The Spring Garden

Posted on April 13, 2022 by Tina

Despite late freezes, drought, and earlier-than-normal warm temperatures, it’s been a lovely, affirming spring in my garden. Plants are growing, leafing out, and blooming in their typical order and roughly on their same schedule. Some, like the multitudes of Tradescantia, Spiderwort, were so eager for spring to happen that they’re over-performing. Of course that has nothing to do with the fact that I routinely fail to control them by weeding during fall and winter. Ahem.

My Spiderwort are pass-alongs varieties and they’ve mix-n-matched for years, so I don’t have a definitive species. Because of their height, I suspect T. gigantea, but regardless of species, the flowers are stunning in shades of purples with a few pinky hues. Some are pure lavender, with rounded petals,

…and some are deeper lavender with or triangulated petals

Certain individuals bloom in shades trending pink. These below sport ruffly petals.

No matter their color or form, Spiderworts are favorites of the honeybees. Flowering early and for most of the spring season, bees are keeping busy with the nectar sipping and the pollen collecting.

The first yellow in my garden is typically Golden Groundsel, Packera obovata. The little group I have brightens a shady spot.

The groundsel echos the Adirondack chairs: cheery blooms, comfortable chairs.

Last year’s deep, destructive freeze ended 2021 hopes for the luscious clusters of blooms from Mountain Laurel, Sophora secundiflora. This year, both of my Mountain Laurels flowered beautifully, if too briefly. These blooms are known for their grape juice fragrance. Weirdly, I can’t detect their very sweet fragrance unless my nose is right up in the flowers or at night, with whiffs of the grape scent on the wind.

The irises I grow, all pass-along plants, have bloomed prolifically this spring, more so than in many years.

I think every single bulb, even those that I separated and replanted in the fall, have pushed up stalks and adorned those stalks with flowers. The irises are still going strong and are now joined by European poppies. Tall, leafy American Basket flower stalks await their turn to shine in the sun, while a couple of Martha Gonzalez rose bushes add pops of rich red and burgundy-tinged foliage.

Spiderworts, irises, and poppies are all plants-gone-wild this spring, but the heat and drought have sadly rendered the columbines less floriferous. As well, given my now full-sun front garden, columbines won’t grow there–they fry in Texas sun.

This one, as well as a couple of others, still have a place in the back garden. I plan to add more in the shadier areas because I can’t resist these graceful additions to the garden.

Hill Country Penstemon, Penstemon triflorus, are in top form this year. Hummingbird moths and Horsefly-like carpenter bees are regular visitors.

I wonder if pollinators have a hard time deciding? Hmmm. Penstemons or Spiderworts? What am I in the mood for??

Of course, it’s not only gorgeous bloom time, but foliage presents a worthy rival in beauty and form during verdant spring. This silvery-green Mexican Feathergrass, Nassella tenuissima, waves, adding movement and action in the garden. In the past, I’ve witnessed migrating Painted Buntings nibbling at the tiny seeds that feathergrass produces. I wonder if those colorful birds will find this patch as they move through my garden this spring?

The drought continues and summer will be a bear, but I’m grateful for the gentle artistry and renewal of life that is spring.

What’s in your spring garden this year? I hope it’s colorful and ever-changing and provides a respite from the world’s troubles.

Happy spring gardening!

Seeing Red

Posted on April 15, 2019 by Tina

April is typically portrayed as a month full of pink, lavender, and yellow. This pastel pulchritude reflects traditional concepts of new and fresh, infant and innocent. My garden currently provides this zeitgeist of spring hue, but what grabs my attention in mid-April are the vibrant hots in the garden.

I’m seeing red.

Many years ago, a German friend gifted to me a handful of poppy seeds. Since then, these harbingers of spring and symbols of remembrance pop for a month or so, usually March to April.

The blooms keep honeybees busy,

…and sway in gentle breezes.

As the poppies are showing off in sunny spots, a native Texas woodland perennial, the Cedar sage, Salvia roemeriana, also rocks its red. Cedar sage are happier nearer to the ground and they bloom in shady parts of the garden.

There’s some vertical hot rocket red, too. Climbing up a fence, is Coral honeysuckle vine, Lonicera sempervirens, decorated with clusters of tubular crimson, with a flair of yellow. Native green metallic bees and my honeybees vie for nectar-slurping positions. If there are hummingbirds who’ve already arrived from Mexico and Central America, they’ll also buzz for these yummy blooms. But so far this spring, it’s just the insects that I’ve seen at the honeysuckle blooms.

April love is like a red, red rose–or, as it happens, many Martha Gonzales roses. The two shrubs–side-by-side buddies–sparkle with red petals, rich with deep green foliage. They welcome walkers to my garden.

Fragrant blooms, each with a dash of bright white, are dramatic foils to the more delicate spring blooms.

Okay, it’s a cheat, but this Texas Beargrass, Nolina texana, sits blooming in a red pot. The bloom stalk is akin to the April pale pinks, but the pot is hot.

Soft and pastel, or loud and hot–blooms are boss and you can see more beautiful blooms by checking out May Dreams Gardens and her Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day.

Happy April blooms!

Winter(?) Blooms

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Tina

While it flies in the face of garden normalcy, it’s been a good winter for many of the flowering perennials in my garden. Few plants were sent deep into dormancy, so flowering florals have been a constant.

This cheery cool season bloomer has brightened the edge of a garden for months. Four-nerve Daisy, Tetraneuris scaposa, is a tidy little thing. Evergreen slender leaves serve as a base for sprightly yellow daisies. Even after a hard freeze, this is a typical winter bloomer.

Owing to the mild winter, there are a couple of Purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, eager for spring to begin. Interestingly, the established plants, some of which are years old, haven’t bloomed up yet.

This group volunteered themselves for a pathway decoration. I’ll leave them be–who am I to yank them up when they’re so charming?

Another beneficiary of our lack of freezes this winter are the Tropical sage, Salvia coccinea. This particular one is red, but the white ones have bloomed all winter too. They’re a little lanky now, but I’m still enjoying the accents of red, so they’ll remain until the new growth catches up with the old-growth blooms.

A cousin of the S. coccinea is this salmon-colored Autumn sage, Salvia greggi. It’s not a bountiful bloomer, but only because it grows in too much shade. Still, the blooms are beginning and will grace the garden for the next couple of months, taking a break during our hot summer, resuming flowering in fall.

Another “victim” of the mild winter is the Mexican honeysuckle, Justicia spicigera. This is a funny plant as it doesn’t have a specific bloom time. In mild winters like the one this year, it blooms all winter, well into spring. In a “normal” winter (whatever that is), it’ll be knocked to the ground, requiring several months to flush out before flowering ensues.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed these winter-orange blooms and so have the honeybees. Most of the native bees are dormant for now.

Mexican honeysuckle is also a great plant for part shade–yay for me as I have plenty of that!

My two red roses have produced luscious blooms all winter, non-stop. This, the Martha Gonzales rose,

…and its botanical doppelgänger, the Old Gay Hill rose. Easy to grow, disease-free, and gorgeous against the blue Texas sky, both roses are head-turners. I’m not going to prune them just yet, against common gardening wisdom; there will be time later for that.

In the last week or so, the Southern dewberry, Rubus trivialis has burst out in blooms.

The sweet, snowy flowers attract skippers and honeybees, and dot the back of the garden, clambering up a fence and creeping along the ground.

The buds are a pure pink, so provides a bit of a color two-fer. Alas, it’s more than likely that the birds will pick off the berries before I get to them.

I finally found the one spot in my garden for Desert mallow, Sphaeralcea ambigua. Native to regions west of Texas, this lovely requires full sun and excellent drainage. It’s a high elevation shrub, but the best I could do was pop it into a raised bed. I love it, blooms or not, and the tangerine flowers paired with that grey-green ruffle of foliage is a winning combination.

The native Blue Orchard bees, recently awakened from their own year-long dormancy, have enjoyed the pollen provided by this mallow.

A passalong plant, Giant spiderwort, Tradescantia gigantea, delivers blasts of purple for this gardener and loads of nectar and pollen for the pollinators. Honeybees are in a frenzy gathering the pollen as they gear up for spring.

I have quite a few clumps of this spiderwort and they seed out prolifically. They’re easily pulled up and tossed into the compost, or even better, gifted to unsuspecting gardeners.

I like that the insect (a fly or native bee?) is also interested in the plant. I wonder if he/she is responsible for the hole in the leaf?

Purple power rules the garden with these spring pretties.

Most of these perennials and shrubs bloom at least some during a colder winter, but this year, that floral show has been richer. Of course, as we enter March, the month of spring, an overnight light freeze or two is predicted in the next few days.

Typical.

The native plants will be fine, the irises, reaching to the sky and starting their blooms, might be damaged. Time–and actual temperature–will tell. Regardless, spring is now knocking at the garden gate and winter is mostly done.

How has your winter garden fared?