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Spring garden project …before, during and during…

It’s time for spring garden projects — time to implement the ideas that have been percolating over the winter, waiting for sunny days and a fresh, new start.

A section of my landscape has been sad for several seasons. It wasn’t quite what I wanted and most of the plants just wouldn’t grow anymore. Lantana wasn’t growing, for heaven’s sake. What does that tell you?!

So, this week, we (the royal we – meaning I had help!) dug up the strip of grass designed as a contrast, shoveled up the existing rock to make a more natural-looking dry creek, brought in a yard of soil and turned up what little existing soil was there — some of which was caliche and some was actually road base, left by the construction workers when they built the house 12 years ago. Seriously? You just dumped it here?

I planted a row of bright edge yuccas and some mystic spires salvia along with a firecracker fern. There are still some Mexican mint marigold there, along with some blackfoot daisies that are going to have to move, but I had to look at them with the other plants to make decisions about what to do with them.

So, it’s not done-done, but it’s pretty close and I’ve got a good sense of what I’ll do next.

When it comes to spring projects, are you still plotting or planting?

By Diana C. Kirby|2016-04-14T02:39:32-05:00February 13th, 2013|Blog, bright edge yucca, dry creek, landscape project, projects, river rock bed, Sharing Nature's Garden|0 Comments

Garden resolutions 2013

I’ve long given up New Year’s Resolutions — but I do make some to-do lists. If I call them to-do lists, I seem to get around to them better!

This year I have a long garden to-do list. Perhaps committing it to eternal, world-wide view on my blog will help me check things off my list!

So, here goes:

1. Plant more trees outside the back fence in front of scrubby cedars. I love this smoke tree and planted one for a client this fall, wishing all the while that I had one to enjoy.

2. Have an a corner arbor build to showcase my tangerine cross vine and my wisteria. The cross vine winds along the fence and then climbs 20 feet up into a tree where I can’t see it. The wisteria spends most of its time hanging out on the opposite side of the fence — hiding from me — to be closer to the morning sun. A tall arbor would give them both plenty of room to keep growing — growing where I can enjoy them!

3. Replace the pride of Barbados that I lost over the last two winters. I love the explosion of color these trees bring in the late summer and I’ve missed mine. I vow to find some great hot spots for them to thrive.

4. I will buy more bigger starter plants this year. I’ve bemoaned the fact that my newer plants struggled to come back from harsh winters and scalding summers. Some years they even came back smaller than when I planted them! When I can, I want to invest in more established plants.

5. With too much on my plate, blogging and scrapbooking have waited in the wings too much this year. I love those creative outlets and want to give myself more opportunities for gathering inspiration from them.

6. Divide, divide, divide. I have irises, bi-color irises and lilies that really need dividing. In fact, they needed dividing this fall. This will be the year of dividing, replanting and sharing.

7. Prune, prune, prune. My cottage garden, cutting garden and hot southwest garden all suffered from overgrown-itis this year. Yes, the plants were all beautiful, but I know that pruned properly they would have complemented each other and showcased their individual characteristics better.

8. This year I will plant my bulbs before January … oh, wait … that means today! Yikes – better go find them and get to planting!

9. I WILL make homemade pesto from my basil “trees” this year. I say that every year when my basil gets out of hand — I mean stunning — but this year I really mean it.

10. And last, well, there never is a last, but I plan to dig up most of this and rebuild the dry creek with moss rock and other, larger stones. The recycled glass will come out and I will raise up the bed to help plants thrive there. With very little soil and a berm to avoid soil on the fence, the plants don’t get enough water and the soil just isn’t deep enough. The solution — protect the fence from rotting by putting hardy board against it and rock in the front to add good soil.

That’s the list — for now. As with everything in gardening – it’s organic and will change a thousand times over the next year. But it’s a good start and I feel good about making decisions to tackle some of my current and perpetual problems.

Guess we’ll see where I end up this time next year.

What’s on your garden resolution list for 2013?

By Diana C. Kirby|2017-11-29T23:27:15-06:00December 30th, 2012|2013, basil, Blog, blogging, bulbs, cross vine, dividing, dry creek, pesto, planning, Pride of Barbados, projects, pruning, resolutions, scrapbooking, Sharing Nature's Garden, smoke tree, to do, trees, wisteria|0 Comments

Spring garden projects…

It’s spring. Well, okay, it’s not quite spring yet, but it’s spring here in Central Texas for all intents and purposes.

It’s time to start the vegetable garden, to amend the soil, to pull lots and lots of weeds. And, it’s time to start planning those garden projects that have been nagging at me all winter.

Let’s be clear, every single bed has a project of some sort. There are holes to fill where the drought decimated plants we thought were indestructible. There are holes to fill where the 3-day below freezing cold snap the winter before killed things or stunted them so much they were never the same last summer.

There are a lot of holes to fill.

But this is an entire area that need revisiting. In the bed above, I actually started out with a plan and a vision of a tall, beautiful bottle brush tree with it’s deep red, wispy blooms set against the strong, structural contrast of a smooth blue agave with deep purple ‘May Night’ salvia scattered all around.

The best laid plans…

Three winters ago, I lost the first bottle brush tree and agave to an abnormally cold freeze. I’d planted the tree in the fall and wondered if it hadn’t had enough time to get established before the cold. So I replanted — another agave and a bigger tree — and I planted them in late spring.

Then we had another unusual cold snap and I lost the second tree. And the deer messed with many of my little salvias.

Early last summer, the bottle brush began to come back from the roots. After a few months I had a nice shrub…the same size as the agave. Not exactly the contrast I’d envisioned. In the meantime, a few irises I’d plopped in there began to grow and spread. And I hated the bottle brush shrub, but I didn’t want to kill it – it offends my gardening sensibilities to kill a plant with that much will to live.

A few weeks ago I pruned the bottle brush back into tree form. Multi-trunked, but still pretty and growing like crazy. The agave looks bad after one or two light freezes this winter, and it needs pruning. It’s also been taken over by the irises. (They are stunning right now) But they don’t go next to the agave – the form is too similar, their colors don’t work together…I could go on and on.

Further up the bed toward the house I originally had a dwarf crape myrtle in deep burgundy. It was literally cut in half by my guys on a pruning #fail. Some transplanted loropetalums didn’t survive there and there is one pathetic knock-out rose left hiding there.

This will be my first spring project. The bottle brush? Gonna keep pruning – it stays. The agave? I’ll prune it and think about it. The irises? They will move when the time is right. May night? Nah – something tougher will take their place. Some grasses might find their way there. I’m still hooked on the burgundy, deep purple, silvery gray color combo. Indigo spires would be delightful, but that’s a very windy spot and at their height, I fear they’d be whipped around like crazy there. But I know what I want there, so it will come together if I take my time.

I might even treat myself like one of my clients and draw out a plan.

Or not…

Stay tuned.

Two more beds to go…but I’ll save them for another day.

What’s your first garden project for this spring?

By Diana C. Kirby|2017-11-29T23:27:19-06:00March 7th, 2012|Agave, agaves, Blog, Bottle Brush tree, knock-out roses, landscape project, May night salvia, planning, projects, salvia, Sharing Nature's Garden, spring|0 Comments

Fall projects…

Ahhhh – Autumn. And Soup. All kinds of soup. And today — ta-dah! It’s leek soup from the garden! Early this morning I ventured out to pull up a handful of leeks and with the magic of potatoes and butter and cream (though I did at least TRY to keep it lighter today), we now have a delicious pot of soup for our dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow and …. on and on.
Then, after the soup was simmering, I went out and laid down a row of weedblock and 4 bags of mulch in the big bed. Unfortunately, it didn’t go far enough. But, with my bad arms, it’s better that I do things like this in stages and moderation, so I’m VERY pleased with how PART of the bed looks today. And tomorrow is another day. Besides, my trunk doesn’t hold much more than 4 bags of native Texas hardwood mulch and my tendons were really talking to me last night as I crawled into bed — and that was just from buying the bags!

Beautiful, dappled light in the front yard. This is roughly the spot where we sat in the grass with our jeans and bare feet last week to take a family portrait — dogs and all! I’ll have to see if I can wrangle an electronic photo to post — our photographer was thrilled with the lighting. Haven’t seen them yet, I’m eager to see how all 6 of us turned out!
Some happy Society Garlic
Perky Senna in the Sunshine

Butterflies are free to fly…and fly they did today. I captured lots of them flitting about from flower to flower, enjoying some nice afternoon snacks in the warm sunshine.