The yellow glow of late fall
December 02, 2021 Cool, blue-sky weather has me spending more time in the garden, having friends over, and tinkering with planting beds. It’s kind of glowing out there. Why? Yellow is the color of fall in my garden, starting with the wonderful forsythia sage (Salvia madrensis), which lights up the ...
Yuccas big and small give a garden the blues
September 30, 2021 I’m getting Blue Garden Lotusland vibes from this part of the garden. A loose grid of paleleaf yucca (Yucca pallida) glows blue-green amid foamy, silver woolly stemodia (Stemodia lanata) groundcover. The anchor plant, by the trio of blue ceramic balls, used to be a gigantic ‘Green Goblet’ ...
Reds for fall and foliage power
September 21, 2021 Ah, end of summer in Texas, and fall only a few weeks away. It’s still a bit too early for the fresh flowering of our “second spring,” but festive reds blaze among the ferny foliage of cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit) on the deck railing. Everyone warns me ...
Garden bed evolution and a newly named agave
August 21, 2021 It’s taken over a year, but this corner bed below the deck is finally moving in a good direction. For several years this space was filled with a frothy cloud of bamboo muhly — fine for a hedge or background planting, but I didn’t want a monolithic ...
Bee balm, daylilies, and fawn season
June 13, 2021 I’m grateful for the past two weeks of off-and-on rain, which helped my garden rebound from the epic February freeze. Early June may be hot and muggy now, but the garden is full and flowery. And the driveway border is back, baby! ‘Peter’s Purple’ bee balm (Monarda ...
Heart eyes for heartleaf skullcap and more
May 26, 2021 A blue haze has settled over the driveway-island bed, the silvery blue flowers of heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata). I find myself stopping to admire them every time I step outside. It fills in nicely around a ‘Vanzie’ whale’s tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia), ‘Vertigo’ pennisetum grass, Mexican oregano ...
A week of bloom spikes and rain
May 22, 2021 We had such prolonged rain this week that I lost track of how many inches it came to — 4 inches for sure if not 5. The garden responded to the extra water and mild May temps with a profusion of growth, including bloom spikes on yuccas, ...
Modern ranch garden embraces water collection and wildflowers in New Braunfels
May 17, 2021 Last spring Cody and Michelle Koehler finished their garden installation at their home in New Braunfels, Texas. Less than a year later, February’s epic freeze killed most of their large specimen plants, including Weber agaves, olive and palo verde trees, and toothless sotol. Like everyone else in ...
Hello, flowering cacti and vines; goodbye, pipe-planted sotol
May 07, 2021 After a good rain last week and now temps in the upper 80s, my cacti have started blooming. And oh, those flowers! I love their jewel-bright colors and satiny petals, which strikingly contrast with the spiny, austere plants themselves. Here’s a new one in my collection: peanut ...
Spring sights in the garden
April 29, 2021 ‘Frazzle Dazzle’ dyckia My spring planting is done, and I think all my post-freeze cutting back is done too. There are still brown shrubs and dead-looking small trees (like a pomegranate coming back from the roots, with a few leaves here and there on upper branches) taking ...
My agaves and other woody lilies: Alive, dead or in-between? Evaluating plants 2 months after Texas freeze
April 19, 2021 Freeze-damaged squid agave Today I’m taking a look at my woody lilies and bromeliads — plants like agave, yucca, nolina, sotol, hesperaloe, mangave, and dyckia. Some of these plants took a severe hit while others sailed through the freeze. I use them mainly as focal points or ...
After the beautiful, terrible Texas snowpocalypse
February 25, 2021 A 6-inch snowfall blanketed our street in northwest Austin. Not a footprint had marked it when I took photos that morning. You might have heard about a little snowstorm that happened in Texas last week. If you experienced it, you might still be reeling a little — ...
An icy garden on my 15th blogiversary
February 14, 2021 I started this blog 15 years ago today, a Valentine’s Day treat to myself as I joined the online gardening community. At first Digging was all about documenting and sharing photos of my Austin cottage garden, which I left behind 13 years ago when we moved to ...
Origami sculpture and Christmasy cactus garden at San Antonio Botanical Garden
December 07, 2020 I first admired Kevin Box‘s playful origami sculptures on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. Now he’s exhibiting his work at San Antonio Botanical Garden through early May 2021. I kept wanting to visit this fall but couldn’t find time until last weekend, when my husband and I ...
Flowers for a warm Texas fall
November 24, 2020 Aside from forsythia sage, which is STILL going strong after nearly a month of flowering (you can see its yellow flowers in the background), let me highlight a couple other plants that have been putting on a show into late November. Philippine violet (Barleria cristata), while nearly ...
Bigtooth maples and more fall foliage at the Wildflower Center, part 2
November 19, 2020 Did a few bigtooth maples from Lost Maples Park lose their way and end up at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center? It sure looked that way last week, when I spotted pumpkin-spice trees in the Family Garden. This is part 2 of my tour. Big, colorful ...
