot wall of green!

However, I just can’t connect to this garden emotionally. The spaces are attractive but they seem impersonal. They remind me of an expensive spa resort.

Carol at May Dreams Gardens invites us to tell her what’s blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.

October 15, 2010

Second fall is firmly entrenched in Austin. As September rolls into October, usually a front will come in from the north and banish the humid Gulf air for a month or six weeks. Then Austin gets a lovely October of intense blue skies, dry air, and temperature ranging from lows in the 50s to highs in the 80s. This has been one of those perfect Octobers; my only complaint is that we didn’t get the prelude of a good long rain. We’ve had a few sprinkles but the last really good rain came with Tropical Storm Hermine at the beginning of September. Hermine dumped six inches of rain all at once and some Austinites got twelve inches or more. It would be nice to spread these rain events out a bit. These are lovely October days but dry, dry, dry. And it’s so cool I become negligent in my watering.

The garden has some fitting golden yellows for October. However it is mostly a jarring clash of reds and pinks at the moment. It was even worse at the beginning of the month before the oxblood lilies and the red spider lilies died down. (And people wonder why I don’t paint my gray cement wall purple.)

Turks cap clashes with coral vine

Ipomoea quamoclit, cypress vine

Dianthus ‘Fandago Crimson’

Ipomoea nil ‘Chocolate’

The package art and description led me to believe that this ‘Chocolate’ morning glory would be a gentle mauve or dainty buff. Not.

Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Dancing Petticoats

I planted some cosmos in the empty larkspur beds thinking I’d get some nice fall color. I always forget that it is too dark for annuals until the pecan tree loses its leaves. This was the only tiny pathetic flower from the entire packet of seeds. All the seeds sprouted but the plants quickly got leggy and died when they were about a foot tall.

The two ‘New Dawn’ roses are covered with flowers. And so is ‘Blush Noisette’. You probably would never guess it from the rest of the garden, but I really prefer these dainty pastel pinks.

Rose ‘New Dawn’

October 15, 2010

The list of all plants flowering today, October 15th 2009, at Zanthan Gardens.

• Abelia grandiflora (2010) full bloom
• Abutilon incanum (2010)
• Antigonon leptopus (2010) full bloom
• Antirrhinum majus (2010) rebloom, survived summer
• Commelina communis (2010)
• Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Dancing Petticoats’ (2010)
• Datura inoxia (2010)
• Dianthus ‘Fandango Crimson’ (2010)
• Duranta erecta (2010)
• Galphimia glauca (2010)
• Helianthus annuus (2010) wild
• Hibiscus syriacus (2010) fading
• Ipomoea nil ‘Chocolate’ (2010)
• Ipomoea quamoclit (2010)
• Lantana ‘New Gold’ (2010)
• Lycoris radiata (2010) last day
• Malvaviscus arboreus (2010)
• Nerium oleander (2010)
• Nierembergia gracilis ‘Starry Eyes’ (2010)
• Oxalis crassipes (2010)
• Oxalis triangularis (2010)
• Pandorea ricasalonia (2010)
• Parkinsonia aculeata, Retama (2010)
• Pavonia hastata (2010)
• Plumbago (2010)
• Polanisia dodecandra (2010) one flower left
• Rivina humilis (pigionberry) (2010)
• rose ‘Blush Noisette’ (2010)
• rose ‘New Dawn’ (2010)
• rose ‘Red Cascade’ (2010)
• rosemary (2010)
• Ruellia (all three) (2010)
• Salvia madrensis (2010)
• Senna lindheimeriana (2010) mostly gone to seed
• Setcresea (both purple and green) (2010)
• tomato (2010)
• Verbena canadensis (lavender wilding) (2010)
• Vitex agnus-castus (2010)
• waterlily ‘Helvola’ (2010)
• Zexmenia hispida (2010)

Carol at May Dreams Gardens invites us to tell her what’s blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.

September 15, 2010

First fall is firmly entrenched in Austin. Given that it’s hot and humid, how do I know summer has surrendered? When I go outside, it doesn’t feel like I’ve stepped into an oven. When I walk down the street, the heat no longer radiates off the sidewalks and buildings. If I’m unable to water the potted plants one day, they don’t immediately die. The plants don’t wilt after ten minutes of direct sunlight. I’m pretty confident if a plant has made it this far it’s survived summer. (I did lose a couple of things the week before the rain: my potted sweet bay and my second ‘Ducher’ rose.)

I’m surprised by people who can’t feel the 15-degree difference between 107° and 92. I’m not going to say it’s pleasant outside but it is bearable. The air is thick with humidity and mosquitoes the result of Tropical Storm Hermine. After an August with only a trace of rain, Hermine answered our prayers with a vengeance. Zanthan Gardens got about 6 inches of rain in one day; other places in Austin got twice that. Flooding ensued. Eight people died (not all in Central Texas).

The oxblood lilies had their day living up to one of their other common names, hurricane lilies. Their fleeting beauty is all but faded today. So the prize for most striking display for GBBD is a toss-up between the Datura inoxia and the Lindheirmer senna. Some of the latter is over six feet tall. I’ve never seen it so tall. It grew a lot during the wet early summer months.

Lindheimers senna

Gardens everywhere in Austin are brimming with Pride of Barbados this year. I’m seduced by the clear orange/yellow combination. Usually I’m not a fan of orange–it has to be the right flower. I’m glad I bought one. I also managed to grow a Pride of Barbados from seed which I planted a couple of years ago. It died back to the ground during the January 2010 freeze but now it is almost as big as the one I bought. It still hasn’t flowered.

Pride of Barbados

Both the golden thryallis plants are flowering as is the ‘Bangkok Yellow” canna which I had to rescue from pond-trashing raccoons. September is a very yellow month at Zanthan Gardens.

Golden thryallis

The garlic chives started flowering very early this year and are still flowering. I planted them to complement the oxblood lilies but they don’t always flower together.

Garlic chives

The vitex, the retama, and the desert willow have all surprised me with flowers today. Even the ‘Catawba’ crape myrtle is reblooming. The coral vine is also pretty happy, sprawling over twenty feet into my neighbor’s cedar elms. A couple of four o’clocks opened, too. The ‘Starry Eyes’ nierembergia has been a winner throughout the summer. I definitely want more.

Nierembergia gracilis ‘Starry Eyes’

After the rain the garden is really just a collection of moderately managed wildflowers. The ruellia (all three types) have taken over the back yard. It’s very obliging. I don’t water or feed it and it grows and grows and grows. Another native plant, scarlet spiderling has been very aggressive this year. I don’t mind it in small doses but this year the plants are huge. The flowers, although a very pretty color, are tiny.

scarlet spiderling

Another native plant that I try not to let get out of control but which has this year is this mallow (maybe Indian mallow, Abutilon incanum). This isn’t a very good photo…it makes it look like horseherb. The flower of the mallow is much larger than that of horseherb; it’s about the size of a penny. It’s also a pretty pale, flat buttery yellow. The mallow is an upright bushy plant; the horseherb is a sprawling ground cover.

mallow

Eventually I’ll get the garden all under control again. Or maybe not.