January 2009. I just discovered a lone flower stalk of this bulb blooming in a shady part of our garden along the driveway, at the foot of a pecan tree. This year, I've discovered two new naturalized bulbs along the driveway, which is the most neglected part of our garden, and was home to a huge 1930s-ish planting of Oxblood Lilys, Grand Primo tazettas, irises and crinums. I moved the crinums and irises to sunnier part of the garden, but I am still surprised by what blooms here. In five years I never saw this flower, but I guess conditions...…

Update September 2009: They did not live through the Texas summer. Seems like they'd need to be watered daily to survive. On a trip to Scotland this summer, I was walking by a small cornershop florist in a small village, and in front a lone pot of violas was blooming, labeled "Etain". I leaned in to smell and was surprised; it was nothing like pansies or annual violas, which often have no fragrance. I had to have one. I almost considered buying it and trying to hide it somewhere in my suitcase home. So you can imagine my excitement when,...…

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...…

Unfortunately, I haven't had the pleasure of seeing this narcissus bloom yet, but I'm not giving up on it. (Note: more recent update below.) I read in a local garden blog that perhaps they need more cold than our winters provide. And yet a seemingly conflicting fact about them is that their native habitat is coastal and they are being sold as better narcissus for warmer, more coastal winters. Go figure. (I keep going back to what one local nursery owner said to me, "It's all a crapshoot, anyway.") Perhaps, like so many other bulbs, you might have the species...…

These are the cutest little flowers, not unlike 'Grand Primo', whose flowers spray out in more of a snowball shape, it can carry from 5 to 20 flowers from the top of each stem. Avalanche was once called "Seventeen Sisters" because of its frequent grouping of 17 flowers, but none of mine had even 10. Perhaps a few more years in the garden and I will see more. Avalanche's blossoms are just a little bit smaller than Grand Primo, but the cups are distinctly, well, cups, and are also a clear yellow, which makes them look more like miniature daffodils...…

This sweet little starry-eyed beauty disappeared nearly as soon as it appeared. Out of about 10 bulbs, this was the only bloom (as I write in February 2008). Campernelles are sweetly fragranced with dainty blossoms and wiry (often called rush-like) leaves. This is an easy way to tell many jonquils apart from modern daffodils or tazettas.Jonquils, at least the varieties technically called Jonquils and descended from that species, are a good choice for Texas. In my confusion about the various Divisions and names of daffodils, I wrote a Texas daffodil society, and a gardener kindly wrote me back a detailed...…

I couldn't quite capture the orange of the cups, but this daffodil is a very bright yellow with cups that darken toward the edges. In some photos I've seen, the cups look closer to red, but I'm beginning to think that many garden colors wash out in the Texas sun. (Some roses are lighter here than is often pictured.)This was one of my 'throwaway' daffodils; most of those I picked out had been mentioned in one place or another as doing well in Texas or the south, but this one was just a risk. (Not to mention I refrigerated it...…

I wish I could get an accurate photo of these beautiful blossoms but my camera always seems to want to make some yellows more yellow, or subtle yellows just wash away. Argh, digital cameras like to guess at things. Yes, yes, there's always Photoshop but that's another story.Anyhow, these are so beautiful and I was surprised when they began to bloom how much they looked like the tiniest roses, each small blossom packed with creamy white petals. They are called a double daffodil, and are descended from 'Grand Primo', a tazetta which is widely naturalized in Texas. They have a...…

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...…

Traditionally, I've learned, fall is the best time in Texas to plant all spring-blooming annual flowers and almost anything perennial, whether herbs or flowers, or shrubs like roses. This is so plants get a good time to root themselves in over the winter in order to have stronger growth in spring before the heat sets in. It's when I sow all my wildflowers as well. I've learned the hard way that I don't live in a climate where I can sow many seeds outdoors after frost, as most seed packets inform you to do. Spring here is just too short, and by the time a plant starts germinating it won't have a change to bloom. My first year of gardening I tried this with several poppies, and they grew all right and started shooting out leaves but at the first hot day most of them began to choke.

If I could offer one piece of advice to a new Texas gardener, it would be to sow most of your seeds in fall, so that plants have a change to grow or settle in by November. October has been the best month for me to do this. This of course doesn't include all seeds, such as summer-blooming annuals which are not winter-hardy: zinnias, cosmos, and some others.

The most difficult job, however, of this past fall, has not been all the planting and the new landscaping--it was the total lack of rain. We had about 2 good days of rain between September and November. And since Thanksgiving it's probably rained once. I picked one of the hottest and drought-iest falls to start a foundational garden.

In spite of all this work, I've tried my best to keep up with my own projects, and even on this website am starting to list all the flowers, vegetables and shrubs I've planted in the "plantopia" section. Here is a small album of some of my recent blooms and projects:

I sowed these in early fall of 2007, during a Dianthus craze. I was buying just about any Dianthus seeds I could get my hands on, and during a trip to London I bought a packet of these and one of 'Ipswich pinks' from the gift store at Kew Botanical Gardens. China pinks are hybrids of Dianthus chinensis and are very popular as winter bedding annuals in Austin; they can flower from October to sometimes as late as July. In some cases they even struggle through the summer to start blooming all over again in fall. I have had some...…

This lovely fragrant daffodil is a frequent site in old yards around Austin. When we first bought our house, these flowers surprised me by popping up in February in the oddest places around our house--nestled against our fence, along the driveway, places that have long been forgotten as potential 'planting zones'. Grand Primo is an old hybrid from the Narcissus tazetta species. (And calling it a daffodil might be confusing to some, who think of the smaller jonquils and tazettas as something different than the big-flowered, big-cupped modern types most often known as daffodils, but I call all the Narcissus...…

April 2007. I saw these at the Natural Gardener a few weeks ago and I was shocked. I had thought this plant was a weed; why would anyone want to pay $8 for a gallon of it? Last year I spent a day on my knees in the lawn digging out the hundreds of little bulbs of this stuff. It grows everywhere... in the lawn especially but also around my flower bed. This year I decided to leave it alone and watch what it does. It is actually very pretty and sweet. Each one grows into a big dome-like clover...…