It’s so simple, but I really enjoy this collection of potted plants on my back steps. I can see them from my bedroom and living room windows, and they’re a focal point when sitting outside on the upper patio. I just chose single plants to pot up in a few colorful pots, balanced by several terracotta pots — and they’re all attractive foliage plants that appreciate bright shade.

Purple oxalis (Oxalis triangularis) anchors the group in the tall turquoise pot. From the top step moving down, there’s a ‘Sticks on Fire’ euphorbia, variegated Agave desmettiana, a stripey passalong yucca from Diana/Sharing Nature’s Garden (possibly Yucca aloifolia variegata), Aloe brevifolia, Agave desmettiana ‘Joe Hoak’ (a passalong from Bob/Central Texas Gardening), and ‘Bloodspot’ mangave.

In a square terrazzo pot set in a planting bed, a nearly black ‘Burgundy Ice’ dyckia is brightened by a waterfall of silver ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea) spilling over the edge and rooting into the soil.

The silver is picked up nearby in the stock-tank planter that’s home to an Agave weberi ‘Arizona Star’ and Yucca rostrata ‘Sapphire Skies’. Behind those leans an ‘Alphonse Karr’ bamboo. Just visible at right is a variegated Agave americana in a pot. And in front of all is a rapidly growing clump of ‘Bright Edge’ yucca. Yep, this has become a spiky, variegated ghetto.

Another of my favorite yuccas is Y. filamentosa ‘Color Guard’, which looks great with anything and grows well in much colder climates than mine (up to zone 4, according to Plant Delights). Here it’s softened with bamboo muhly grass (Muhlenbergia dumosa) and more silver ponyfoot.

Please join me in posting about your lovely leaves of June for Foliage Follow-Up, a way to remind ourselves of the importance of foliage in the garden on the day after Bloom Day. Leave your link to your Foliage Follow-Up post in a comment. I really appreciate it if you’ll also include a link to this post in your own post (sharing link love!). If you can’t post so soon after Bloom Day, no worries. Just leave your link when you get to it.

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By the way, if you follow me on Facebook (and if not, I hope you will), I’m folding my two separate pages — Digging and Lawn Alternatives — into a new Facebook page called, ahem, Pam Penick. Please “Like” my page to enjoy photos of beautiful gardens and lawn alternatives, get notifications of my blog posts and upcoming talks, and just hang out with me and talk plants! I hope to see you there!

Speaking of garden talks, I’ll be in San Antonio on Monday at noon to give a free talk at the San Antonio Garden Center about losing the lawn and gaining a waterwise landscape or beautiful garden. Lawn Gone! book-signing afterward. Please join me! P.S. If that’s during your work day, just bring a bag lunch and come on out.
Where: 3310 N. New Braunfels, San Antonio, TX (adjacent to the San Antonio Botanical Garden)
What: Essentials of Gardening class, hosted by the Gardening Volunteers of South Texas

All material © 2006-2013 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Day-tripping in San Antonio last weekend, my family and I made time for a stroll through the Japanese Tea Garden, located near the zoo in Brackenridge Park. Constructed in an old limestone quarry, the gardens are framed and accessed by fascinating and unusual stonework, including a pagoda-like pavilion with stacked-stone columns that rise like hoodoos from the pond below; an undulating, “dragon-back” bridge; and paths edged with toothy walls that lead up and down the garden’s cliffside terrain.

The garden is free to the public, and on this cool, early-spring Saturday it was not very crowded, although at least one wedding party was wrapping up an intimate ceremony. Entering the faux-bois gate, you may be confused by the sign that reads Chinese Tea Garden until you read the historical plaque nearby, which explains that during World War II, the Japanese-American family who’d run the tea house for nearly 20 years was evicted due to anti-Japanese public sentiment, and “Japanese” was removed from the garden’s name. At the time of the gate’s construction, the garden was known as the Chinese Tea Garden. In 1984 its original name was restored, but the gate remains as a reminder of the war-fueled paranoia of that time.

A colorful mix of native and tropical plants greets you as you enter, like this red hibiscus and purple-blooming Texas mountain laurel.

I like this wiggly line of dwarf yaupon hollies bordered by colorful marigolds.

Entering the garden you are immediately drawn to a large stone pavilion reminiscent of a Japanese pagoda. Stacked-stone pillars lead the eye up to a dazzling array of stone arches, huge timbers, and the dome-like roof, which is thatched on the exterior with palm leaves.

The pavilion overlooks several large ponds that cover much of the base of the old quarry, and a series of rock stairs lead to the lower gardens. Instead, however, we took the path that winds along the cliff at the top of the garden before descending on the far side.

Halfway around you’re treated to a spectacular view of a ribbon-like waterfall, which drops 60 feet from the top of the quarry to the ponds at the bottom. Lush vegetation on the cliff walls gives the impression of a tropical vista.

An undulating bridge spans a large, shallow pond from the base of the cliff to the lower gardens. It was too early for water lilies, but I imagine in summer their pads and flowers spread across the pond’s surface.

Bridge detail, and my patient family posing for a photo.

Along the trail, the scarred leaves of a cliff-hugging Agave lophantha reveal the impulse of park visitors to leave a record of their passing.

From the initials and date carved into the rock below, you can see it’s not a recent phenomenon.

Bamboo leans over the pond, its leaves yellowing as part of its spring leaf renewal.

Enormous koi swim lazily in the ponds at the bottom of the garden, approaching tamely in hopes of a feeding.

Palms add tropical texture to the garden.

In one section of the garden, an annual display of edibles is paired with spring-blooming Jerusalem sage.

The pavilion as seen from the lower garden—a romantic hideaway for at least one couple.

I remember visiting the Japanese Tea Garden as a senior in college way back in 1989. I was reminded to revisit thanks to Shirley’s post about the tea garden at Rock-Oak-Deer and, before that, Ivette’s reminiscences about the garden at The Germinatrix. Once you read their posts, you’ll be ready to explore the garden too.

All material © 2006-2013 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Texas dwarf palmetto (Sabal minor), foxtail fern (Asparagus densiflorus ‘Meyersii’), heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata), sparkler sedge (Carex phyllocephala ‘Sparkler’), and bamboo muhly (Muhlenbergia dumosa) add plenty of greenery to the winter garden.

Audrey, a regular reader of Digging, recently asked me how to plant for winter greenery, explaining that her garden needed some green for the off-season. “I would love to see a picture of an area of your garden in full bloom and the exact same shot in the winter,” she wrote. What a great idea! Not that my garden is totally fab in winter or anything, but I do have quite a lot of evergreen interest, plus a few other tricks that help liven up the winter garden here in Austin.

I will point out that my garden is not particularly flowery in general. There are three reasons for this. One, my garden is fairly shady. Two, I love the architectural plants of the Southwest, and they are essentially evergreen shrubs. Three, I planted this garden to be low-maintenance, and that means more evergreens and ornamental grasses and fewer flowering perennials and annuals.

That adds up to a garden that doesn’t go through dramatic seasonal changes, and I’m OK with that. I do still enjoy smatterings of flowers throughout the growing season, as well as berries, bulbs, a little fall color, and the unfurling of bright-green leaves in the spring. Bees, butterflies, and other pollinators visit my garden, and I see lots of birds, which goes to show that even a largely evergreen garden, planted diversely with plenty of cover, nesting material, and seed and fruit sources, can be a wildlife habitat.

OK, let’s look at a few wide-shot views of my garden in mid-winter, paired with similar views from a more flowery season.

Today. (The garden in the foreground belongs to my neighbor, though I planted and help maintain it, and I frequently blog about it as if it were mine. Hi, Donna!)

Early October. Salvia greggii and Salvia leucantha brighten up this bed with flowers in spring and fall, and most other plants are a brighter green. In winter, though the S. leucantha shrivels away, the Salvia greggii remains green. Mexican feathergrass (Nassella tenuissima) and Gulf muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris) turn tawny, but they’re still there, as are evergreen (or everblue?) Agave ovatifolia, red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora), and bamboo muhly (Muhlenbergia dumosa).

Today

Mid-October. Not much difference, really. It’s all a bit more faded and tawny, and the copper canyon daisy (Tagetes lemmonii) at left is frost-shriveled now. However, this is a very evergreen bed. You can get color from evergreen plants too, as shown by the yellow-striped ‘Color Guard’ yucca, the blue-green gopher plant (Euphorbia rigida), and the silver ‘Powis Castle’ artemisia.

Today

Early March. Again, pretty similar thanks to a mass planting of Mexican feathergrass and prickly pear. Even the little four-nerve daisy (Tetraneuris scaposa) is still blooming sporadically. Springtime adds the chartreuse flowering of gopher plant (Euphorbia rigida) to the mix. You’ll notice I added a potted Agave lophantha for vertical interest since the spring. Potted evergreens are a great way to get additional winter greenery and to make a focal point of it.

Another example of winter interest in a pot: ‘Color Guard’ yucca in a blue glazed container, with foxtail fern at its feet.

Today

Late March. Pulling back a bit, you see globe mallow (Sphaeralcea) in full bloom. This heat-loving plant flowers spring through fall but shrivels up in winter. The evergreen Arizona cypress ‘Blue Ice’, bamboo muhly, gopher plant, and butterfly vine (Mascagnia macroptera) add up to plenty of winter greenery.

Today

Late May. A tighter image, with purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) and ‘Peter’s Purple’ monarda in bloom in beds on either side of the pond. The pond will also have been blooming with water lilies. Look back up at today’s image and you’ll actually see two hangers-on purple coneflowers, but the other flowering plants are dormant. But what carries this area through winter is the structure of the stock tank, shed, and disappearing fountain (in the foreground), the colorful shed doors and fountain, the reflective quality of the water in the pond, ‘Winter Gem’ boxwoods marking the path “doorways” all around the pond, ‘Color Guard’ yuccas, and Mexican feathergrass. Also, don’t overlook the power of hardscape to give life to your garden in winter. The sunburst path around the pond is a striking feature of this space, all the more noticeable in winter when the garden is quieter.

On the other side of the stock-tank pond, a trio of culvert-pipe planters with squid agaves (A. bracteosa) adds height and texture to the winter garden. Winter-through-spring groundcover heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata) adds a blue-green carpet at their feet.

Today

Mid-April, when the Aloe saponaria was in bloom. Let’s face it, this raised bed overlooking the pool is all about texture and form, with hits of variegated yellow color, and not about flowers. Even so, the soap aloes bloom a couple of times a year, and in fall oxblood lily bulbs pop up along the edge of the bed, providing a jolt of seasonal color.

Today

Early June. I couldn’t find the same viewpoint for the raised bed containing the ‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave (A. ovatifolia), but you can see from another angle what it looks like in June. Winecup (Callirhoe involucrata) rambles and purple skullcap (Scutellaria wrightii) flowers profusely. Earlier in the season, iris add their ruffled flowers to the mix.

Here then are my tips for greening up your winter garden: add lots of evergreen shrubs, sub-shrubs (like Salvia greggii), and ornamental grasses, especially evergreen ones like bamboo muhly. Add punches of color with cold-hardy potted plants set into your beds and with painted surfaces like sheds, benches, and garden art. And leave frostbitten plants standing through winter, because even tan and brown are colors, and it all adds up to an interesting winter garden.

All material © 2006-2013 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.