Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

Dateline: 2009

2009-12-05. Per the Weather Underground: Bouldin station. Hard freeze (28°F or below) from 2AM-8:30AM. Freeze 9:30PM-9:15AM

I felt giddy and full of energy today because of (rather than despite) the hard freeze last night which laid to rest half my garden for the year. The garden was full of fresh greenery and bursting with flowers from this year’s weekly fall rains. My regret at seeing so much die back or die outright lasted only while I took my inventory. What I felt instead was freedom and a sense of new possibilities.

Zanthan Gardens didn’t get a hard freeze at all last year. Back in 2006, I was ready to start the year afresh and wishing that last year’s annuals would Just Die Already. The worst kind of winter we can have in Austin is mild in December and January followed by a big winter storm in February or even March. By then, you’ve spent countless hours covering and uncovering plants and bringing pots in and taking them out again. You’ve babied the garden and pulled it through a few light frost or short freezes and then, wham! an ice storm.

So if Austin is going to have a hard freeze at all this winter, I’m glad it was the first winter storm and not the last one of the season. As @AnnieinAustin remarked, “better swallowed by whale than nibbled to death by minnows!”

Now I can really look forward to my spring garden. It helps that the pecan and persimmon trees dropped all their leaves in a matter of hours. (Quite a few Austinites tweeted about this phenomenon this morning.) The front yard is back to being in full sun and I can transplant my larkspur seedlings. The Port St. Johns creeper which smothered the back fence, the grape, a ‘New Dawn’ rose, and a stand of yucca can be pulled out.

I’m still assessing the damage so I’ll be updating this list. Sometimes, it takes several days for freeze damage to become apparent.

Killed
basil, cosmos, datura, tomato

Damage on some growth
aloe vera, amaryllis, jalapeño, Meyer lemon (covered), Salvia madrensis (covered),

2009-12-05. Although frost tolerant to 22°F, the Meyer lemon showed damaged to new, tender growth even though it was covered.

Died back
fig, banana trees, coral vine, cypress vine, duranta, elephant ears, kalanchoe, Port St. Johns creeper, purple Wandering Jew, turks cap,

Not affected
asparagus fern, cilantro, larkspur, lavender, love-in-a-mist, oregano, parsley, roses, sage (culinary and Jerusalem), sweet alyssum, snapdragons,
Read the rest of this entry »

I love white flowers. In the heat of summer, they look so crisp and refreshing like wealthy women who never sweat in their white gloves and linen dresses. In Austin’s summer, it’s hard to be out in the garden when the sun is. White flowers, which reflect the most light, make wonderful twilight or moonlight gardens.

Marigolds are one of the easiest heat-tolerant annuals available. They are so easy to grow that they are often included on plant lists for children’s gardens. And they make good companion plants in the vegetable garden because the distinctive smell of the leaves throws off the bugs looking for tomatoes and other goodies.

If bluebonnets can come in colors other than blue, can’t marigolds come in colors other than gold? (Clearly the marketing name for screaming orange). I’m not the first gardener to wish for a white marigold. Others have been obsessed by the idea. For over 20 years Burpee offered a $10,000 prize to the breeder of a white marigold. 80,000 people tried for the prize. In 1975 Burpee awarded it to Alice Vonk. They called the new marigold ‘Snowbird’.

Garden History

2009-01-11
Tweeted @MargaretRoach that I always wanted to try white marigolds but that I wasn’t sure about ordering seeds from Burpee.

2009-02-28
Receive a packet o white marigold seeds from Pinetree Garden Seeds a gift from @indygardener who says life is too short not to try what you want to try.

Seed packet description: Vanilla white 2″ flowers on 18″ tall plant.

2009-03-20
Plant the marigold seeds in a flat of 2″x2″ cells.

2009-03-24
Marigold seeds sprout. (4 days). Almost every seed sprouted.

2009-04-19
Plant out 9 marigold plants. Out of 24 which sprouted, 15 damped off. I plant these marigold in prime garden real estate next to my tomatoes. This raised bed is filled with bought soil from the Natural Gardener and gets a lot of sunlight with some afternoon shade. Because I water the tomatoes every day, I’m reminded to water the marigolds.

2009-04-23
Pillbugs eat 2 of the marigold plants, leaving 7.

In May, we go to San Francisco for several days. When we return, only 5 plants have survived the heat without being watered. In September, we are gone for another week and on our return only 2 plants have survived. In the drenching rains that follow the penultimate plant dies, leaving a lone survivor. It is about 20 inches tall but has fallen on its side. Along the horizontal stem, new growth and buds spring. But the buds never seem to open.

2009-12-03. The remaining plant on its side.

2009-11-12
I send @indygardener a photo of a bud I hope will open for GBBD. It doesn’t.

2009-11-23
The first bud which has almost formed a flower opens, although some petals are dwarfed or missing. It is not a clear white or even pale ivory (or vanilla, as the seed packet describes it, which I assume means it is supposed to be a bit yellowish). It is a greenish tint.

2009-12-03. More than a week later, this first bloom finally looks white.

2009-12-03
The first flower which opened finally looks white. New opening flowers still look greenish yellow. Tomorrow (12/4) a possibility of snow is forecast for Austin and then by Saturday morning we will flirt with our first hard freeze with temperatures around 28°F. So I despite half a dozen buds, I think this is the last day for white marigolds.

2009-12-03. The remaining buds will probably never get a chance to open.

In Other People’s Gardens

Carol @ May Dreams Gardens (aka @indygardener) also planted some ‘Kilimanjaro’ marigolds.

A contributor to Dave’s Garden had a negative rating for ‘Kilimanjaro’. Even though she grew them in Madison, WI she experienced many of the same problems I did.

If Austin has received good fall rains, then by November my yard is filled with the first grassy green leaves of false dayflowers. The color is a young, spring green so bright and cheerful that it seems at odds with the season.

False dayflower is a beautiful, but generally uncultivated, member of the Commelinaceae family which includes spiderwort, wandering Jew, and the true, perennial day flower (widow’s tears). Seeds for false dayflower arrived in my garden in a bag of leaves that I collected for mulch. I’m glad they did because their 5-inch tufts of bright green foliage which appear in late fall, brighten the winter garden.

2009-11-12. The bright green leaves of false dayflower glow when they catch the sunlight.

Its habit is very similar to its relative, the spiderwort. I consider them far superior to spiderwort because they are shallow-rooted, easy to remove from any spot where they’re not wanted, and have more arresting flowers.

False dayflowers form grass-like drifts that disappear in the first heat of summer. Although they self-sow with the vigor of weeds, they are not rank. They are very shallow-rooted and easy to remove from any place that they are not wanted. They require absolutely no attention and make wonderful filler plants, especially on the edges of shady areas. The seeds sprout in moist soil covered with mulch.

2009-11-19. False dayflower massed next to purple heart–another relative.

They are also quite attractive as single plants.

2009-11-19.

With spring rains the flower spathes shoot up a foot or more and the funny-faced flowers float like pale blue butterflies. Normally, the petals are a solid lavender blue, but occasionally a bitone flower will appear. I’ve selected the bitones seeds over the years and now about 80 per cent of the flowers in my yard are bitoned.

2004-03-14. Two colors of false dayflowers growing among purple spiderwort. (Blooming more typically in March.)

I have never seen false dayflower or its seeds for sale. The Wildflower Center had plants at their Spring 2010 sale. I felt sorry for anyone who bought them because they were near the end of their lives and looked unlikely to flower and set seeds. I don’t know anyone else who grows them on purpose. They are weeds. But what wonderful weeds! They are endemic to central Texas so I can grow them without guilt.

Previously, the earliest that false dayflower had bloomed in my garden was December 7, 2001. However, this year it is already blooming. The first flower was October 28th.

Update: 2012-03-15

Related

Wildflower Center: Native Plant Database: Tinantia anomala (The botanists are playing with names again. I say commelinantia because it took me such a long time to learn to spell it. And because it belongs to the Commelinaceae (Spiderwort) family.

We Austin gardeners are living in heady times. The last two winters have been very mild. Last year I didn’t even get a killing freeze in my garden (although I know others in who Austin did). As a result, plants that usually die back to the ground–like the duranta and the Port St. Johns creeper–kept growing and flowering year around. Tender perennials that we treat as annuals–such a jalapeno pepper–demonstrated that they are indeed perennials. My aloe vera that I planted outside has survived three winters and grown and flowered. It produces so many pups and is so heat and drought tolerant that I keep planting it all over the garden. And worse, I’ve started collecting its cousins. There are 400 species of aloe and dozens of different ones are available in Austin nurseries. Some are reputed to be hardy but aloe vera is not. So far the aloe vera has reacted to the cold by turning slightly red but recovered quickly.

Aloe vera. I planted these in 2006. Since then they’ve doubled in size, multiplied, and flowered.

The aloe vera was only the beginning. Last winter I got tired of lugging plants I could barely carry into the house when a freeze threatened only to lug them back out again a couple of days later when temperatures returned to the 70s. So, I planted them out in the garden, too. If Austin gets several hard freezes this year will it be the end of my lemon tree, my cut leaf philodendron, two different kinds of asparagus fern, and my kalanchoe?

The kalanchoe is forming new buds. These will turn to mush in a freeze.

Why do I keep buying new frost-sensitive plants like the allspice bush and the Natal plum?

As I continue planting (Austinites do most of our planting in the autumn so that our plants can have a chance to establish themselves before our deadly summer), I keep wondering if we aren’t headed for a reversal of fortune. We’ve been riding a non-freeze plant survival wave, living recklessly based on short-term memories. The forecast for this El Niño winter is colder than normal.

Established plants have responded to Austin’s recent rains after our two year drought as if it were spring. Several normally spring-blooming plants are flowering now and everything is putting out new growth. Even in normal years, many of our plants don’t go dormant and our ground never freezes. I often have roses in bloom at Christmas. Although on average Austin has a dozen nights of freezing temperatures, these nights are interspersed with days in the 60s, 70s, and even 80s. (If you delight in statistics, see the freeze dates at Camp Mabry between 1997 and 2006.)

Earlier this week, November 17th, the National Weather Service issued its first freeze warning for parts of our county. This should not have surprised us. The average is first freeze is December 2nd and as recently as 2005, our first freeze was also November 17th.

If the garden is unprepared and vulnerable, I think Austin gardeners are even more so. On Twitter, our responses fell into one of three camps: those who hurriedly covered plants and brought them inside, those who decided their plants were just going to have to tough it out, and those who gambled that while a freeze might hit other parts of Travis County, our micro-climate was probably safe. I was in the latter group and I won my bet with the weather. This time.

I need to get prepared. When it comes to Austin weather, anything can happen. In 1980, on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, it snowed.

November 15, 2009

This last month has been one of the most beautiful in memory, its perfection lulling us into a glowing sense of “God! Isn’t it wonderful to live here in central Texas.” Rain. Rain. Rain. And then a month of dew-kissed mornings when we never got the hose out once and only watered seedlings and new transplants with the bounty in our rain barrels.

The overwintering annuals have filled in making it look more like March than November. The false dayflower is already flowering.

Commelinantia anomala. The common solid blue false day flower has an endearing face, too.

Henbit, chickweed, and dandelions–the early winter weeds (or tonic herbs depending on your point of view)–are also getting a head start on sprouting and blooming. It’s odd to think that our first freeze is due within three weeks when the whole garden is insisting we’re already into spring.

Another March flowerer, cilantro, is about to bolt. I hope this counts as a bonus fall crop and that we get a second crop in spring. Even the spring-flowering Jerusalem sage threw out a few flowers on one bush.

The fall flowers, brilliant with fall yellows and oranges, are in full bloom. With the flowers, the butterflies returned.

Asclepias curassavica.

As did swarms of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes love to be in the garden in the late afternoon at the same time I otherwise find it most pleasant to work. Very discouraging. The garden is buzzing with bees, too. They especially like the coral vine, the basil, and the orange cosmos. The cosmos is in full bloom right now. Unfortunately it is a uniform orange, unlike previous years. It and the pink Port St. John’s Creeper account for almost all the color in the back yard.

Cosmos sulphureus.

All month the roses have been in full bloom. The ‘New Dawn’ rose by the front fence has flowered more and longer than ever before. So has ‘Red Cascade’ which looks like it has finally decided to do something (take over the world?) after years of lying sleepily along the ground. In the back yard, ‘Ducher’ collapsed under its own weight and then sent out a lot of additional new growth from the bent canes. In short, it pegged itself.

Rose ‘Ducher’. Linen white and lemon scented.

Rose ‘Red Cascade’. Tiny flowers on rambling rose that wants to be a groundcover.

Rose ‘Prosperty’. From bud, to faded flower on stem…like a timelapse photo of itself.

Rose ‘Blush Noisette’.

‘Mermaid’ has been blooming this last month, just not today. Only ‘Souvenir del Malmaison’ and ‘Madame Alfred Carriere’, which are still in the shade of a red oak, have not flowered.

The vines have set out to smother the yard, especially the kudzu-like Port St. John’s creeper which is following the coral vine’s leap into the trees. The cypress vine has grown into a flopsy mopsy tangle at the top of its trellis. One surviving morning glory puts out a unique striated flower every other day or so.

Pavonia hastata. A single pale pavonia flower struggles to open. I prefer it to its cousin the solid pink, Texas native, rock rose, Pavonia lasiopetala.

In the winter vegetable garden, the parsnips are flowering. The leaves are only just beginning to fall from the pecans today so the newly planted lettuce and other salad greens are struggling in the shade and getting leggy or eaten by pill bugs. The jalapeno is flowering and has peppers on it. One self-sown tomatillo is flowering but the other two which sprouted died so can’t cross-pollinate and set fruit.

Complete List for November

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

• Ajania pacifica (2009)
• Antigonon leptopus (2009)
• Asclepias curassavica (2009)
• Aster ericoides (2009)
• basil (2009)
• Callisia repens (2009)
• Calytocarpus vialis (2009) hated horseherb
• Commelina communis (2009)
• Commelinantia anomala (2009)
• Cosmos sulphureus (2009)
• Datura inoxia (2009)
• Dolichos lablab (2009)
• Duranta erecta (2009): overwintered and bloomed all summer
• Eupatorium wrightii (2009): fading
• Galphimia gracilis (2009)
• henbit (2009)
• Ipomoea quamoclit (2009)
• jalapeno (2009)
• Lagerstroemia indica ‘Catawba’ (2009): one flower; leaves browning–not changing color
• Lavandula heterophylla ‘Goodwin Creek’ (2009)
• Lobularia maritima ‘Tiny Tim’ (2009) survived the summer
• Malvaviscus arboreus (2009)
• Mirabilis jalapa pink (2009)
• Nerium oleander ‘Turner’s Shari D.’ (2009): fading
• Oxalis crassipis (2009)
• Oxalis triangularis, purple (2009)
• parsnips (2009)
• Pavonia hastata (2009)
• Podranea ricasoliana (2009)
• Polanisia dodecandra (2009)
• rose ‘Blush Noisette’ (2009)
• rose ‘Ducher’ (2009): so heavy with new growth and flowers that it’s sprawling
• rose ‘New Dawn’ (2009): both plants
• rose ‘Prosperity’ (2009)
• rose ‘Red Cascade’ (2009)
• rosemary (2009)
• Setcreasea (2009) both purple and green
• Solanum jasminoides (2009)
• tomatillo (2009)
• Tagetes lucida (2009)
• Thymophylla tenuiloba (2009)
• Zexmenia hispida (2009)

While on a the Austin garden blogger field trip to the Madrone Nursery, the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, and the Antique Rose Emporium, yesterday, at the latter I came across this lovely rose ‘Happenstance’.

‘Happenstance’ is the miniature version of ‘Mermaid’ (which I grow). ‘Mermaid’ is a rambunctious rambler, and in my garden has snaked up through several trees making many visitors do a double-take when they see her flowers blooming through very non-rose foliage.

‘Mermaid’ is renowned for her thorns and ‘Happenstance’ shares this family trait. However, ‘Happenstance’ is a comparitively small, dense (although equally thorny) bush. The leaves are much smaller than ‘Mermaid’ but just as glossy and bright green. The flowers are only slightly smaller. So if you like the large, flat creamy flowers of ‘Mermaid’ but don’t have room for a house-eating rambling rose, ‘Happenstance’ seems to be the solution.

Rose ‘Mermaid’. The difference in color is primarily a result of the lighting. Mermaid is a creamy ivory, not yellow, rose.

This is the first time I’ve written a plant profile on a plant I haven’t grown. When, I saw ‘Happenstance’ I knew that I would grow it someday…just as soon as I find a sunny spot.

Mother of thousands, Kalanchoe daigremontiana, is described as an annual succulent that will not survive a frost. For years, I kept this native of southwest Madagascar potted and moved it indoors any time we had a freeze warning. Last winter, it got too big for me to carry in and out and I left it outside. Although others in Austin experienced hard freezes, my neighborhood just south of Lady Bird Lake apparently did not. Old stands of mother of thousands bloomed up and down my street.

2009-03-10. A well established stand of Kalanchoe daigremontiana in a neighbor’s garden.

When taking photos for GBBD last January, I noticed that buds were forming on my potted plant.

2009-01-15. Anticipation.

It had never bloomed before and I was excited. It took almost six weeks for the flowers to open fully; however, it remained in flower for months. Flowering does not necessarily happen annually. The conditions must have been just right in Austin last winter because I’d never seen it in flower before, mine had never flowered before, but I suddenly saw it flowering everywhere.

2009-03-20. Kalanchoe daigremontiana.

My kalanchoe tolerated full sun even in this hot, dry year. It was fairly drought tolerant. I watered it when it looked reddish and sunburnt but I didn’t have to baby it. When it began to rain and cool down, the leaves became greener and plumper. I would say that its growing requirements are similar to Aloe vera. It’s tempting to want to plant both because they are great structural plants that can take Austin’s punishing summers. They’ve survived the warmer than normal winters we’ve had in 2007 and 2008. However, 2009 is supposed to be colder than average–plants which have recently thrived may be in for a killer surprise.

2009-11-06. Kalanchoe daigremontiana. All the green around the pot are baby plants.

Fortunately this kalanchoe is aptly named mother of thousands. The edges of the leaves are covered with plantlets which drop off and root. I got my start by taking a few leaves and sprinkling the plantlets into the pot containing another plant. Sure enough they sprouted and pretty soon took over the pot. Now they’ve sprouted all around the pot

2009-02-09. Kalanchoe daigremontiana.

The stems also flop over and root. I’ve read that the cuttings must be kept dry to root but I haven’t tried that yet because when the rains finally arrived this fall hundreds of little plantlets fell from the leaves and took root around the mother plant and even quite far away wherever the rainwater had washed them.

I’m potting them up to take inside over the winter as a backup in case the mother plants freeze. If you’re an Austin gardener and want some, let me know.

Pronunciation: kalənˈkō-ē, that is the “ch” is pronounce like a “k”. “ko-ee”, not “cho”.

Last weekend, I had the privilege of touring some wonderful Central Texas gardens. Not only did I admire plants and plantings, I was inspired by the creativity of all our hosts and encouraged by what they had accomplished themselves on regular-sized lots. These were very personal gardens, each reflecting the unique vision of its gardener.

I’m always astonished at the courage gardeners hosting tours show inviting hundreds of strangers to tramp through their gardens. Even the most respectful visitors are bound to cause a certain amount of damage, grinding the lawn underfoot, walking into beds to snap photos and trampling on plants. I can only guess at the months of preparation required and the worry about the weather. These gardens had to survive two years of drought, one of Austin’s hottest summers ever, and then a sudden deluge of rain before the tour. I don’t think I could do it.

So, when Linda Lehmusvirta, the producer of Central Texas Gardener, asked me if she could film my garden last April 1st, I was dubious. Aside, from wondering if my garden blogger friends had put her up to an elaborate April Fool’s Day joke, I’ve seen the gardens featured on Central Texas Gardens. Some of them I’ve visited in life. Many of them are designed by landscape architects, or by people who write garden books, or by avid plant collectors active in various plant societies. You know, real gardeners. Me? I’m just a putterer who likes working in the garden and writing about it.

Besides, Linda had never seen my garden. Did she understand that it was just a messy collection of plants that had no structure or design, no interesting hardscapes, no garden rooms, no places to sit, no fountains or ornaments? Did she know my one major construction project had left a scar through my garden and a pile of building materials stacked on one side. Did she realize that I’d let the front lawn die during the drought and lost half my roses? Did she know that Zanthan Gardens is basically a one season garden and that most of the year it looks pretty unprepossessing? I invited her to come and preview it before making a decision to feature it. I just knew she would show up with her camera crew and be disappointed.

But Linda has something something gardeners wish all visitors had. She intuits the spirit of a garden and comprehends the intention of the gardener. Most gardeners don’t see their gardens in the present. We see its possibilities.Those 3-inch tall seedling, we see in full flower. We also know the entire cycle of bloom in our garden. We remember those nondescript Mexicans plums covered in the first white blossoms of the year. Gardeners know how to unsee, too. We look past a weedy spot because we know that next week we’re going to pull those weeds and edge that bed and plant it out. Our inner gardening eye skips over the weeds, the bare spots in the lawn, the tools left out, and the unswept walks.

In garden visit etiquette we are told it’s a no-no to say, “Oh too bad you didn’t come last week, when the tulips were in full bloom.” or “If you had only waited until next week, when the larkspur had filled out a bit more.” We can’t help ourselves. Gardeners are tormented by the one-time visitor. A photograph–that rigid snapshot in time–imprisons the garden. A garden is a living thing, ever-changing in the flow of time. Of course, I do take advantage of those fleeting moments of perfection. Every day I find new compositions in the garden to write about and photograph. But what’s there one day is gone the next and if you visit my garden, you’ll find it a very different place than the garden on this blog. It’s the contrast between the ideal and the real.

It takes a special kind of person to see more than what’s there, to understand the underlying intentions of the gardener, to see what is meant to be. Linda is one of those special people. I’m glad that you get to see my garden through her eyes.

Update: October 29, 2009

After our month of rain, roses all over Austin are blooming in profusion. I see ‘Knockout’ roses on every corner. I’m not a fan of their cherry red color so I don’t have any. I much prefer the baby pink of my old-fashioned ‘Blush Noisette’.

‘Blush Noisette’ has survived both the 2006 and 2008/9 droughts and seems as happy as ever. However, 2009 was the first summer that it didn’t bloom much. I kept watering it and cut back some of the old growth to the ground. When the fall rains came, it tripled in size and this week has begun blooming profusely.

It has not quite reached the size or number of flowers that it did in rainy 2007 but it’s getting there. If you live where the water is plentiful, it will thrive. If you don’t, it will survive happily, not just grudgingly.

April 23, 2007. This is the biggest ‘Blush Noisette’ has ever gotten.

The best thing about the fall bloom is that dry cool weather alternates with the rains–and so the flowers haven’t succumbed to their usual tendency to ball.

Dateline: November 9, 2003

‘Blush Noisette’ has a baby powder fragrance that wafts on the breeze. It’s the only rose I have which surprises me with unexpected whiffs of scent that I can smell even if I’m digging weeds 10 feet away. In my garden, it’s is in bloom more than any other rose, even in the heat of summer.

The pale pink flowers bloom in little nosegays. Unfortunately they don’t open at once. And the individual blossoms frequently ball (turn brown before opening as shown in the photo below). They don’t seem to ball in wet weather like ‘Souvenir del Malmaison’. I think they do it if I haven’t kept up with my watering. This bunch opened over a week where it which began dry in the 90s and ended drizzling in the 40s. ‘Blush Noisette opened its biggest flowers ever in the cold drizzle.

I grow ‘Blush Noisette’ as a freestanding bush rose. It has formed a nice vase shape about three feet cubed.

Update: 2018-03-18

I prune, weed, feed, and water rose ‘Blush Noisette’ which is starting to have buds. She is getting just too much shade from the Texas mountail laurel. I’ll try to open those up a bit.

My favorite Austin garden tour each year is sponsored by the Travis County Master Gardeners Association. Not only are the gardens lovingly handmade (as opposed to contractor-installed) but gardeners and all the volunteers are full of plant knowledge. The plants are well-labeled and every site on the tour includes an extensive plant list. It’s a day-long field trip into what you can accomplish in a Central Texas garden.

I’m sure all the gardeners participating breathed a huge sigh of relief when the weather cooperated. Austin had a good rain on Thursday, it was clear Friday to dry out the gardens a bit and to allow for last minute straightening after the storm, and today we had the most perfect weather any garden tour could wish for: cool, dry, with beautiful blue skies.

Even more fun for me, I carpooled with Diana @ Sharing Nature’s Garden and Robin @ Getting Grounded. At lunch, we met up with Pam @ Digging. So, you can imagine it was six hours of non-stop garden talk. I’m sorry that we didn’t have time to see all of the gardens–but we really enjoyed the ones we did. Thank you, everyone of you who shared your garden with us.

Garden of Cheryl Goveia

I met Cheryl Goveia last year when a couple of carloads of Austin garden bloggers trekked to Peckerwood Gardens. Her blog is named Conscious Gardening and it’s obvious from the moment you step into her garden that she applies herself to everything with passionate and rapt attention.

The yard is an ordinary city lot but it feel huge for two reasons. It is partitioned into a series of small, garden rooms and every space is crammed with plants and ornaments. It doesn’t feel stifling or claustrophobic though. It feels like a garden layered in secrets. Everywhere I looked were little witty jokes (like the “snakes” made of strings of bottle caps in the beer garden). Or the metal rooster next to the bottle of tequila and a sake cup on a table made from a painted stump overseeing the henhouse (not in the photo).

Notice the painted hub caps on the fence. Mirrors, paint cans, and bowling balls were some of the other repurposed objects woven into the tapestry of the garden. Cheryl said that she didn’t follow any master plan for the garden as she transformed what had once been an empty St. Augustine lawn. The spaces grew naturally from how they were used–including the need to fence off areas from her dog.

Garden of Eleanor Pratt

Eleanor’s garden (in the same neighborhood and with the same sized lot as Cheryl’s) has a more conventional layout, a pecan-tree shaded lawn surrounded by borders. She had many plants that left us asking the volunteer Master Gardeners, “What’s that?” All three of us were particularly taken with the Chinese ground orchid. And where did she find this exotic beauty? On sale at Home Depot. Despite all the negative things I’ve read about shopping at the big box stores, one of the surprising things I learned on this tour is that there are some real plant bargains to be had there–not just in price but in unusual plants.

I especially liked the pigeonberrry and when Eleanor said that it reseeded easily and filled in any space, I bought one for myself. Unfortunately the light wasn’t very good for photographs when we were there, so I only snapped one picture…of the pigeonberry, of course.

Eleanor blogs at Garden of E.

Detour: Backyard Salvage and Gardens

As we drove east on Koenig headed for our next garden, we saw
Backyard Salvage and Gardens which Renee Studebaker had recently written about in her Statesman gardening column. It didn’t take a 1/10th of a second for the three of us to agree on a little detour. I immediately fell in love with the pallets of old brick and many types of stone. In addition to the architectural salvage materials, there were also piles of composts and gravels. And plants. After seeing the variety and number of plants at the first two gardens on the tour, I was feeling pretty plant-deficient–so I bought a pretty little succulent.

Garden of Randy Case

The first thing I fell in love with at Randy’s garden was the low stone wall in the front. Not only did it have plants tumbling over it it actually had little planters built into it. Next to the driveway, Randy had built three large wooden planters, sort of like inverted ziggurats. (He said he was inspired by the Guggenheim Museum although we all agreed that building an inverted spiral would have been a bit more complicated.)

Randy also makes good use of mirrors to provide the illusion of the garden beyond the fence. After seeing all the bamboo muhly, I finally succumbed to the plant that everyone in Austin has been gaga over and bought three.

Randy had a beautiful, ginormous ‘Double Purple’ Datura metel and was kind enough to share seeds with us when we asked for some. You can see some more of his many flowers at his blog Horselip’s Horse Sense. Scroll down to see the transformation of his garden from plain suburban lawn and the “Guggenheim planters”.

Garden of Gail Sapp

In the tour brochure, Gail Sapp writes, “I like my plans bright, bold and big.” She is not kidding. In comparison, my garden looks like a big space with a few Lilliputian plants scattered here and there. Gail’s yard is typical suburban lot. Her plants are huge and dramatic.

The bamboo which screened the garden was not your ubiquitous fishing rod type bamboo. It was the clumping Giant Timber bamboo. It was the most beautiful bamboo I’ve seen in Austin. The stems (trunks?) were thick and the bamboo towered over the two-story house. When the wind blew through them, the trunks struck each other musically sounding like a set of bamboo wind chimes.

In the front yard, Gail had a brugmansia twice as large as any we’d seen on tour and it was covered in yellow flowers. Behind it was a huge palm. The garden felt rich and full but the forms of the plant were distinct. To offset some of the lush wildness, several box shrubs were clipped into perfect globes. I liked the contrast between the constraint and the lush jungle-like wildness.

The real stop-dead-in-your-tracks plant was this pale silvery palm, a blue fan palm. None of us had recalled ever seeing anything quite like it. Where could she have gotten it? Home Depot, was the answer. Apparently it is highly adapted to desert-like conditions. In sharp contrast, was a diminutive dark-leaved ornamental pepper ‘Black Pearl’ with globular fruit which start out bright red and ripen to black.

Garden of Lindy McGinnis

When we were at the salvage store, Diana told Robin that she drew the line at having a bathtub in the garden. When she saw Lindy’s tub transformed into a pond covered with fig ivy, she stepped bravely over the line.

I was particularly drawn to the patch of chrysanthemum because they didn’t have any of the stiff formality of the potted mums you see everywhere this time of year. They were shorter, looser, freer–I didn’t even recognize them as mums at first.

Lindy’s was another garden just packed full a variety of plants. In the front were agaves, aloe, cactus, and other succulents mixed in with grasses and sages and a hundred things I’ve forgotten. In the back were more shade-loving plants. Diana pointed out a night-blooming jasmine, and I wanted one immediately.

I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to take more photos or do more justice to the myriad of confused impressions and inspiration I felt. You can see a video clip of Lindy McGinnis’s garden which aired on Central Texas Gardener.

The bottom line of the tour for me this year was to make me feel that I want more. I want more plants, more different kinds of plants, more garden ornaments, and sitting areas, and little secret spaces, and fountains. I want more mulch and more stone and more defined spaces.

I came straight home and got to work.

Related Posts

• Zanthan Gardens: Inside Austin Garden Tours 2008
• Zanthan Gardens: Peckerwood Garden