Plant This: Eve’s necklace for spring flowers that bees love
May 12, 2022 Eve’s necklace may not be widely known among gardeners. But bees and other nectaring insects sure know it and love it. Formerly called Sophora affinis, now Styphnolobium affine, this small deciduous tree with lacy foliage occurs naturally in well-drained limestone (i.e., alkaline) soils in North and Central ...
Plant This for purple power: Spiderwort
April 08, 2021 Every year native spiderwort (Tradescantia occidentalis) seeds itself into rocky nooks and crannies and pops up in new places in the garden. I usually like where it shows up, like this spot at the top of a stone stair. Bees love the flowers too, so having lots ...
Plant This: Forsythia sage for fall flowers
November 03, 2020 The big-box stores are pushing mums and Christmas tree rosemary topiaries (too early!!). But branch out to your local nursery and you’ll find more interesting fall fare for your garden. Like forsythia sage (Salvia madrensis), one of my favorite late-blooming perennials here in central Texas. A yellow-flowering ...
Cenizo in bloom after the rain
September 06, 2020 Praise be to the rain gods, who delivered 2 inches of rain Thursday and Friday and broke Austin’s month-long heat wave. Rain lilies and oxblood lilies are waving their flower flags in celebration, but the prima donna of rain-celebrating plants has to be cenizo (Leucophyllum frutescens). This ...
Plant This: ‘Old Mexico’ prickly pear
May 17, 2020 Everyone needs at least one beautiful beast of a plant in their garden, a tough old boot intent on annexing adjacent real estate, but not so quickly that you can can’t beat it back. Texas tough. Meet ‘Old Mexico’ prickly pear (Opuntia gomei), also called wavy-leaf prickly ...
Plant This: Coahuila lace cactus
May 01, 2020 Slow-growing Coahuila lace cactus (Echinocereus pectinatus var. coahuila) bloomed in one of my wall planters recently. Tight quarters and dry, gravelly soil don’t bother cacti and succulents (that’s a little ghost plant tucked in there with it), which makes them perfect for small containers. Speaking of slow-growing, here’s how ...
Lauren’s Grape poppy pops open
April 19, 2020 I’m not a big seed sower. A well-mulched, shady garden isn’t really conducive to growing plants from seed. But last fall, having pulled out a few under-performing plants from the back garden’s raised beds, I had a few square feet of bare soil at my disposal. Fishing ...
Plant This: Dwarf Barbados cherry
October 11, 2019 Are you looking for a native Texas shrub (native to South Texas) that stays 3-to-4 feet tall, attracts pollinators with pretty pink-and-cream flowers in spring and early fall, produces small red fruits that birds love, and is evergreen in mild winters? Oh, and did I mention that ...
Plant This: Mexican beautyberry
October 01, 2019 I am not, in general, a plant collector. I rarely make impulse buys at the nursery. And yet a few plants (agave, mangave, and Turk’s cap come to mind) have captivated me enough to try different varieties, even if I don’t exactly need or have space for ...
Plant This: ‘Purple Pillar’ Rose of Sharon
August 05, 2019 Do you ever come home with a plant you don’t know what to do with and just stick it in the most neglected, out-of-the-way place, dust off your hands, and say, “Well, little plant, good luck”? I know you do. All gardeners do this. That’s what I ...
Plant This: Pride of Barbados, Caesalpinia pulcherrima
October 01, 2018 When summer’s heat sizzles the back of your neck and it hasn’t rained in a month and the rest of your plants want to give up, Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima) sassily unfurls dozens of ruffled, ember-hued flowers at the ends of blue-green, feathery-leaved branches and throws ...
Plant This: Paleleaf yucca shines in dry shade
August 04, 2017 Like a woman who’s grown tired of covering up the gray, I’m letting my silver self shine — in the garden, that is. Instead of bemoaning the dominant silver-green to olive-green palette that comes so naturally to Austin’s hot, often droughty climate, I’m letting it rip. And ...
Plant This: Pale pavonia, or Brazilian rock rose
July 28, 2017 Even in gentler months, my shady garden is not particularly flowery, and in the heat of summer those perennials that do flower — salvias, mistflowers, cupheas — tend to hunker down until fall. One happy exception is pale pavonia, also known as Brazilian rock rose (Pavonia hastata), ...
Plant This: Moonflower vine for moonlit nights
July 23, 2017 When the sun goes down and the moon comes up, that’s when moonflower vine (Ipomoea alba) unfurls tissue-petaled white blossoms as large as your palm, inviting you to lean in for a deep whiff of its sweet perfume. In my mind’s eye, the flowers glow like miniature ...
Plant This: Purple prickly pear adds rich winter color
January 23, 2016 Photos of rich-purple pads on a spineless prickly pear called ‘Santa Rita’ sent me running to the nurseries about 10 years ago. I came home with this, a purple prickly pear I thought was ‘Santa Rita’ but now believe to be Opuntia macrocentra. What’s the difference? Long ...
Plant This: Little Grapes gomphrena
January 18, 2016 Since first planting it at Green Hall Garden in 2008, I’ve known this delicately branching gomphrena cultivar as ‘Grapes’, but it also goes by ‘Little Grapes’, ‘Itsy Bitsy’, and airy bachelor’s buttons. By any name, it’s a moderately reliable perennial in my fall garden, sometimes remaining in ...
