Plant This: Flipping for Philippine violet
November 05, 2015 Autumn is a boom time for most Austin gardens, with a spring-like explosion of flowering perennials like salvia, lantana, mistflower, and native daisies. Add Philippine violet (Barleria cristata) to the mix, and enjoy weeks of tubular purple flowers clustered on upright stems of glossy, green leaves. Native ...
Plant This: Bat-face cuphea, perfect for Halloween in Austin
October 30, 2015 Austin is home to 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats, which summer under the Congress Avenue bridge downtown and constitute the largest urban bat colony in North America. The bat is the unofficial mascot of the city, and the rest of Texas thinks liberal-hippie Austin is pretty batty ...
Plant This: Inland sea oats
September 01, 2015 Are you hunting for a shade plant that looks good from April to January but especially shines during the challenging late summer? Try inland sea oats, also known as northern sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium), a grass that’s native to eastern and central North America, including central Texas ...
Plant This: Turk’s cap
July 21, 2015 Death Star-adapted plants tend to be small-leaved and airy, the better to retain precious water. But our native Turk’s cap (Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii) defies that expectation with vaguely heart-shaped leaves the size of a napkin scrounged out of your car’s glove box, and just as crinkled ...
Plant This: Peter’s Purple bee balm, a pied piper for hummingbirds
May 28, 2015 The plant getting the most attention in my garden right now is ‘Peter’s Purple’ bee balm (Monarda fistulosa ‘Peter’s Purple’), a 4-foot tall perennial with pincushiony, lavender-pink flowers atop long stems. I bought my original plant 5 years ago from Plant Delights (High Country Gardens carries it ...
Plant This: Gray globemallow lights up the garden
April 06, 2015 Its frosty, felted, gray-green leaves hint at its exceptional heat and drought tolerance, and they’re very pettable too. But when gray globemallow (Sphaeralcea incana) opens clusters of cupped, orange blossoms atop its silvery branches, it becomes a beacon of blooming beauty. Fire and ice! Gray globemallow is ...
Plant This: Chinese fringeflower
February 25, 2015 As winter and spring duke it out in late February, Chinese fringeflower (Loropetalum chinense) starts strutting its stuff, flashing hot-pink, strappy-petaled flowers amid its dusky-purple, evergreen leaves. Dark foliage is kind of rare in central Texas — our native and adapted plants tend to have gray-green and ...
Plant This: Chile pequin will spice up your garden
December 11, 2014 Native perennial chile pequin (Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum) adds hot color to the fall garden with a profusion of tiny, red peppers held upright on rambling green stems adorned with chartreuse, spade-shaped leaves. And if you taste one, you’ll find it heats up your tongue as well! ...
Plant This: Candy lily blooms are a sweet surprise
August 29, 2014 Visiting the garden of my friend Cat/The Whimsical Gardener earlier this summer, I exclaimed over a dainty, freckled flower on a long stem, with the sword-like leaves of an iris. Candy lily, she said, adding that she took no particular care and it thrived in morning to ...
Fixing a floppy Will Fleming yaupon for Foliage Follow-Up
April 16, 2014 ‘Will Fleming’ yaupon (Ilex vomitoria ‘Will Fleming’), a fastigiate cultivar of our native yaupon holly, is one of my go-to vertical accent plants. It’s a green punctuation mark, ideal for adding height to a flat bed or using in multiples as a narrow hedge to screen an ...
Plant This: ‘Winter Gem’ boxwood
February 18, 2014 Winter is when you really appreciate the evergreens in your garden, even in green-winter places like central Texas. While I rely heavily on non-shrub evergreens like agave, yucca, and sotol, I also have a soft spot for oh-so-English boxwood, specifically the cultivar ‘Winter Gem’ (Buxus sinica var ...
Plant This: Agave lophantha ‘Quadricolor’
February 10, 2014 Need a little summer sunshine in your garden? Plant an Agave lophantha ‘Quadricolor’, a small agave with golden-edged, serrated leaves with reddish teeth that grab onto sunlight and simply glow. Stripes of pale celery, forest, and olive green run down the center of the leaves in snazzy ...
Plant This: Evergreen sumac
January 28, 2014 Is your garden winter-dreary, lacking in greenery after the latest sub-freezing blast? Or is your tired, old red-tip photinia hedge finally succumbing to photinia fungal disease? If so, take a look at evergreen sumac (Rhus virens), a small tree or large shrub native to the drylands of ...
Bright Edge yucca brightens up a December Foliage Follow-Up
December 16, 2013 Edged with mellow-yellow stripes, Yucca filamentosa ‘Bright Edge’ adds a little sunshine to my garden on chilly winter days. Evergreen, drought tolerant, deer resistant, heat loving, and cold tolerant to US hardiness zone 4 or 5, ‘Bright Edge’ proves adaptable to everything except shade and damp soil ...
Plant This: Bamboo muhly for Foliage Follow-Up
November 16, 2013 A feathery, chartreuse cloud in the garden, bamboo muhly (Muhlenbergia dumosa) is my favorite ornamental grass for hot, dry, sunny spots, where it grows vase-like to 4 to 5 feet tall and wide, tall enough to make a pretty border along the driveway, perhaps, hiding the neighbor’s ...
Plant This: Dwarf firebush ignites the fall garden
November 01, 2013 I’m trying a dwarf variety of the popular firebush (Hamelia patens ‘Compacta’ or ‘Glabra’) in a mostly sunny spot in my neighbor’s garden that I help tend, and it’s performed beautifully all summer and into fall, requiring little water once established and blooming its head off through ...
