This lovely little annual phlox has bloomed in my garden from November until April. It is not as showy as the big garden phlox like Phlox paniculata, but I love how little I need to take care of it and how it blooms when not much else is. I've often seen it for sale in nurseries in the fall along with other annuals like snapdragons and alyssum, but it's just as easy to grow from seed and will bloom in fall if you start early enough. (The seed germinates in about 3-5 days if you keep it moist, and often...…

As I am writing, the Christmas lights on my street are drawing passersby from all over Austin, we had our first sprinkling of snow in five years, and the weather has gone from a glorious 78 degrees, to windgusts and below freezing in a matter of a few hours. This was the year I finally decided to leave my Meyer lemon tree permanently outside in a beautiful bronze ceramic pot, and I fear that last night was its death. This is the odd season we call Winter in Austin, mild enough to have a winter garden, roses blooming at...…

In my first season of growing sweet peas, I knew I would become a lifelong fan. They are the sort of flowers that bring out the child in me and would make a great project to grow with children. I also like a challenge. Here in Texas, at least in Austin, the growing emphasis is on sustainable landscape, and somehow old-fashioned annuals--here today, gone tomorrow--just don't fit. But truly, these are worth the short season, just as much as tomatoes are worth their short season. I have seen sweet peas blooming in Scotland in September, in Cape Cod in August,...…

I never thought I'd be a snapdragon fan. As a child I saw them every summer in my grandmother's garden. They seemed too... familiar. When I first started gardening I was so obsessed with starting native plants that I usually ignored most of the 'annuals' table at every gardening center, but then, one autumn while I was looking for some color to fill in bare spots, I visited a gardening store I'd never been to before and they had rows and rows of snapdragons. And to my surprise, they were fragrant, so fruity and sweet. I had never remembered snapdragons...…

As I sit here writing on my front porch, the sweet candy fragrance of sweet peas is dancing in the breeze. This part of the afternoon, fragrance often dissipates in the heat, and already the heights of the afternoon sun are starting to produce the kind of heat that makes me thankful for air conditioning (or at least the very protecting cedar trees in our yard, which just started to leaf out last weekend). pinks in the herb garden Last fall, I concentrated heavily on adding more fragrant plants to my garden, and I have to say I am not...…

Mrs. Collier, an old-fashioned sweet pea Someone should have warned me about romance in the garden. In pictures, in catalogs, in nurseries--all it takes is a bit of romance about a flower and you must have it. Somewhere, anywhere.  You might not know how big it gets, or if it works in your climate. Who cares? It's like trying to get those amazing shoes to fit when they only had one size left. And yet unlike the expensive romance of vintage clothing, or furniture, or any other object with a historical, mysterious beauty, plants are quite cheap. Seeds are...…