I grow a rare plant in my Austin garden. A cluster of Big Red Sage, Salvia pentstemonoides, resides at the corner where the street and my driveway intersect.

I first became familiar with this plant years ago, having read an article about a gorgeous, deep-red flowering plant that’s found only in a few counties of Central Texas. At one time, Big Red was thought to be extinct, but colonies of the plant where discovered, seeds collected, and some in the local nursery trade propagated the lovely plant for sale. When when I managed the Green Garden at Zilker Botanical Gardens, a previous gardener had planted several and those played a starring role in the front, full-sun garden, much to my. I’ve purchased several individual plants at two local nurseries over the years and my little cluster has thrived.

Big Red is pollinated by the Black-chinned Hummingbird, Archilochus alexandri, which hangs out in Texas during late spring and summer, migrating southward in September and October.

Other insects, like various carpenter bees and even honeybees, will visit the blooms, often nectar stealing from the flower, nosing deep into the calyx, puncturing the calyx-held flower for the sweet stuff.

Big Red Sage is a showy thing in the summer garden. Mine grow stalks about 3 feet high, though I’ve read that the stalks in natural areas reach to 5 feet tall.

Since 1975, this rare flower in decline has awaited its turn for protection by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In January of 2025, the Service finally proposed that Big Red Sage be listed as an endangered species. Drought, floods, animal browsing (both native and introduced), and urban development are all adding stress to this rare plant; fewer wild colonies exist compared to when I first learned about the plant years ago. The official protection granted makes illegal the collection of Big Red Sage seeds from wild colonies. Check out this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity, the key organization which pressured, through a lawsuit, the US Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the Texas beauty.

I usually prune the stalks to the ground in November, leaving the dark leaves of the winter rosette as a reminder of summer’s glory. Though most stalks have ceased blooming, often there’s at least one hold-out bloomer, which you can see at the top left part of the photo. This plant just doesn’t want to quit!

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is currently researching this plant, spending time collecting seeds in protected areas to learn about its biology, which you can read about here. The team of scientists and volunteers are seed-banking collected seeds from specific colonies to ensure the survival if wild specimens disappear. My understanding is that there are no plans to sell either seeds or the plants germinated from the collected seeds in order to protect the diversity and genetic strength of the remaining native colonies.

I sometimes feel a bit awkward as the guardian of this plant as it’s too precious for a common, urban garden! I purchased the plants that I have, as Big Red is a commercially available in some native plants nurseries. Mine have never germinated to create new plants and I don’t live in a neighborhood with many actual gardens (lawns, lawns, lawns!), so even if my sages produced offspring, it’s likely I could control where the plants grow. Still, as Texas and the wider world becomes less biologically diverse, I’m pleased that I have some of these rare and beautiful plants in my garden, for their looks, their pollinator draw, and for their uniquely Texan heritage.

After four years of growth, my Flameleaf Sumac, Rhus lanceolata, a seedling gift from a neighbor, has finally come in to its eagerly awaited flame-y-ness. The young tree bloomed in August–pleasing the pollinators; set fruit shortly thereafter, which produced a bird buffet; now, it rocks its namesake in lovely fall color. The first photos, on a misty day earlier this month, demonstrates the beginning of the color change.

I like the mix of green and flame. Truthfully, my Flameleaf has never achieved its flame potential. Many Flameleaf sumacs show off in varieties of rich red foliage; check out Portraits of Wildflowers for some stunning photos. My young Flameleaf’s foliage ranges from yellow to mauve to orange. Deeper colored leaves are just shy of true red.

I’m okay with the orange-y tone, though. I wanted fall color and the Flameleaf has provided; I won’t criticize its choice of hue and I’m happy this plant is a member of good standing in my garden.

After four years, the still growing Flameleaf, situated next to its sister sumac, an equally young Evergreen Sumac, Rhus virens (the dark green, smaller shrub to the Flameleaf’s left), and, further left, a glorious Red Oak tree, Quercus buckleyi, are all large and autumnal enough to gratify my initial end-of-growing season vision for this front garden. The silver foliaged shrubs and tawny Big Muhly grasses are worthy companions to the reds and oranges, garden greens offering a soothing background. Central Texas’s fall color morphs in its own time, flushed out slower than in northern climes, but foliage change eventually happens.

Just two days after the above photo, the fall colors deepened.

The Flameleaf orange pops against a winter sky.

Two weeks later, the foliage on the tree was no more, but dropped and blanketed over the ground, keeping company with emerging spring wildflowers.

As 2025 ends, the tree is bare, dormant and prepared for a few months of colder temperatures.

May 2026 provide the appropriate environment for more growth, change, and beauty for this tree–and all other things.

When I began re-imagining this plot of Earth, my back garden was the sunny side up and the front garden, while facing harsh west sun, grew mostly in dappled shade. Nature evolves, change happens and the opposite is now my gardens’ norm: the front garden is glorious in sunshine and my back garden is nearly opposite, ranging from deep shade, to dappled, to part shade. In the long, hot summer months, the back garden is a refuge. It’s still hot of course, but the cover of the two mature Red Oaks, Quercus buckleyi, is a balm to that heat, allowing for a more comfortable time in the garden to work or sit.

My back garden isn’t as lush with flowers or native grasses as the front, though there are plenty of blooms and varying foliage, the palette of garden choices is simply more limited. In this photo, facing northwest and behind the yellow chairs the plants receive no direct sun.

In that space, Turk’s Cap, Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii, provide wide, tropical looking leaves paired with the Turk’s signature red blooms; several Drummond’s Ruellia, Ruellia drummondiana, which offer rich purple flowers from mid-summer through September, and Tropical Sage, Salvia coccinea, brightening the dark space with white, pollinator flowers. There’s plenty of evergreen, too, in the form of Giant and small Lirope and iris straps, though it’s far too shady for iris flowers to bloom here.

Another dark space, behind the Red Oak in the above photo, sits an American Agave with Purple Heart, Tradescantia pallida. I’ve planted five sections of this ground-cover in the back garden. Where it receives more sun, the foliage is a darker purple; with less direct sun, both green and purple leaves are represented. Purple Heart doesn’t not like full sun.

Straight out from the kitchen, living room, catio, and back bench, the garden is a narrow, part-shade situation. This is where most of the bird feeders reside (peanut, safflower, suet, and sunflower) and where birds hang out. The pond is also a huge draw, especially during spring and summer migrations.

In both my front and back gardens, I grow many plants that provide cover, flowers, and seeds/fruits for resident and migrant birds. However, it’s in this back space that I can watch, unobtrusively, the antics and activities of birds and other wildlife. During the day, whether the feeders are out or not, there are always critters around. For nighttime viewing, we’ve installed two wildlife cameras: one placed on the left beam of the wooden arch in this photo, the other in a different area of the garden. Raccoons are the most frequent visitors, but neighborhood Grey Foxes, Opossums, occasionally a stray cat, a bunny or two, once, a Yellow-crowned Night Heron, and (unfortunately) some rats, are active, especially around the pond.

The front garden is now wonderful for bird activity, but I don’t have a particularly good spot in which to watch that activity. The two yellow chairs in the center of that garden (see previous post) are too much a part of the garden and when I’m there, the birds scatter. I’m mulling changes to allow a bird blind–of a sort–but haven’t settled on a good way to watch the front garden birds so they won’t be offended by my presence. For now and maybe always, I’m content knowing the birds have plenty to nibble and currently, no stray cats to bother them!

It is in this shady back garden where I take most of my bird photos:

Moving south east toward the wider part of the garden, the garden opens a bit to the sky, primarily because the far Red Oak tree was damaged in Winter Storm Uri in 2021 and no longer spreads its canopy over the whole of the garden. There are pockets of sun, here and there, allowing for a wider range of plants to grow. The pond, across from the pea gravel negative space, receives a decent amount of needed sunshine in the summer months. The fish and lilies are happy with that arrangement.

I resisted digging a pond for a long time. I thought it would too much work and maintenance, but I’m pleased to say that I was wrong about that! The pond benefits from a once-per-year clean out–and it’s a long day when that happens–but other than that and adding a bit of water from time-to-time, the pond is a delight. I can’t imagine a garden without some sort of moving water feature.

The area of the garden directly adjacent to the pond receives about 5 hours of sun during most of the summer months, less so once the angle of the sun changes. I grow orange daylilies, native Mexican Feathergrass, Nassella tenuissima, Mexican Honeysuckle, Justicia spicigera, Softleaf Yucca, Yucca recurvifolia, and Inland Sea Oats, Chasmanthium latifolium as well as several other smaller native shrubs and perennials.

Beyond the pond and central part of the back garden, and at the far end of my pie-shape lot, more native perennials and native and non-native grasses keep an old Texas Mountain Laurel, Sophora secundiflora company.

The Mountain Laurel was the first small tree I planted (not long after we planted the large Red Oaks) and is at the end of its life. Birds still perch in it and squirrels still climb along its old branches. While it no longer holds a beautiful form or produces stunning purple flowers, it will stay for those critters as long as it’s not in danger of falling.

This section, which abuts the fence between our garden and our neighbor, my husband’s lovely sister, gets a good blast of sunshine. I’ve not been completely happy with some of my plant choices here; it’s a work in progress and an area that I’m still futzing with!

Along the pathway to the back corner (where the honeybees live), two Frostweed, Verbesina virginica, and smaller companion ground-covers and perennials provide color and a diversity of foliage.

Left to its own this year due to my laziness (I usually lightly prune mid-summer), the Frostweed bloomed twice: one bloom-up in July/August, the second in October–and it’s still in creamy flowery mode. I should always be so lazy! Frostweed is a Monarch butterfly favorite and a number of the amber beauties stopped by this Frostweed for nourishment!

This crazy thing is all over the place!

Forsythia Sage, Salvia madrensis, is a garden pass-along plant–as are many of my plants. Another missed opportunity to prune in August, I was too whiny about the heat and therefore didn’t. Now, instead of standing as a more compact plant, the long, cheery bloom spikes sit at the end of even longer, brittle stems and most of those stems are a tad floppy! S. madrensis is the last perennial to bloom in my garden, strutting their yellow stuff mid-to-late October until a freeze renders its blooms’ mute. I don’t have any photos of honeybees on the flowers, but they visit regularly, and towards winter, it is usually the last plant where they get nectar and pollen. Native to the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains of Mexico, Forsythia Sage provides blue-tinged foliage and stunning blooms, and is a dramatic addition to the back garden. It’s thirstier than most of my plants, so receives some extra wet stuff from my hose (maybe twice/month in the heat), but it’s worth that effort.

In the back of the main section of this garden packed with shrubs, perennials, and ground-covers, I’ve added small trees/large shrubs.

Included are two Rough-leaf Dogwoods, Cornus drummondii, and two Yaupon, Ilex vomitoria, two Retama trees, Parkinsonia aculeata, and one Possumhaw, Ilex decidua. Some are evergreen, others deciduous, but all are cover for birds and also produce blooms and fruits for mammals, birds, and insects.

This past summer, my back garden received no artificial irrigation in the shady spots and was watered only twice in areas that receive sun.

Thank you native, hardy plants. Thank you shade. Thank you, no grass!

My gardens–front and back–are both mature and new. I’m always re-imagining and re-configuring areas, either due to changes outside my control, mistakes I’ve made in previous years (snort–there are lots of those!), or simply realizing there are better, more biologically appropriate and aesthetic choices for a section of garden. I feel about my garden the way the second Mrs. de Winter in the novel Rebecca explains to Max de Winter about her father, who was an artist and painted a tree–just one tree–over and over, in different ways because he continually saw the tree differently. Gardens are like that, sparking interest and imagination, they are vessels for learning and experimenting, and are always places of joy, connection, and peace.