Succulents

January 14, 2010 As you snap pics for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day tomorrow, don’t forget to take a few images for Foliage Follow-Up on the day after. Many of us in the Northern Hemisphere won’t have all that much blooming anyway, so this will be a good chance to show ...

January 12, 2010 The deep freeze of the South has retreated, and now it’s time to assess the damage done to our plants. Native and well-adapted perennials and shrubs should be just fine, even if they look toasted. The best bet is to leave them alone for now, brown stalks ...

October 26, 2009 My favorite color echo on Saturday’s Inside Austin Gardens tour appeared in Eleanor Pratt’s garden in the Brentwood neighborhood of north-central Austin. Eleanor repeats the red of a Japanese maple red-leaf hibiscus (Hibiscus acetosella) with a swath of bachelor’s buttons. Vivacious! Eleanor also grows the plant I ...

October 19, 2009 Kermit sang, “It’s not easy being green.” But actually it is, especially if you gravitate toward textural and architectural plants, as I do. In Austin’s subtropical, zone 8b climate, many plants stay green all year, keeping the garden “alive” even in winter. From my October Bloom Day ...

October 19, 2009 Kermit sang, “It’s not easy being green.” But actually it is, especially if you gravitate toward textural and architectural plants, as I do. In Austin’s subtropical, zone 8b climate, many plants stay green all year, keeping the garden “alive” even in winter. From my October Bloom Day ...

September 29, 2009 Over at The Grackle, Lee sees his garden bursting with purples and yellows. I miss my former garden’s fall purples like Mexican bush sage, mistflower, and ‘Indigo Spires’ salvia. But I am enjoying a flush of silver and golden yellow and orange in my new garden right ...

September 02, 2009 Cascading down a steep-sloping front yard, Jeff Pavlat’s 8-year-old terraced xeric garden is a symphony of form, texture, and subtle color echoes. I met Jeff a year ago at an Oracle Gorge Nursery sale and have asked his advice about agaves and aloes from time to time ...

September 02, 2009 Cascading down a steep-sloping front yard, Jeff Pavlat’s 8-year-old terraced xeric garden is a symphony of form, texture, and subtle color echoes. I met Jeff a year ago at an Oracle Gorge Nursery sale and have asked his advice about agaves and aloes from time to time ...

August 28, 2009 They’re a dime-a-dozen in gardens all over Austin. Here are a few plants easy to overlook because of over-familiarity, whose praises I rarely sing, but which keep my garden green even during the hottest and driest summer anyone alive can remember. ‘Katie’ dwarf ruellia (Ruellia brittoniana), also ...

August 08, 2009 When the Death Star trains its energy-sapping, plant-frying beam on central Texas each summer, I find inspiration in succulent gardens, which use heat-loving, water-thrifty agaves, aloes, cacti, and groundcover succulents to create a tapestry of colorful foliage. This summer I’ve been devouring the images and design ideas ...

August 02, 2009 Have the drought and heat wilted your enthusiasm for gardening, Austinites? May I suggest two things to renew your gardening joy? Water plants and cacti. I’ve gone on lately about my new water garden, but long-time readers know that I also love agaves, yuccas, and other plants ...

June 24, 2009 Despite the record heat wave and dreadful drought that continue to take their toll on Austin’s lush green canopy, the trio of little succulents I planted this spring are blooming their flower-like heads off. Just look at ’em go! I thought these were sempervivums, which die after ...

May 15, 2009 I nearly didn’t post this Bloom Day, having a lot of work on my desk that needs doing, plus a stock tank pond that needs installing. But when I went out this morning to water some new plants and recent transplants, I noticed some new May flowers ...

April 21, 2009 Before the roller derby, we spent part of a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon at Living Desert, a cactus nursery and gift shop out on Highway 71 West in Bee Cave. Living Desert is known for piles of colorful slag glass for sale in the back yard and ...

March 25, 2009 My ‘Macho Mocha’ mangave (pronounced man-GAH-vay) is budding its first bloom stalk! I’m very excited and checking on it almost hourly. When I transplanted it from my old garden last fall, giving it a solo spot in a low stock tank, I never expected it to respond ...

November 10, 2008 Last week I finally got the transplants from my old garden, plus a few new plants, into the raised beds I’d cleaned out recently. Today I finished mulching—the desert plants in decomposed granite, the others in shredded hardwood mulch. And since I couldn’t feel at home in ...