Xeric plants

January 06, 2008 Path to the garden shed Yesterday afternoon I took my camera into the garden. It was 75 degrees, cloudy, balmy—a pleasant winter day in Austin. A strange thing occurred. My eyes saw the frost-browned salvias that seem to beg to be cut back, although I’ll leave their ...

December 08, 2007 I spotted this beautiful curbside garden at a house near St. Andrew’s Episcopal School and had to stop to admire it. While my own garden is cottage style, with a combination of drought-tolerant natives and tough cottage favorites, I find myself drawn more and more to this ...

December 08, 2007 Snowy, white, December gardens work so much better with holiday decor than my gaudy garden, now decked out in a mix of late-summer and (finally!) fall color. Those beautiful orange leaves on the new crepe myrtle? They just don’t work with the red-and-green Christmas wreath by the ...

December 07, 2007 Arabian lilac, or purple vitex (Vitex trifolia atropurpurea) Did anyone think I’d be ready to try another vitex so soon after removing the last one? Neither did I. And then I saw this beauty at Barton Springs Nursery. With leaves that are green on top and purple ...

November 07, 2007 In the past month, three different visitors to my garden have commented on its fragrance as they walk through the front gate. “It’s just the Salvia greggii ,” I say, taking for granted the clean, minty scent of this shrubby native that I’ve planted on either side ...

October 01, 2007 Gulf muhly grass glows pink against the setting sun in the school garden. Welcome to part two of “Growing a School Garden.” Click here to read part one. It takes vision to look at a dead courtyard like this and envision a garden. However, teachers tend to ...

October 01, 2007 Gulf muhly grass glows pink against the setting sun in the school garden. Welcome to part two of “Growing a School Garden.” Click here to read part one. It takes vision to look at a dead courtyard like this and envision a garden. However, teachers tend to ...

September 11, 2007 Conserving water is integral to “green” gardening in central Texas. Although Austin receives an average of 32 inches of rain a year, much of our rainfall is concentrated in spring and fall and in heavy showers that run off quickly rather than soaking into the soil. Yet ...

September 04, 2007 During a quick visit to the San Antonio Botanical Garden (more on that later), I spent a good five minutes just admiring this Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima ) in a parking-lot island. Also known as dwarf poinciana and red bird of paradise, this showy tropical is ...

August 27, 2007Esperanza (Tecoma stans ) means hope in Spanish. With that in mind, I have a few hopes to share, along with a few quick photos of newly blooming esperanza (also known as yellow bells) taken this evening with my new camera, the Canon Powershot S3 IS. I hope ...

July 15, 2007 Beautiful Sunbird on flowering aloe. Tarangire National Park, Tanzania Carol commented recently that my African animal photos were nice and people photos would be fine too, but what she really wanted to see were photos of flowers from my trip to Tanzania. So here ya go, Carol—a ...

July 14, 2007 ‘Belinda’s Dream’ is wide awake after all the rain we received recently. Although I missed Bloom Day in June because of my travel schedule, I’m happy to participate this month. The roses and salvias are enjoying a lush rebloom thanks to cooler than normal temperatures and ample ...

July 14, 2007 ‘Belinda’s Dream’ is wide awake after all the rain we received recently. Although I missed Bloom Day in June because of my travel schedule, I’m happy to participate this month. The roses and salvias are enjoying a lush rebloom thanks to cooler than normal temperatures and ample ...

May 17, 2007 Salvia guaranitica—love those blues! I’ve been covering Gardens on Tour 2007 all week, and I have one more to show you tomorrow (my favorite of the bunch, actually), but I decided to give you a little tour of my own garden today. It differs from my Bloom ...

May 16, 2007 A twisted live oak frames a sweeping lawn of ‘Palisades’ zoysia and a potting shed in this estate-sized garden. Our next stop on the garden tour led us to a luxurious home in a West Austin neighborhood. Surrounded by the open, palatial St. Augustine lawns of the ...

May 14, 2007 Buffalograss (Buchloe dactyloides) stands in for a traditional but thirsty St. Augustine lawn in this NW Austin garden. Surrounded by typical suburban yards, this garden shows how to use drought-tolerant natives in a fairly traditional way. While it didn’t bowl me over with an unusual design or ...