Blooms & Beyond: Year-Round Color for Your Garden

Wondering how to have year-round color in your garden?   I recently gave a presentation to the Grapevine Garden Club on this topic and the video was posted to YouTube.   Click HERE to check it out!

The plants mentioned in this talk are geared toward the Dallas/Fort Worth area in hardiness Zone 7/8, but if you live in other parts of the country, maybe it will inspire you to think through the seasons and how you can add color to your garden with plants that are hardy in your area.    Click HERE to see the plant list.

Below I've listed the garden centers and resources I mentioned in the presentation.

Here's to hoping you have something colorful in your garden all year long!

Toni :-)

Grapevine Garden Club
grapevinegardenclub.com

Stegall's Nursery & Plant Farm
stegallsnursery.com

Metro Maples
metromaples.com

Neil Sperry
neilsperry.com

aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu

TCMGA
tarrantmg.org

Fort Worth Botanic Gardens
fwbg.org

From Balmy to Brrrr

The first week of December in North Central Texas was a very interesting week of weather.

We started out the week quite balmy, with temperatures in the 70s.  Early Monday morning a light fog had rolled in and created a beautiful photo op as the sun was rising.

We have had a couple freezes this fall already, but only down to about 30 degrees.   Some of the most tender perennials were burned, but other perennials were not even fazed.    Some of the trees had already lost their leaves, some were at peak color, and some were just beginning to turn.

As the fog burned off later Monday morning, the Japanese maples in my garden were showing off their finest fall color.

Tuesday was a sunny and warm day, my kind of December :-)  I went with a client to my favorite Japanese maple nursery, Metro Maples, with the intention of purchasing some maples for her garden, but I just couldn't resist the urge to buy another maple for my garden, as well!

I came home with a new maple is called 'Koto No Ito,' which means "String of Old Harp."  It has an upright form with narrow strap leaves that have green spring color and yellow/orange/red fall colors.
  

I planted the new maple on Wednesday when it was sunny and 78 degrees! 

I originally had a 'Peaches & Cream' maple in this spot, but I transplanted it across the bed where I thought its highly variegated summer leaves would brighten a dark spot.

The 'Peaches & Cream' maple was added to my garden in December of 2010, and this is the first year I have seen good fall color on it.

Thursday morning the temperatures had dropped to the 40s (tolerable), but the forecast was calling for the temps to continue to drop throughout the day, with freezing rain and sleet arriving late afternoon and evening (not so tolerable).   

I knew this was probably going to be my last opportunity to get some good pictures of the fall color in my garden, so I grabbed my camera and headed outside to memorialize this beautiful season.

      In the picture below you can see the new orange 'Koto No Ito' to the right front, and the similarly fall colored 'Peaches & Cream' is behind the bench now on the other side of the bed.

 'Sango Kaku' (Coral Bark) Maple (below - center) has been more yellow in years past, but this year it is showing lots of red color.

I think this is one of the prettiest fall color seasons I have seen in the 27 years I have lived in Texas.  A little bit of rain this fall, cool nights, and sunny days have created the perfect environment for a spectacular fall show.

'Fireglow'

'Orange Dream'

'Tamukeyama' (foreground)  -  'Viridis' (background)

'Sango Kaku'

By late Thursday afternoon the temperatures had dropped into the 20s and the precipitation started falling...and freezing.  

On Friday morning my garden looked like this...brrrrr!

Thankfully I had drained and cleaned the fountain on Wednesday when it was nice and warm outside.   

The front hellstrip perennials are now under a covering of ice.  

 The Yaupon Holly tree in the front is splayed open from the weight of the ice.   Back in the winter of 2011 we lost several feet out of the top of this tree from the weight of about a foot of snow that fell in February.  

 

I am hoping once the ice melts it will be okay.

In the backyard, the arbor cover over the patio is dripping with tiny icicles.

The ornamental grasses near the pond that usually sway in the breeze are frozen stiff.

The maples that were so beautiful just one day earlier are now covered in ice and droop from the weight of the ice.

 

"He gives snow like wool;

He scatters the frost like ashes.

He casts forth His ice as fragments;

Who can stand before His cold?

He sends forth His word and melts them;

He causes His wind to blow and the waters to flow."

Psalm 147:16-18

So until God sends a few warm breezes to thaw the ice that blankets our area, I guess I will just hunker down under a cozier type of blanket in my nice warm house, and treasure a few quiet days.

Take care....and stay warm!

Toni :-)

Hellstrip Redemption

Redemption:  The act or process of redeeming

Redeem:

1. To reform, change (for the better)
2. To save, rescue, or recover.
3. To reclaim (to return land to a suitable condition for use).

My hellstrip has been redeemed!  It has been reformed, transformed, and changed for the better.   It has been rescued from a mundane life of Bermuda and weeds needing to be mowed on a weekly basis.  I have reclaimed that long hellstrip of lawn and returned the land to a suitable condition for growing beautiful blooming perennials that attract visitors of the pollinator and people kind.

Here is how the area looked in January right after having the utilities marked.

The transformation began in March by having the Bermuda grass removed.  As the Bermuda attempted a comeback, and as soon as temperatures allowed, I followed up with Roundup applications to make sure the Bermuda was killed to the root, leaving me with a clean slate. 

Then in late May the day I had been waiting for arrived.  

    

3 cubic yards of compost, 2 tons of cobblestone, and 1800 pounds of moss rock boulders were delivered first thing in the morning, and I got right to work.

Since phone cables run the length of the area literally just inches below the surface, and sometimes on top of the ground, I could not till the soil, so I opted to mound the bed with compost. 

Then with the help of my husband, the largest boulders were placed in random spots throughout the bed.    I  also added several pieces of flagstone along the front edge of the bed to make an area for visitors to have something to step on instead of flowers.  Then I began adding cobblestones along the edges to hold the mounded compost.

On Day 2 I finished adding the cobblestones along the edges of the bed.

 

On Day 3 I added the plants, and on Day 4 I mulched the bed.

And here's the finished product!

Notice the heart-shaped boulder :-)   

I love how the new bed turned out!!

You can see the taller plantings in the bed on the other side of the sidewalk.   All of the plants I chose for the hellstrip plantings are lower growing.

 (See detailed plant list below)

Elfin Thyme was added between the flagstones.  I am not sure if it can take this much heat, but I will replace it with sedum acre if it does not do well.  A variety of sedums and thymes were added along the cobblestone edges to soften the look over time as they creep between the rocks.

Before and After

Here's a list of the plants I used:

Catmint 'Walker's Low'

Zexmenia hispida

Lamb's Ear 'Helen Von Stein'

Pink Skullcap, Scutellaria suffrutescens

Dianthus 'Bath's Pink'

Blackfoot Daisy, Melampodium leucanthum

Salvia nemerosa 'Snow Hill' and 'May Night'

Four Nerve Daisy, Hymenoxys

Creeping Phlox, Phlox subulata

Dwarf Mexican Petunia, Ruellia 'Katie's'

Daylily 'Little Missy,' 'Little Zinger,' 'Little Trooper,' 'Dutch Art,' 'Sissy'

Pine Muhly, Muhlenbergia dubia

Germander

Gray Creeping Germander

Santolina (gray)

Thyme:  Thymus vulgaris Lavendar, Elfin, Silver Posie, Lemon, Woolly

Sedum reflexum 'Blue Spruce,' 'Lemon Ball'

Sedum kamtschaticum

Sedum potosinum

Sedum sarmentosum

Sedum mexicanum

Sedum acre

Daffodils:  'Golden Dawn,' 'Tete a Tete,' 'Erlicheer,' 'Carlton,' 'Ice Follies'

'Wise Blue' Starflower

I also added some 'Cora' Periwinkles and 'Sundial' Moss Rose just for some annual color this year until the perennials grow and fill in the extra spaces.   

Yes, my hellstrip has been redeemed!    In fact, I'd say it's downright heavenly now.

Do you have a piece of ground that needs rescuing?

Happy Gardening!

Toni :-)