Austin’s lovely, unexpectedly extended spring appears to have faded into summer’s mid-90sF heat and humidity. While I may be complaining about the sauna-like conditions, my garden doesn’t mind. Take this cute little cactus for example. Last year it resided on a sunny windowsill in the kitchen, but this spring I moved it into the garden. Now it’s thanking me with a stunning orange flower.

Why, you’re quite welcome, little guy.

Water lilies love the heat, and in the stock-tank pond ‘Colorado’ is revving up with new, starry blossoms.

Continuing the peach theme — with a nod to my friend Susan Morrison‘s article “Peach Goes with Everything” in the current issue of Fine Gardening — I’m enjoying the peach-petaled, green-throated flowers of ‘Best of Friends’ daylily.

My ‘Wonderful’ pomegranate tree is decorated with dozens of frilly, orange blossoms.

Last year this resulted in exactly one pomegranate fruit, which split before it ripened. While I planted it for ornamental reasons, I’m eager to see if I get more fruit this year. After all, the fruit is quite ornamental as well!

This is for you, Loree/Danger Garden. I’m bragging about the towering forest of blooms from my ‘Chocolate Chips’ manfreda. One, two, three…let’s see, six bloom spikes on this plant.

All kidding aside, I know you would enjoy them. I’ve had two groups tour my garden since last week, and I was delighted that the manfreda timed their annual Dr. Seussian appearance for my visitors.

FYI, I was also told by several blogging friends this weekend that my pictures do not accurately convey the size of Moby, my ‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave. I need to start putting something in my photos for scale, perhaps. But just so you know, his girth is now about 6 feet, and his flukes stretch to a height of 4-1/2 to 5 feet. He’s quite the whale!

I’ll end with a couple of cheery flowers on my Sunny Lemon Star clockvine…

…and the cool, blue-green, native-Texas groundcover heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata), which was easily the most-asked-about plant among my garden-tour visitors.

Happy Monday!

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

Our final stop last Saturday on the Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour was the Curt Arnette-designed Bonnell Garden in west Austin. If it looks familiar, yes, I posted about it last fall after the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Tour; check out my earlier post for images of this garden in bloom with billowy fall grasses, daisies, Philippine violet.

On this spring visit, spineless prickly pear, dwarf pomegranate, and red yucca flowers added their extravagant color to the mostly evergreen garden. Imagine a bowl of lawn surrounded by a bermed perimeter of drought-tolerant, architectural plants that shield the home, lawn, and back-yard pool deck from view — this is the Bonnell Garden. Pictured here: spineless Opuntia in bloom, Yucca rostrata, and (in the center) Mexican olive.

Beautiful, blue-dusted ‘Green Goblet’ agave

A wider view shows the ‘Green Goblet’ agave with leatherstem (Jatropha dioica) on the left and a silver carpet of ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea) at its feet.

Now the house comes into view, and that large, bowled lawn, behind a spiky orb of Wheeler sotol. Silver ponyfoot adds a cooling color echo and happily colonizes the gravelly berm.

Shifting slightly we see a dwarf pomegranate in bloom, as well as a ‘Sharkskin’ agave in the foreground.

The contemporary home, a compelling mix of bronze steel, mahogany-colored wood, and rust-tinged limestone, sits below street level, protected, seemingly, by the xeric garden that surrounds it.

Another look at leatherstem (Jatropha dioica), a thicket-forming central and west Texas native. I like the handsome, coffee-colored branches.

An awkwardly cropped view of the poured-concrete front walk. Still, it’s worth showing again (see last fall’s post for better images) because it’s such a graphic element in the front garden.

And at the bottom of the slope, by the entry, looking back up the walk.

The Koosh-ball shape and spiny texture of Yucca rostrata makes it strangely touchable.

Closer to the entry, the garden becomes more spare, each plant standing alone in a gray-gravel bed like a kind of sculpture. Here we have aloe, dyckia, Yucca rostrata, and Agave ovatifolia.

All of which contrasts dramatically with the expanse of soft green lawn inside the “bowl.”

Entering the back yard, a more naturalistic garden greets you, framed by a small lawn and tumbling down a hillside.

A pretty succulent dish makes a focal point atop a retaining wall.

A series of limestone-and-gravel steps leads to the lower garden, where a mass of red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) waved their coral-red flags.

Powder-blue ‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave (A. ovatifolia) backed by Philippine violet (Barleria cristata)

Here’s a scene I was really taken with. In the shade of live oaks, a sort of matrix planting of variegated dianella, asparagus fern, sedge, and prostrate yew cascaded down a slope behind the house. The combination of light and dark-green foliage appeals to me, as does the seemingly random, “placed by nature” arrangement of the plants.

Climbing back up from the lower garden you reach the swimming pool, which is cantilevered out from the house above the slope. It’s a dramatic finish to another fun garden tour.

This concludes my recap of Gardens on Tour 2013. For a look back at the delightful Highland Terrace West Garden, click here. You can find links to the other gardens at the end of each post.

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

I’m in the midst of posting about an Austin garden tour this week, but I’m taking a break today for Foliage Follow-Up. Still inspired by the garden at Highland Terrace West, I’m showing another view of this living still life — white, ceramic containers planted up with trailing ivy, placed within a dark-stained, wooden frame, and hung on a fence like art.

Beautiful simplicity!

Please join me in posting about your lovely leaves of May 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.

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