SOME FLOWERS THAT WE
GROW IN OUR AUSTIN GARDENS
ALL PHOTOS TAKEN AT
DIVAS’ HOMES
Our
diary frequently mentions Loquat trees, which are being grown by Buffy
and Glinda. The fragrance of their blooms floats on the Austin air in winter,
and the leaves are evergreen
This
is Carolina Jessamine waving golden trumpets in the March breeze. It’s
growing in a container on a deck, but would be happy to wind around a trellis or
decorate a portico over the entry. Gelsemium sempervirens stays pretty
evergreen for us, but we’ve occasionally lost a plant, even an established one,
in a long hot spell. Even with supplemental watering, the heat of the rocks got
to the roots. This is also a fragrant plant, and reputedly deer-resistant,
because it is somewhat poisonous.
Another favorite in spring is Texas Mountain Laurel,
not really a laurel at all, but Sophora secundiflora. It’s in the legume
family, with stuff like wisteria and that green-barked Retama that turns the
area around Barton Creek Mall all yellow every year. Sometimes it’s listed as
Mescal Bean. Under any name it looks wonderful and smells great. In spring of
2002 and 2003 the buds were already waking up and expanding when late freezes
or ice storms froze them. Although the Divas missed the lovely Laurel flowers,
these evergreen shrubs and small trees were still an asset in our landscapes. In
most years the Texas Mountain Laurels are fragrantly blooming all over Austin.
March
is also the time to see the Texas Redbuds in bloom. They are a form of Cercis
canadensis, but we need the Texas form of this tree. Sometimes the local
stores will have Redbuds for sale, but reading the tags will tell you they are
Eastern Redbuds… and they won’t be too happy here. I got one a couple of years
ago from Kimas Tejas Nursery out near Bastrop. The leaves are a little different on
the Texas native, and they can take the heat better. When this tree starts
opening buds on bare branches, and even popping the out on the bare trunk, it
makes you smile just to see it every spring.
Next
up will be the Texas Bluebonnets, Lupinus texensis. There have
been some strange things happening in the bluebonnet world in the last few years,
leading to disconcerting scenes such as this one:
These
Maroon specialty items are only recommended for rabid Aggie fans (might be a
Diva or two in this group!) … especially because there’s already too much red
in the Texas spring landscape, what with all those nandinas and the red tip
photinias. Even if you grow a few maroon bloomers as a novelty, there should
always be a real bluebonnet in every garden. If you haven’t got the right area
to seed them in fall, just pick up a plant in spring and put it in a pot:
As the
days get longer the summer bloomers will start their show. One plant that looks
deceptively delicate is the Balloonflower, or Platycodon grandiflorus.
It’s in the Campanula or Bellflower family, which can be a temperamental bunch,
not happy with Texas weather. This member of the family is pretty darn tough –
taking the heat and cold, and even giving a final autumn show of golden leaves
before going dormant. Spending a couple of minutes every few days can keep this
beauty blooming all summer. You just pop, snip, snap or pinch off the spent
flowers before they turn into seedpods, and give it some water on a regular
basis. New buds appear in the junctions of the stems. It comes in white, blue
and pink, with some varieties staying short in size. In this photo, the
magenta, tubular flower in the hanging basket at the right is a plant of Million
Bells, a selected form of the South American native plant called Calibrachoa.
They are not always perennial, but frequently make it through the winter. The
hummingbirds like them, too.
In
Mindy’s garden the pond presents an opportunity to grow water plants. Here is a
lovely water lily from the summer of 2005
Hedychium
coronarium, the white ginger lily, can
do pretty well here, with a little shade and a protected location. This one is
blooming alongside a member of the Asclepias family, tropical orange Milkweed:
Another
summer bloomer is Chaste Tree, Vitex Agnus-castus. Another name
for this shrubby tree is supposed to be Monk’s Pepper, but I’ve never heard
anyone actually call it that. The Divas just call it Vitex, and enjoy both the
long bloom season and the butterflies that cover the wandlike flowers. Annie’s
has grown very quickly into a small tree. Mindy has a couple by her gate,
because they are waterwise plants, too:
As we
pass through August there are still flowers waiting their turn as the star of
the garden. As the days grow shorter, the Hyacinth Bean, an easy
seed-grown annual, is hard to miss. This is one flashy flower, a welcome
visitor at the end of a long, hot Austin, Texas summer. The seeds might also be
found under their botanical name as Dolichos Lablab. Buffy lets them
wind up her Loquat tree, and trail into the Mermaid Rose. She always has lots
of seeds to share with the Divas. Last year, I lost the first batch of seeds
from Buffy (don’t keep them in a plastic bag on the porch – they turned to
fuzzy mush!) but was able to find fresh, ready-to-jump out and climb seeds from
Boggy Creek Farm, a wonderful organic farm on the East side of Austin. The
flowers are lovely, and the purple pods are decorative, too.
Another
annual vine easily grown from seed is the Moonflower, Ipomea alba.
Sometimes the seed packages call it Calonyction. These fragrant white
flowers absolute glow in the dark on a warm summer evening, and they have a nice
fragrance, too. Here’s one climbing up a loquat tree:
Another
summer lovely is Tecoma stans. Sometimes it’s called Esperanza,
and sometimes the label will say Yellow Bells. I didn’t see too many in 1999 or
2000, but there have been more around every year. Who could resist yet another
bell-shaped flower? This photo shows some plants in their containers, right
before we put them in the front bed at Donna’s.
Annie
bought a flower in 2003 year that was a new one to the Divas, so we’re waiting
to see how it does here. It was called a Clerodendron, blooming lovely
and blue last October. Annie’s garden is somewhat sheltered and offers
microclimates, tempting her to try unusual plants with more success than the
Divas who live where it’s hilly. The hill gardens get colder in winter, hotter
in summer and windier all year. The Clerodendron looked like this last fall –
and we’re all hoping it will look like this again in 2004:
Another
plant that some of us grow is the Philippine Violet, Barleria cristata. It blooms in the fall and can get really
large in some years. Most winters kill off the top, but the plant comes up
again in spring. This photo is from Annie’s garden
Like the
Pyracantha, another useful plant that can get out of bounds is the Copper
Canyon Daisy. Tagetes lemmonii is actually a kind of perennial
marigold, with a pretty distinctive scent. The deer don’t mess with it, it
keeps growing while the rest of the flowers wilt, and every autumn its golden
flowers really perk up the tired out yard. But it grows so steadily, and looks
so lacy, that it can smother its neighbors before you remember they ever
existed. But it also can act like a kind of ‘nurse plant’ in deer country,
guarding a young shrub or tree until it has grown taller and less tempting to
the browsers.
In
February of 2004, we had fun pruning the Pyracantha, also known as
Firethorn, which was weighing down Buffy’s fence and attacking her visitors. I’ve
seen it behaving well in a wilder, less well-watered situation, but once the
automatic lawn sprinklers were installed at Buffy’s, this thorny climber turned
into a thug. There are flowers (not that exciting) earlier, then come the
berries that last until spring, and they are the main attraction. Some of the
thorns on the long whips were 5 inches long. But the berries are so beautiful
that it’s worth wrestling with, I guess!
