I'm sure this year was one of the most glorious they've experienced--after the intense drought of 20 months we had loads of fall rain (good for getting new plants established and all the wildflower seeds germinating) and then so far a pretty rainy spring. Today it's 70, and it's late April. Last year it was in the mid-90s by now and all the sweet peas had croaked.

Not that things were without worry. Several hard freezes--which are unusual if totally absent here--killed back a lot of plants that are usually green through the winter. I thought I'd lost the New Zealand flax, but now new leaves have sprouted up. Same with the oleanders. All those on-the-cusp tropical plants didn't fare well, and I'm sure were completely lost in gardens outside the city. While driving by one of the local garden centers this week, I noticed my favorite hedge of oleanders had been torn out and cleaned up.

I also worried about the sweet peas--by far my favorite spring plant. Half of the seedlings died in the first freeze and the other half looked as if they were about to follow in another surprise freeze in late February. I mean, we had snow! And usually the early-blooming sweet peas start around February. Better late than however, and those that remained went on to grow like weeds this past month.

Normally the later-blooming sweet peas don't have a chance here--the best bets are buying either Painted Lady (an antique early-bloomer) or winter-blooming kinds. But for the first time I have an abundance of Cupani and Matucana (similar to the original wild sweet pea) growing right next to April in Paris--which I've tried unsuccessfully to grow for three years. It usually succumbs to heat and mildew before it gets a chance to bloom. (Sweet peas seem to develop lots of blind shoots above 90 degrees.)

Anyway, these three are by far the most fragrant of all the sweet peas and just a little vase of them makes a whole room sweet.

Like many of the existing bulbs that came with the house, I suspect they were planted several decades ago, before fences and apartment buildings and overgrown shrubs. And I had never seen them bloom. So I moved them around, threw some out (irises divide rather quickly and I was running out of room). A few of them bloomed in spring of 2008, and were a yellow color, so I assumed they were all this way. But I'm grateful I didn't throw more out, or I would have missed this lovely huge white iris!

What a joy to be continually surprised by one's garden, to have these "freebies" popping up. I thought I had seen the last of the surprise bulbs until a strange tazetta appeared last spring. Even after 6 years of living in our house, there are still flowers left to be discovered. Now if only the heirloom crinums would bloom.

From my experience, irises don't bloom the first year after you plant them. I've had one or two rare exceptions. I have moved some in spring, and they didn't even bloom the following spring. It seems to me they need at least a full year in the ground, probably two. Most of the time irises are purchased and planted in fall--from what I can gather, the best time to plant them here in Texas is around September. In spring it's possible to buy potted iris plants in nurseries, and I often see Louisiana irises sold this way.

But the great thing about the bearded iris types is they are pretty indestructible. It seems like they can live for years off the nutrients in their little bulbs. I've thrown teeny broken bits of iris rhizome on top of compost piles and they went on to grow new leaves without even rooting. They're very easy to divide and multiply. Their only fussy requirement is that they don't usually like overly wet soil and it's standard practice to keep the rhizomes visible on the soil surface; otherwise they may rot. So I have to be careful about mulching and composting over them.

I thought originally it was some kind of skullcap because I didn't know anything about plants when I bought it, but its behavior is almost identical to Texas red sage (Salvia coccinea) so I'm thinking that I planted a variety of red sage called "Coral Nymph'. Both can get quite rangy by the end of the summer, are the same height (1 1/2 to 2 feet) and have similar leaves and both like growing in the same dappled shade conditions. I thought that Salvia coccinea was more of a tender perennial treated like an annual here but this pink sage is almost four years old and has been green in winter.

Texas red sage grew from seed all over my backyard. It likes dappled shade under trees.

At the end of last summer, I thought the pink salvia was a goner to the heat and drought. My two plants were also planted too far into the bed so got overwhelmed by taller plants. So I replanted them and cut them back severely in the fall. They seemed to like the move as well as the additional water they got from the drip system and this year they bloomed their hearts out all summer long, one of the few flowers to do so.

By September I noticed they had reseeded themselves in other parts of the garden. Ironically they reseeded in the same parts where I had intentionally seeded the red sage. So I don't know if 1. pink is a natural variation in the red seeds or 2. the pink version comes true from seed. The only way I'll be able to tell is if I isolate some seeds from the pink ones next month.

I came back from several travels this summer to witness a slowly eroding lawn and lost perennials. In case you aren't from Texas we are sustaining a pretty nasty drought period. Last summer was bad enough and this summer Austin's weather officially broke all records. (Most days 100-plus degrees, hottest average.) One weatherman said this was the hottest summer since sometime in the late 1800s. I'm not yet packing my bags for San Francisco; although I dream of gardening in a climate like that I know I couldn't get half the garden space I have here.

I try to take it all in stride. We underwent a major landscaping and planting overhaul last fall, and many of my "permanent" garden plants are in their first year--so I am tempted to stress out and what is happening here, but for some reason I thought to myself, this is what I got myself into. Even the cactus are wilting.

I love the idea of filling in bare spaces with summer annuals but there are so few that don't need to be attacked with water daily. I had few sunflowers that actually got to blooming before dying and some needy zinnias. Cosmos sulphurus seem to be the only flowers that don't need water every single day--maybe every other day. (Yes, even those xeriscape plants still suffer in 40 days of 100 degree heat and no rain.)

Over the last four years I have slowly built a large drip irrigation system, set on timers, to help me. Drip irrigation is fairly easy to set up, but takes time and doesn't always run correctly. Often a clog or bug will block up the whole system, and if this happens while I am away, whole sections of my garden will stay without water for weeks. Once while away a clog burst off one of the connectors, and the resulting water just spilled out into a puddle during every timed watering session.

Drip systems have other limits. A certain line of tubing can only run so far away from the house, with so many drippers on it, before the farthest end of the line loses pressure. So watering the far back of my garden has become hand watering only.

It's also not the be-all-end-all solution to shrubs like roses. Drip irrigation does focus the water in one spot, not wasting any water, but a drip system isn't the greatest at soaking the entire root ball unless you have mini sprinklers. Roses have large roots and small feeder roots and if these stay dry you will notice the rose responding in kind with browning leaves and canes. This summer I lost several good canes on roses that were being watered regularly with drippers. A rose appreciates a good long soak all over the place at least once a week in a summer (and more than that here).

I will try to write more about drip systems in hopes that my experience will help others. In the end I am at the mercy of gracious friends who understand my love for my garden, and come to check on things. My potted patio gardenia was struggling before I left, but a green-thumb friend seemed to bring it to life, looking better than it did in spring bloom.

Because my lifestyle includes travel, I have to live with something that can't be watched over 24-7.

The oxblood lilies started to poke out in my driveway this week, the usual first blooms of fall, and now I'm hatching all sorts of fall plans. It's my favorite time of year to garden, to be in the garden. I'm a fall baby, so I always think of fall as a fresh start.

Viola 'Etain', a perennial viola in some climates, died during our three-week stay in Europe. Partially because a friend accidentally turned off the drip system in this area, but I have a feeling it would have needed daily watering anyway. I loved how much these bloomed in spring and even through the early days of June, but they do need water. I think I will pass on these again (although they have a beautiful fragrance, if you can find them!).

My two Philippine Violet plants, planted last October, were looking great in early summer but have sadly passed on. These aren't violets but look like bushy ruellias, and were recommended to me by the Natural Gardener as a good shade plant. One died by the time we got back from Europe, and the other kept wilting despite me watering it every day for a week. I love these plants and they are great for a shadier or understory garden, and I do see them around Austin. I suspected they died from some kind of root rot. Cotton root rot, or Texas root rot, as it is known in other states, can kill many plants, and is especially active in high pH soils (check) and temperatures above 90 (check). I would worry about trying these plants again if my garden is somehow susceptible to this rot.

Moving out of the Definite Goners category into the Curiously Misbehaving, we have here, as exhibit A:

I planted this culinary sage variety last fall and am hoping to have a big bed of them--they are so pretty and fuzzy like lamb's ears and of course great for cooking. One of these four plants in this bed seems to be drowning and dying. The others are fine. I suspect this is a case of too much watering. I will have to dig under the roots and inspect. I had an idea in early summer to remove the other herbs from this bed (oregano, Mexican mint marigold and thyme), and have an entire bed of this salvia--it is that pretty. I tend to only plant in twos or threes, but from a distance sometimes my garden just looks so mish-mashy. I have a lot to learn from broad-strokes kind of gardeners. Anyhow, if it is too much water as I suspect (I had a lavender die in this bed two years ago), I may till it up and add some more of that super-duper expanded shale, a few bags of which I still have around.

I thought these were a no-brainer in a southern garden, but boy, the Cast Iron Plant sure looks natty. I think this is due to too little water, but still--not exactly cast iron tough.

Lamb's Ears were another try--on some days as if they've had too little water. On others they appear to be drowning. I suspect this might just be a late-summer appearance. Lamb's Ears often split open after flowering, creating a kind of rotted look in the middle. These, however, have not yet flowered this summer. I may just remove the rotted parts and see how they manage the rest of the summer.

I do love the Heart-leaf Skullcap, especially in spring. It reseeds like mad and really fills out an area with its fuzzy leaves and lovely salvia-like purple blooms. However, within one month the entire plant starts to die back, regardless of water use, and look very straggly. I have read that Heart-leaf skullcap often returns in fall but I've yet to see this happen in my garden after three years. I'm considering tearing it out this fall and planting Salvia guaranitica ("Black and Blue salvia") in its place. This salvia looks just gorgeous in fall in much of Austin.

Other ho-hums and danger alerts:

I'd put this in the curiously misbehaving category but I know that Princess Flower (Tibouchina urvilleana) is in its first year and am learning it just needs more water than I thought. Of the three plants I bought, one has died from drought, and the two are holding on with brown tips at their leaves. I think these would appreciate morning sun only. I am on the edge of their hardiness zone, and they could possibly die over winter. But oh, how beautiful they are when in full growth (here and here)!

This Bicolor iris (Dietes bicolor) looks great in partial shade, and terrible in full sun. Unfortunately all those lovely spring blooms I see from these plants all over Austin are usually from the ones in sunshine. In the shade I might get lucky to have one or two. But by mid-summer they looks as if they're dying in summer. So I guess one has to make a choice about which is the lesser of two terribles. Personally, I like this foliage in the shade--it looks like a tall very blade-y grass--and how it makes for a good understory or foundation planting.

After three years of watching them in my garden, daylilies seem to be fussier than I thought. While pretty in the spring, the foliage is rather spent-looking by now. Some even die back completely. Most of these are Stella d'Oro daylilies, and they just ain't all that. I'm sure there are better daylilies out there, but this seems to be all the nurseries sell. Must've been a marketing thing. In this mass are also several heirloom daylilies that are as old as my house. They bloomed for the first time this year, on nearly 3 1/2 feet tall stalks, which tells me I may need to move them behind something. Note to self: daylilies will often skip a year before blooming after being replanted, just as I've discovered with irises. One must be patient with many bulbs.

Pleasant surprises and other good happenings in the garden:
For the first time, I've had success with zinnias. It could have been the soil, it could have been the watering, but they never looked this good. They do need water every two days.

My foundation planting of three Oak-leaf hydrangeas seems to be doing well. These are "Alice", a tall oak-leaf cultivar. I imagine it takes a couple years to reach the height and fullness I am looking for and these were planted 10 months ago, and are growing at a medium-slow rate. However, four other plants have died in this same place including a beautiful Japanese aralia (Fatsia japonica) which seemed to die from rot. It is the same area in which the Philippine violets died from root rot, so I'm guessing I need to plant things known to be immune from now on, but thankfully the hydrangeas seem to be surviving it.

Hydrangeas, I was guessing, are a real risk here. I tried a pom-pom "Encore" hygrandea in here two summers ago and it lived until July at which point it declined beyond repair in the heat. An azalea suffered the same problem. (One has to be dedicated to keeping the soil acidic on these, which I am not.) I am hoping the oak-leaf hygrandea, which is a U.S. native, and seems to live successfully in southern climates, sticks around.

Acidic-need plants just stink in my garden. The last one I am trying is a Gardenia jasminoides in a pot. I was careful to give it a homemade, high-draining potting mix, and in the spring it bloomed beautifully (oh, that jasmine fragrance!), but started to look a bit ratty in early summer. While we were away a friend tended it for almost a month and it came back to me looking lush and green at the end of July! She has a love-touch with plants so I know that is half of the success, but also containers with rainwater and yes, gives them Miracle Gro. I am realizing, slowly, that I don't fertilize or water pots enough. Containers have different needs, and I think that fertilizers drain more quickly in containers than in-ground plants. Containers don't cultivate worms, don't cultivate the same microbe conditions--they just need something extra. So I now use a combination of slow-release and liquid chemical fertilizer in my pots, with a splash of Superthrive in the watering. I'm sure this helps cultivate more acidic conditions, in addition to a constant supply of available nutrients that they weren't getting when I was just using a very light fish-based organic fertilizer.

Do I need to say that I lost more grass this year? I wish I would have composted the lawn this spring, I think it would have helped, but I lost a huge 4-foot spot due to sun and heat. I don't have a huge lawn, just a teensy weensy slice of it, but I do like having that green, no matter how unfashionable or thirsty it is.

Since I have started going to the Natural Gardener, they've changed their look a few times, expanding the grounds. I do miss the huge fruit orchard, some of which was replaced by a xeriscape display garden. I like xeriscape as an idea but also it has an underlying aesthetic which is a little too intentionally Buddhist-minimalistic for me. I am all for the wild and natural look. It's fun to walk through their Butterfly garden, especially in late summer when the cannas and mistflowers and zinnias are covered with a rainbow of fluttering life and then sneak back into the pathway that leads toward the teepee--an area which is all wild cactus and native flowers--an area which is totally uncultivated and gives you a raw idea of what the land actually looks like there. There has been so much development of refined landscapes and homes in the Hill Country in the last decade that it's easy to forget how wild and untamed (and desert-y at times) that land actually is.

The Natural Gardener calls itself "organic gardening headquarters" and offers classes and workshops, and the staff there is incredibly passionate and knowledgable about gardening. The don't just sell stuff, they are gardening outside there every day. I see the Natural Gardener as one of the best examples of the Baby Boomer generation offering its knowledge to younger people. It is a very local, unique expression of the ways one can garden in Austin. The owner John Dromgoole is the sort of Texan that came of age in Austin in the 60s and 70s, a little hippie, a little soft around the edges, but definitely Texan in that I suspect he has "ranch" somewhere in his background. He reminds me of a good friend of mine--kind and concerned, and authentic in his own spirituality. My friend, who I'll call O., raised his young family on a hippie commune and then in his 40s and 50s went on to start a house community, inviting a rotating cast of Gen-xers to live with them and experience some of what they did in their youth. I was one of those 20-somethings that lived with them for a time.

The big difference between my generation and the Boomers is that most of us didn't grow up on farms. The Boomers are the post-war generation that remembers a more rural style of living; if they didn't live it their parents did. And even if they sometimes reacted to what they perceived as society's more institutional lifestyles, they still had an understanding of those lifestyles. My generation, on the other hand, couldn't tell a Miracle-Gro bottle from a compost pile. Statistically, we were and are a much more urban-driven generation and grew up in the suburbs where maybe at best we watched our parents tend a lawn.

My father, for example, grew up on a sprawling farm. His father had horses, cows, ponies, pigs, four barns, dug-out fishing ponds that he stocked every year. And this was all in an suburb just miles outside of Detroit. By the time I was a teenager, that entire area was developed as a General Motors suburb, and the memory of it having been a farm long gone. My grandfather farmed because he had to and because it is just the thing one did. Having chickens and goats wasn't just for the rural people, it was for anyone. He had a day job on the assembly line and in the rest of his life was a farmer. My father didn't have to make that choice. And I am nowhere near having to make that choice. My in-laws both grew up with homesteading parents in the South. They no longer farm either, but live in a beautiful home near downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

And for some strange reason, our parents didn't really pass on the gardening know-how to us; it is like a distant memory for them. I find that this is pretty typical in my generation, and we are having to re-discover gardening on our own. We don't have the same reasons for doing it, but we do want to reclaim something that has been lost. This brings me back to the Boomers. They DO remember, but they also have a different philosophy--organic, sustainable, etc.--behind their gardening impulses than that of my parents. My parents didn't need a philosophy to garden: it is just something one does.

The Boomer philosophy is evident everywhere if you really look. But what about us? Or the even younger people? I really think we have to re-define it on our own terms. What I appreciate about John Dromgoole's approach is that he seems to be listening. He is parenting the gardening world, and he is parenting us, but with a gentle hand. In the Time Magazine video, he explains that most of the people in our generation are interested in vegetable gardening. With the current economic climate, and the threats of drought, we want to be able to create and provide our own food.

The gardening world is concerned with how to "reach" the younger generations, because, as they've rightly guessed, we just don't have the same motivations or knowledge our parents did. Teaching about vegetable gardening is one way because locally-grown food is more important to us than ever.

I would suggest that the larger approach to teaching us should be to Keep It Creative. My generation values authenticity. We like stories. We learn from blogs (and not corporate ones, but usually a personal story), and make up things like "Guerilla Gardening". We are pretty tribal in our approach to gardening, we learn from friends and sometimes learn things backwards. We have no idea where snapdragons come from. Tell us stories about their wild habitat in Israel, with pictures. We don't know the Latin names. Tell us stories about botanists who hunted down wild lilies in China and how the names came from that. We are interested in heirlooms because there's something about reclaiming the past that interests us. Tell us how to hybridize our own plants. Farmers did this all the time, why can't we?

It was telling that the same Time article included a link to an "avant-garde gardening" photo essay, that those interested in the new generational spending impulses would also appreciate the interaction between conceptual art and gardens. Being creative doesn't just mean design-branding but actual authentic artistic expression. We work in creative industries, are the most artistically, information-driven generation ever (and the ones that follow even more so). Fine artists and storytellers need to be integrated into the gardening world. Where are the Gertrude Jeckylls of my generation?

If, for example, you are selling seeds that were raised and collected in California, tell us why. Use a local artist to paint these wonderful plants, and tell us stories about these flowers, right on the package. We like boutiques, not malls. This message about creativity is important I think because so much of the gardening approach remains so bland and driven by the practical metaphors of previous generations. Why are tomato cages so boring? Or rainwater barrels (I mean, c'mon, black plastic ugly barrels)? I'm not talking about product design but about integrating creativity and fun into gardening--hire more artists for your company. They will bring it to life.

More importantly, I want to mention a caution. We are driven by different passions than the Boomers. We don't have as much of a "got to get ourselves back to the garden" thing. We do want to be funky and fun and true to who we are. We value authentic, one-of-a-kind expression. We are learning, slowly. We need to be encouraged to do it on our own way, while learning old, lost wisdom along the way. We have enough pressures as it is--economic worries, general political anxieties--and to put us under some religious pressure to "garden for the future or else everything will be destroyed" will only heighten our anxiety and take the true joy out of learning. Gardening should not be a place of existential struggle; it is hard enough to tend the earth and requires patience. I have several friends who are wracked with guilt if they don't recycle every last scrap of their unused waste. I find this pressure too much to bear when I am gardening. What comes out of joy and personal expression will last a lifetime, and we will pass that onto our children, who might become the wisest gardeners ever.

powdery mildew, the bane of sweet peas

The sweet peas will be the first to go in the heat; most of them are already riddled with powdery mildew, especially the early-blooming types. Although I adore the fragrant old-fashioned sweet peas, they don't start blooming until right now, and they have about three weeks before the heat starts to get them.

If you are a Texas gardener and you really want to have more than three weeks of sweet peas, the winter-blooming types are the way to go. Sadly, they just have so little fragrance, which to me is the whole point of growing sweet peas, although I can't complain that I've had two months of gorgeous flowers to cut. There is, however, one exception to these, the old-fashioned Painted Lady, probably the oldest variety in cultivation next to the original sweet pea itself. This gorgeous and dainty pink and white pea blooms first in my garden--the last two years it started in January. Unlike most of my sweet peas, I started this from a nursery-grown transplant so it has a slight head start on the others.

There is a conundrum with my Painted Lady. According to Graham Rice, the first early-blooming sweet pea was Blanche Ferry, which was a sport of Painted Lady. However, when I grew Blanche Ferry from seed last year, it didn't bloom until April, along with the other old-fashioned Grandifloras. In other words, Painted Lady is supposed to be a spring-blooming sweet pea, and Blanche Ferry the earlier one. So this year I experimented again. I obtained seeds of Painted Lady from Owl's Acre in England, and bought a transplant of Painted Lady from the nursery, to see if both would bloom early. Once again, the transplanted Painted Lady started blooming in January. The seed-grown version, however, stayed quite small until last month, took off and finally started blooming last week. Not only did it bloom two months later, it looks distinctly different--to a casual gardener, maybe not by much, but very different to me.

Painted Lady on left, Blanche Ferry on right.

The flowers of my seed-grown Painted Lady are dark pink in their standards (upper petals) and a brushed pink on their wings (lower petals). The transplant-grown Painted Lady is a distinct pink and white (occasionally its lower petals have a brushed pale pink but they quickly fade to white). The seed-grown Painted Lady also has slightly larger flowers. I like horticultural mysteries and mix-ups are not unusual (see my entry on Byzantine gladiolus), so I revisited the Owl's Acre site which says:

"The original Painted Lady sweet pea arose as a sport from 'Cupani' in about 1730. It had only one or two small flowers per stem, and survived in cultivation at least until 1910 when it was not considered to be worth growing. This form is clearly a more recent reselection, with larger, more numerous flowers."

So my seed-grown flowers are definitely a more recent selection than my transplants. Roger Parsons, a horticulturalist responsible for maintaining the British National Collection of sweet peas, mentions a potential mix-up on his site: "Almost all Old-Fashioned types are also Summer flowering. The exception to this is 'Blanche Ferry', named in 1889, which was originally released as an early flowering form of 'Painted Lady'. I suspect that the two have got a little mixed since there are stocks of 'Blanche Ferry' which flower in summer and stocks of 'Painted Lady' which flower earlier. "

As with many heirloom flowers, especially ones of an 18th century variety, things change over time, re-selection might add slight new characteristics, and growing environments and cultures will eventually add their own stamp. In other words, the heirloom you are growing today might not be exactly as it was 200 years ago. Most of the very early sweet peas, for example, only had one or two flowers on each stem, but even the heirloom Cupani, which is supposed to be the original, has sometimes three or four. Some horticulturalists hunt for plants with more primitive characteristics, often from their native homeland, in order to breed back some of the originality. (Fragrance in particular is most potent in the primitive kinds.)

So I have two Painted Ladies. The early-blooming Painted Lady is probably older than the seed-grown one, as it has smaller flowers and less of them per stem. It is also most likely to be closer to Blanche Ferry than it is to Painted Lady. Perhaps I could complete my experiment by finding seeds of a more primitive Painted Lady rather than the Owl's Acre variety. Renee's Garden started selling Painted Lady this spring, claiming it to be early-blooming, so perhaps it is more like my nursery-grown plant.

Gardening has seemed to spark in me a new interest in science and little growing experiments. I really enjoy amateur botany and growing things side by side for comparison. I'm fascinated with these beautiful flowers, their history and how to grow them better in our climate. because the early-blooming types are far more successful in my garden. Given how early the transplant Painted Lady blooms, I want to make sure I'm growing that one and not the other (while pretty and fragrant, simply not worth it for the 6 months it doesn't flower). I adore the Old-fashioned and fragrant sweet peas, but they bloom too late here. I wish there was more color variety in early-blooming types, more fragrance. My early-blooming Painted Lady is the one source of beautiful fragrance along my entire fence of sweet peas.

The other early-blooming sweet peas are Winter Elegance, Cuthbertson's (Royals), Mammoths and the recent "Winter Sunshine" series by Owl's Acre. All of these have lovely colors but rather dull fragrances (which seems to be a bit stronger in the darker colors). Additionally, none of the winter-blooming types have bi-colors (which Painted Lady and Cupani have) or other unusual color patterns like streaks or picotees which are all widely available in the Spencer/summer-blooming sweet peas. Perhaps the gene for early blooming peas prevents unusual color patterns.

Last year I grew a seed mixture called "Old Spice" and of this mix there was one pea in particular that flowered early. I wish I would have saved the seed. Although sweet peas have been classified into three flowering seasons, there aren't really strict boundaries here. The gene which influences early-flowering can have varying effects in plants, as I've discovered from a little research into pea genes. So there are always some exceptions. If you are reading this and know of some early-flowering old-Fashioned sweet peas, I'd love to hear from you.

I'm not a geneticist but I'm always conducting little odd science experiments. And there must be some old-fashioned pleasure in breeding one's own flowers. Perhaps I should start breeding my own early Texas sweet pea?

The Byzantine gladiolus, however, is another kind of glad. While many gladioli are native to Africa, the Byzantine species grows around the Mediterranean. Here in Texas the corms are planted in fall (October-ish), and bloom in April, much earlier than other gladioli. And they're also known as one of the best naturalizing bulbs in Texas. I've seen photos of huge stands of these against ranch fences in the country.

The true Byzantine gladiolus is somewhat hard to get, and expensive. As far as I know, only three bulb sellers offer the Texas heirloom, Old House Gardens, Southern Bulbs (where I got mine) and another home-based Texas seller whose name I forget. Most other bulbs advertised as Byzantine glads are not the same girl, at all. If they are inexpensive, chances are they are not the real deal. That may not matter to you. I tried them both. The inexpensive one is smaller-flowered and a very pale pink, whereas the prized Byzantine is a deep and warm magenta, luminous and unmistakeable. One has a sort of wildflower-y grace, the other more of a bold statement.

According to Scott Ogden in Garden Bulbs for the South, the Southern heirloom strain of Gladiolus byzantinus is called "Creuntus", although it may or may not sell by this name. If you can find one that has been cultivated by Texas growers, you are probably buying the real thing. The "fake" Byzantine is a related Dutch-cultivated species, Gladiolus communis, and is unfortunately often sold with the wrong name and the wrong picture--a picture of her magenta sister--on the package. These mistakes happen innocently in horticulture, I guess, but the Southern heirloom is a much richer gem and has a history of naturalizing in our gardens.

Gladiolus do reproduce like crazy, at least this one does. Dig it up after one year as I did and you will find a number of baby-corms falling off the mother corm. It might take two or three years for a baby corm to become flowering size, but in by then you will have about five or six times as many glads as you started with. Gladiolus leaves will look messy and flop over early on in their life, and I think that planting the corms deeper than is often suggested might help them get a bit more support underground. I tend to plant bulbs too shallow, simply because I hate digging in our soil.

Another gladiolus worth trying in Texas is the white Abyssinian gladiolus, which has a light powdery musk fragrance that fills the evening air. This glad is planted in spring and blooms in fall and I'm about to find out if it will return this year.

The funny thing about these Byzantine gladioli is that they tend to open only one flower on the stalk at a time--so one opens, the one below it withers, the next one above it opens while that one withers, and so on. At any given point there is some withering, which is noticeable when you don't have a huge clump of them. So for the best effect, it would be nice to have at least 6 or more grouped together.

I've been trying to keep up with everything that was blooming, and have spent more time taking innumerable macro photos of sweet peas and cleaning. Since last spring, my garden is considerably larger (new landscape installation = more plantings = more watering = more clean up!)

Some hard rains came late in March and I was running around putting open containers to collect the water. (I don't have a rainbarrel... yet.) With March's high temperatures, some things disappeared as soon as they appeared, like my tulips and early irises. My "Texas Tulips" (Tulipa praecox) bloomed for their second year in March, and not only that, one of them multiplied. (I went from three to four!) This is a tulip which is supposed to naturalize in the cooler parts of Texas. I'll see how long it returns in my garden, but this year it was so hot that the flowers lasted about two days. I have poppies that last longer than that.

Tulipa praecox

Since my last post on daffodils, some others appeared, even a few surprises which I had moved around from last year. Ice Follies came into full bloom six weeks ago and finished their show at the end of March. Geranium started blooming in early March and just today I discovered a new bloom stalk. It has been by far the longest blooming daffodil and probably the latest. Mount Hood, a lovely white trumpet daffodil, returned after I moved it last fall and is still blooming.

Souvenir de la Malmaison has a record of about forty blooms on it but many of them either "balled" (stayed closed due to the high humidity during the rains) or got smothered with a dose of powdery mildew so they look 'worse for the weather', as they say down here. Still, I can live with its gorgeous fragrance hovering over my patio.

Meyer lemon bloom

My Meyer lemon tree has just finished blooming and I feared getting close to it as it was covered with bees. I'm keeping my fingers crossed this year, as it has only given me a total of four lemons for the past two summers. I think with all the bees it must have been pollinated; now just keeping it regularly watered (it's in a huge pot).

Oh, oh, so many things are a-blooming. April is just the bloomiest month here. Hopefully I can get more pictures, more time to write. In the meantime, here's some more from my photo adventures:

Flanders poppy

Freesia is a spring-blooming bulb. I don't know why more people grow this, the fragrance is absolutely delectable and blooms at the same time as my lemon tree. Between these and the sweet peas, my backyard fragrance is heavenly.

And rain lilies have made their regular spring appearance after our heavy rains in March.

Happy spring!

These thorns make it hard to pull this vine out and even if you do, it will still respond by sending up more green vines from some big tuberous root deep in the soil. Even the experts at the Ladybird Johnson Center suggest that painting herbicide on the stumps of this vine is the only recourse to getting rid of it. I don't like using herbicides and the one and only time I did was on my dreaded trumpet vine.

Both the trumpet vine and the briar vine are native here, but in a tidy part of the garden they can quickly take over. The Briar Vine succeeded in entwining an entire crape myrtle in my backyard, which I had to wear some super-tough gloves to cut out. I guess if I was being garden-politically-correct I should say that it provides food and cover for birds and all manner of wildlife and even the leaves can be eaten in salads but all at the cost of blood-letting whenever it touches bare skin!

Saw greenbriar at the Wildflower Center

I've not yet been so daring up till this past year to plant a tree. in fact, most of my tree adventures have been about eradicating the junk trees I do have. Once we started to get rid of nuisance trees, I wanted to know about the good trees. I started noticing trees in our neighborhood. Once I read about Mexican plum, I suddenly started seeing it everywhere.

I've also fallen in love with both Arizona Cypress, whose ashy color and graceful form make such pretty barriers. I saw photos of it in a garden magazine and suddenly it was all around me. It very much stands out in a landscape if you are specifically looking at trees and not flowers. And honestly, until a year ago, all I noticed about yards were their flowers or garden plants.

I had a hard time deciding between the two but I thought it was wise to choose just one and think seriously about where to plant it. This is a big decision, I thought, because a tree is not just any perennial, it is more like building a house--a thing that lasts perhaps longer than I and becomes a part of my property's architecture.

In our backyard we cut down at least three Hackberry trees and about five Chinaberries. There are still six huge Chinaberries left, but finances kept us from doing more. When
Chinaberries flower they are a fragrant, pretty sight. Last year a friend visiting from England collected stems of their blossoms to make an early spring bouquet, and once indoors, as their lilac-like fragrance filled the dining room, I had a moment of grace for these otherwise annoying trees. In fact, one of their other common names is Persian Lilac.

Like most "junk trees", as they call them now, fast-growing trees are attractive in that they provide willing and fast greenery and shade to an otherwise barren landscape. One look at some of the new suburban communities that have popped up around here in the last few years, and I understand why people might be desperate for a fast tree. Developers eradicate the existing landscape and while they might prop it up with some native shrubs and hollies, it takes years for something as gorgeous as a live oak or post oak to make a statement. Not to say trees like that wouldn't be worth these settings, especially as most of the suburbs to which I am referring are in the hill country and need something dramatic to go with the natural drama.

Planting trees requires someone to think of a landscape beyond his or her lifetime, at the very least beyond the period in which they live in their house. I know that some of the new trees I plant I will never get to see to maturity. I know this because I don't think I will be here forever. We have too much gypsy blood in us. But it is a different state of mind when you are really planting for the future, as a gift to others.

In addition, a majority of people in the world and in cities can't even possibly entertain planting a medium-to-large tree. Texas Gardening magazing published an article a few years ago by our local county agent and garden guy Skip Richter in which he lists "A Dozen Delightful Little Trees for Texas". Unlike the old days when people had room for a few grand trees in their landscape, our modern landscapes are very urban. "Now lot lines are shrinking so much that you can almost reach out your window to close your neighbor's blinds. Many people live in garden homes, townhomes, or other tight areas without an expanse to accommodate a large tree. Structures such as outbuildings, pools, and decks, as well as hardscape features like sidewalks and driveways may mean a large tree is just not appropriate for the landscape."

The positives are that "the changes have opened up a new opportunity for small trees." And that makes sense; we will probably be seeing more and more small trees and shrubs enter commerce than ever before. Still, for those wanting a big tree, patience is utmost. I get it, I am not a patient gardener. But I don't want to plant anything that grows fast, gives up fast, and creates more problems for either my or future resident's landscape.

The Mr. Smarty Plants at the Wildflower Center answered a recent question about fast-growing trees: "We rarely talk to anyone who, a few years after planting a "fast-growing tree," were glad that they did. Fast-growing trees usually have one redeeming value, they quickly produce shade. The negative consequences are often many and quite unpleasant. Among the problems that many fast-growing trees exhibit are weak trunks, weak limbs, abundant leaf-, fruit- and twig-litter, invasive roots, insect and disease susceptibility, and so on."

Chinaberry (Melia azedarach) is one such fast-growing tree, despite its lilac grace. Although it is in some places called "Persian Lilac", Chinaberry is not a true lilac tree. Chinaberry was introduced into the U.S. from Asia in the 1800s, and planted en masse in the South for its fast growth and use as a cleanser. I've read in several places that the berries have been used in soap-making products, but there are other species of trees called Chinaberry or Soapberry that are also used for the same purpose so I suspect people get the names confused.

Chinaberry is certainly "sustainable" by today's meaning; you chop it back and it grows again, and again, and... again. I understand why it was once so desirable as a Southern tree, especially in the days before air-conditioning. My father-in-law grew up in China Grove, North Carolina, a small Southern town named after its Chinaberry groves. He told me as kids they made slingshots out of forked chinaberry branches to shoot the berries around, there were so many of them.

It certainly provides half the shade in my garden. The other half of my trees are pecans, which have a similar form, but are native and far more sturdy and long-lived. Chinaberries might live to 30 years, and a quick hard Texas spring storm or fall's hurricane-season winds can tear a large limb down in no time flat. Last spring's hail storm (possibly lightning) split the most mature Chinaberry in our yard. It has about three full trunks; they often grow all akimbo by growing second trunks in odd spots, especially if they've been pruned. It's only funds and time that keep us from hiring someone to tear this dangerous thing down. Then there is the matter of their berries. In fall the berries start falling, before the leaves do and seem to fall for weeks and weeks and are difficult things to rake up. If there is any sort of rain here, one will spend weeks in spring pulling out all the chinaberry seedlings from these berries.

So I am very happy with my baby Mexican plum. In a nearby neighborhood there are several mature plums and in the sunshine they grow up with long-limbed linear branches, eventually shaped like a huge teacup. Its distinct airy form looks just gorgeous in springtime when covered with tiny white blossoms. (And the bees go crazy on them.)

And I mean literally wheeled: I transformed an old rusting wheelbarrow into a tulip-and-daffodil show, and moved it around like changing furniture in my backyard.

I didn't have time to plant disposable bulbs this year and while I liked all my pot displays, it was a little too mish-mash. I also have much more sun, now that all the evergreen ligustrums and privets are gone from the backyard. So I moved around some of the potted bulbs to more permanent positions and bought some more of the known returners.

Chinese Sacred Lily

The first narcissus to bloom were the Chinese Sacred Lilies, which I planted last year but languished in the shade. In the spring I threw them in a pot which ended up in a neglected shady corner with a bunch of garden tools. I had forgotten all about them until Christmas, when I was raking up debris and noticed leaves and buds popping up in the abandoned pot. I will definitely have to move them again so they have a more permanent spot in the sun next year. They have a delightful fragrance, citrusy and warm and not at all cloying like other tazettas.

Tazetta hybrids are the first blooming daffodils in the garden. They do not need to be chilled and shouldn't be as they prefer warmer climates and bloom in mild winters. Some of the Galilee paperwhites (tazetta relatives) that I planted outdoors last year came up last month, but they're all leaves.

Double Roman

A new surprise this year was a lone bloom of a tazetta I believe to be "Double Roman"--at least my research tells me this is what it is--because I've never planted anything here. It has very double blooms with bright yellow centers. There is a similar tazetta called Erlicheer but this not only blooms a month earlier it seems more yellow.

a fading Grand Primo in front of Ice Follies and Sweetness

Next to bloom in my garden is Grand Primo, a tazetta which is usually the first sight of daffodils in old neighborhoods. Mine start blooming around early February, although they have occasionally bloomed in January. This year some of mine came up the first of February and a few are still blooming now, although they have reached their peak. I have hundreds of these planted from a previous owner, and spent some time last year dividing and moving them around.

My mystery tazetta

At the same time Grand Primo started blooming, another new beauty showed up in the shade of a thicket of privets. This unidentified yellow tazetta has bright orangey cups and has never bloomed before in my garden. This year I had two new gifts from a previous owner!

Erlicheer

Erlicheer follows shortly after, another tazetta which is descended from Grand Primo and is returning from last year. This strongly-fragranced tazetta has very double blooms and is in full bloom right now.

Avalanche

Simultaneous with Erlicheer is Avalanche, a tazetta that is returning in my garden for the second year, and the wild Jonquil, Narcissus jonquilla. Avalanche is very similar to Grand Primo, although I like the colors much better, with its very crisp white-and-yellow classic daffodil look. Its fragrance seems a little less musky as well.

Wild jonquil

The wild jonquil is such a tiny thing and this is a new bulb this year so I don't know if it will return, but I have planted the "Early Louisiana" strain which is the old-fashioned strain that persists in the south. Today another one bloomed--and I will have to have a lot more of these to make any sort of visual statement, but they are far and away the most gorgeous smelling narcissus, a strong fruity fragrance that is almost like hyacinth.

Now that the tazettas and most of the very early bloomers have reached their peak, the early-spring narcissus are taking stage. This past week both Ice Follies and Sweetness appeared together in one of my borders.

Ice Follies

Ice Follies is returning for a second year. According to Scott Ogden, it is one of the best of the large-cupped (Division 2) daffodils for Texas--as too many of them bloom too late or need more chilling to return. It is by far the largest and most dramatic narcissus in my garden.

Sweetness

Sweetness is a jonquil and a new planting in my garden, and as its name suggests has a lovely fragrance; although not as potent as the wild jonquil, it seems like this fragrance and those of other jonquil hybrids have much more fruity notes than the powdery musk of tazettas.

Carlton, a classic daffodil look that is nearly indistinguishable from Sweetness, but it has larger flowers and little fragrance

I planted two other early-blooming large-trumpet kinds in the fall, Carlton and Saint Keverne. Both were on a list of returning favorites by a Gulf-Coast gardener, which I am not, but I figured it was worth it to try them. Only problem is, at the moment I can't remember which one is where, or perhaps I put them together! But one of them reached its absolute glory this morning.

Still yet to bloom is Geranium, a new planting and a tazetta that blooms later than most, and Trevithian, a large and mid-spring jonquil which I planted last year and struggled to come up in the drought. The leaves are up, though!

The best daffodils for growing in Central Texas are usually tazettas and a few jonquils. Not all of them return, however, and not just because of our weather but because of our soils. Narcissus usually multiply and like it when the soil is dry in summer and can rot in heavy clay soils like ours. But the few returners, like Grand Primo and its cousins, have been carrying on in the south's clay soil for many many years. Other daffodil types, like the large-cupped kinds, often bloom later and when it is too hot here, and also need a longer winter to bloom properly. Still there are a few early blooming types of these kinds which are worth a try but they may only make a show for one or two years and then disappear.

And for a parting shot, here is my newly planted lavender hedge (3rd time trying lavender!), with Carlton daffodils in bloom. And you can see at the very front, a tiny wild jonquil to give you an idea of its size compared with a medium-flowered daffodil and the 4-inch tall baby lavenders.

When we first moved into our house, it was the backyard that sold me. Nothing special to some people but for this neighborhood it has a long yard, which is nearly twice the size of our house. Most of the original platted properties in this neighborhood have been divided into two lots in the last 20 years. Everything about this house and the yard had its original touch, and the last two previous owners had added nothing major but they had cared for it lovingly.

When I first saw the backyard while walking through the alley behind it, it was mysterious, covered in trees and shrubs and rolling green. It had recently been sowed with annual rye grass, but most of what was grass was (as I later discovered) annual weeds and horseherb. (This is now sought out as an alternative local groundcover, and my relationship with it has grown from love/hate to ambivalence.)

Most of all, the thing that I saw was mystery. It had a lovely shaded grove quality that somehow reminded me of my grandmother. And I've since learned that "grandmother memory" is often the beginning of great gardening impulses.

These were the realtor photos taken of our house before we bought it. Rustic and farmy? Definitely. Just like my grandmother's land.

It seemed destined to be my space, destined to have me in it and tending its mysterious quality. After two years of serious gardening efforts, and many failures, and the rapid disappearance of most of what was "grass" or weeds, what I was left with 6 to 8 months out of the year was bare dirt.

January 2006 and April 2007. The brief history of my garden for the first 2 years: barren/lush, barren/lush.

In spring when all the weeds would take off and the chinaberries leaf out, it seemed as if my garden would return to the dreamy hidden space that I loved about the house. I could barely see through the thicket of the backyard. And during those first two years, our dog ran free through the backyard, her well-trodden paths removing all hope of maintaining any ground cover. (Our dogs now have to stick to the side-yard.)

I had no clue how to start, never having gardened before, and even tried to sow grass seed in January (thinking it would just sprout right away!) In February 2006, almost a year after moving in, I made my first ever attempt at landscaping. My friend Whitney took me to the Natural Gardener, a lovely organic nursery and ranch-like garden in Hill Country Austin, for the first time and I fell in love. Even being mid-winter, the place was still gorgeous. We left with 10 bags of good soil, and when I got home, she helped me line the backyard fence with a couple of beds, edging it with a pallet of flagstone, digging in the good dirt and planting wildflowers.

That first summer my little beds started out great, but there was a long drought and most everything looked wretched by fall. I was learning that summer here is not kind to a garden.

Since I have no grass, and late summer and winter looked so barren, I realized over the next year I knew I needed what gardeners call "bones" in the garden, something to frame things, hardscape. Gardening magazines didn't help either, as the most beautiful gardens, even the most natural looking ones, had trellises, pathways, arbors, garden sculptures, bed edging, architectural stuff that draws the eye and keeps things in bounds.

The first thing that I was unsatisfied with was the porch in the backyard, which had been built just a few months before we bought the house, in order to make it more sell-able. Over a year, the porch began to warp and boards came up from their nails. It is also one of the few places that was mostly sun all day, and with no shade, no one ever wanted to sit there. So I tried covering it with pots and planting things around it but it felt too big and imposing in our yard, a big unsubtle statement that just didn't fit with how I saw things.

Not the greatest photo, and it only captures about a third of the porch size, but like my crispy bougainvillea, you get the idea of what it feels like to sit here mid-summer.

So I began to dream of replacing it with ground-level stone patio, and we hired the original contractors to come out and tear it out. I tried to draw up the patio I wanted but after seeing the price they wanted for a new one, I balked. Then the contractor didn't want to lay the patio in sand, only mortar or an inflexible synthetic material. I just didn't want concrete in my backyard!

After the porch was taken out, I tried to draw the area immediately behind our house, as I saw it in my mind. I'm not good with drawing, but you can see my humble beginnings at design.

And how difficult it was to convince someone to do it this way. Most of the stone and brick patios I saw and adored in Sunset magazine and Fine Gardening were all laid in sand. Our friends in northern England laid an entire beautiful brick patio in sand, and on a recent visit I never saw a stone area in concrete. Maybe it's a Texas thing. From the time we had the wood porch pulled out and found a new contractor, it was nearly a year of facing this blank dirt backyard.

Unfortunately, we had no builder friends here or someone who was capable of such a thing and while we're not against doing it yourself, we just had no idea how to start. So we bit the bullet and decided to spend whatever it took to do it right. The advantage of working with a contractor is that you have multiple people on the job and what might take a few months takes a few weeks.

I wanted to get things done by the fall so I could plant most of my foundational plantings--perennials, trees, roses--then. I'd learned that the best perennials of any sort are usually fall-planted. Spring is a difficult planting time in Texas, the plants don't get enough time to establish themselves before an onslaught of heat, and they need a lot more care to make it through their first summer.

Thankfully, through a friend we found a contractor who came up with some great ideas and worked with our wacky desire to have no concrete (in spite of the fact that one of their main businesses is concrete).

Stay tuned for part two--or how to keep your wits about you when drills, saws and lots of people are building on your tiny piece of property for 8 hours a day. (Or should I say, how I wonder how others keep their wits.)

Phlox drummondii is native almost exclusively to Texas, although it has naturalized in other parts of the south. In 1838, botanist Thomas Drummond sent seeds of the wildflower to Britain and shortly after was introduced to nurseries in continental Europe, where it is widely cultivated--making it possibly Texas' most famous wildflower outside of Texas. According to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, over 200 different strains and colors which come true from seed were developed from Drummond's small seed collection.

Even in Texas, the same flower takes on different shades depending on its habitat. In East Texas, there are more reddish shades, while in Central Texas area the wild colors are rosy and pink. Any given packet of seeds from local wildflower sellers usually has a mix, and I get a mixture of lavender, pink, mauve and a brilliant magenta shades. Sometimes I can detect a light phlox fragrance and sometimes none at all. I wonder if it depends on the wind or temperatures.

They are not very compact growing--it seems as if the nurseries get them to grow more this way, but I am not sure how. Perhaps I just don't deadhead the flowers enough; I leave them to go to seed and they keep on growing. They are suited to a more meadow-y garden or filling in spaces around more formal plantings because they are very informal. Like other phloxes, even Drummond's phlox tends to get a little mildew in spring, but usually by that time, they are ready to give way to the summer flowers anyway.

I spent the late afternoon with my nose stuck in in one of its thick blooms. Like all intoxicating fragrances, it brings up memories. The first is my grandmother's hand lotion. This is the scent that I think of when I think of rose fragrance.

When I started building a "dream rose" list for my soon-to-be landscaped backyard, Souvenir de la Malmaison was on the top. Picture after picture of its luscious pale pink flowers and descriptions of its fragrance gave me a kind of abstract standard against which I held all other roses. But little did I know that I already had this gorgeous beauty, right in the front of my house! It was one of three very well-established rose bushes that came with our house, and they are, I suspect, as old as its original inhabitants. (A china rose in our backyard is ready to climb up our garage and seems to bloom in near shade; I have not identified it yet. The third rose struggled in complete shade and sadly breathed its last in the autumn of 2008.)

It took me a few years to identify it properly, mostly because at first I knew nothing about roses. But anyone who has sat on our porch in spring has known this rose. In spring its fragrance wafts down the driveway and lures people in.

Souvenir de la Malmaison (often shortened by rose lovers to "SdlM") is a bourbon rose, released in 1843 by French breeder Jean Béluze. Named after Malmaison, the rose garden of Empress Josephine, SdlM has been historically adored as "The Queen of Beauty and Fragrance".

The bourbon roses are worth growing in Texas, and many of them, including SdlM, are tender in colder growing zones. Here in Austin, my lovely rose stays green nearly year-round and puts on its biggest show in spring, but has intermittent blooms throughout the year. Some people complain that it tends to "ball" in humid weather, which means the buds won't open. It has happened to me but not enough to worry. The problem can be solved by peeling back the outer petals of a bud.

She also usually gets powdery mildew in spring, and at least once a year loses a cane, but for the conditions she is in, this rose is pretty tough--growing in almost total clay in a clump of St. Augustine grass. The bush reaches about four or five feet at most, but by mid-summer often sends some canes out laterally, probably in search of light. During the summer this part of my house gets shade for half the day. I rarely fertilize the bush, and even in my lack of knowledge hacked it back pretty severely the first year we lived here. But I'd say, for a rose that is at least 15 years old, possibly many more, that grew and bloomed through neglect, she is quite majestic. As all the pictures promised.

On a side note, I adore pale pinks and especially quartered blooms in roses. This is a really fat, full look in rose blooms, and happens when there are so many petals that they tuck into each other in a radial pattern that seems to divide the bloom into four parts. When these kinds of flowers open, they often look flat, rather than cupped. Here are some examples:

Charles de Mills
Gloire de Dijon
Claire Rose
Clotilde Soupert
Awakening

One of the drawbacks to these huge-petaled roses is that they are prone to "balling" in our climate. Roses ball when humidity is high or the weather is wet, and in buds with sometimes hundreds of petals will stick together. Imagine wearing hundreds of layers on a hot, humid day--the petals more or less "sweat". The result of all this is that the outside of the wet bud ends up frying or browning, and the insides start to mildew and rot from the inside out.

this comical creature is a rotted SdlM bloom

Souvenir de la Malmaison is particularly prone to this, and so is Clotilde Soupert. I lost hundreds of buds this year (2009) to balling. One way of solving the problem is to get to the bud before it's too late and peel off some of the outer layers. (If the bud stays closed for several days once it's fully formed, you know it's balling.) I've had mixed success with this, mostly because I get to the buds too late. In doing this, yes, you lose some petals but the blooms are so thick anyway that you might not notice.