New Roses For the Front Garden

This was one project i did in the end of 2018 that will hopefully look nice in 2019, and reminds me of the Austin fling everything I get home! No current pictures... because they look like rose bushes in the winter. 

One of the plants i saw in Austin that I wanted to get for myself were these "Livin' Easy" roses. Here they are in the garden of Kirk Moring - in person, the orange popped out, and the smell was amazing. 

From Kirk Moring's garden

Since i'm trying to apply the lessons I learned in Austin (in addition to buying all the plants!), i figured that Livin' Easy would work well in the front garden. The flower color would play off the orange lantanas. Roses do ok here, although in general they need a bit more water, especially in the sun. However, i have some roses on the north side of the house that survive and bloom really well. So I knew that if i could give them some shade, they'd do fine. 

Coincidentally, this bed in the front garden needed an update anyway. Its in the shade during our hot afternoons (facing due east), and i installed drip irrigation a number of years ago. The current occupants were a opuntia and a Black Knight butterfly bush. The Opuntia was doing fine, but leaning over the side walk. The butterfly bush had been doing fine, but took a big hit during the house painting and really didn't recover. 

Current residents right before being evicted...

The sad buddleia

I'm actually not entirely sure what happened here - the last few years, this plant was 6+ feet tall. My guess is a combination of broken irrigation, bugs (something ate its leaves - every year) and rough handling during painting finally got it.

Speaking of broken irrigation...

Had to fix where the old sprinkler head converted to drip

Do not ask me why the previous owners installed old fashioned pop up sprinklers in a bed filled with rocks. Even weirder is the fact that there is some major plumbing equipment another foot under the ground here. A part of the rock mulch is actually laying on an access hatch i installed to make it easier to service that in future...

Of course, before i started any of this, i had to source Livin' Easy. I probably spent a good 2 months checking every orange rose i saw, and checking online. I had just decided to wait until bare root season and ordering online, when i randomly checked some roses at the big box store, and found 'Livin Easy'.

One on one side

I had just said "i'm not buying any plants today", when i, of course, ended up with plants. Oh well - at least now i have the rose I want!

and one on the other side!

All the rocks put back, and some bark mulch (the same as in the rest of the garden! I learned!) and everything looks cleaned up...

Now grow!

 These pictures are a bit too bight, but the roses did give me some immediate gratification in the form of flowers...

they are more orange in real life!

 So pretty...

a little bit better color match to RL

These are (probably) the last plants I'll get to plant this year. They will get a bit of supplemental hand watering the first few months (and during heat waves) but so far they are doing alright. And now i have one of my Austin Plant Lusts in my own garden!

Hanging Hoyas

One thing i've done every spring/summer for a while now is put my Hoya kerrii outside. In the summer of 2018, hoya carnosa 'Rubra' was also big enough to join it. These two hung out just by the front door all summer:

rubra on the left, kerrii on the right

This spot is basically in full shade all day - it gets about 2 hours of morning sun. Through experimenting with kerrii, anything more than that will induce leaf burn. It's also a very sheltered spot from the wind, since it's almost enclosed from 3 sides - 2 by the house, and the 3rd by that large pillar covered with rocks. That means the wind can't/won't (hasn't?) damaged these yet.

from the other side

 While hoya kerrii will bloom indoor for me, putting it outside usually causes it to bloom all summer. The flowers look strange... both when they are in bud and actually blooming.

Hoya kerrii bloom hanging out above the hoya carnosa

 The other nice thing about them being outside is that the nectar doesn't drip all over the place inside.

Hoya carnosa rubra aka Pink Princess bloomed too, but less. 

This year, the hoyas stayed outside until right before Halloween. Now they are sitting on one of the ledges near the stairs inside. They grow so much when they're outside that they sprawl all over the place...

Sitting on the ledge, sprawling like octopus...

Starting around early April they'll go back out. I'm sure they can't wait!

Weekend Wrap Up: Quiet Summer

It's getting to the end (let's hope!) of a quiet summer - between the heat & travel, not much gardening got done. Before diving head first into the problems (why are all my sprinklers misaligned at once, what is wrong with the agave in the front, and FML, gophers), let's look at a random collection of things I think are pretty...

this pink muhly catching the light

a baby agave!

That one was eaten by gophers in the spring, then covered with rock by the landscaping crew... but it's coming back!

the front garden

 From that angle, you can't see the new gopher mounds... but in general, the front garden redo has held up really well over the summer! The new rock mulch means the xMangave Macho Mocha could finally grow without slug damage..

In the back garden, some things have made it through the summer well also. After adjusting the sprinklers (...they work better when the controller is on, who knew!), all three of these xMangaves came back from the near-dead

Mayan Queen, Catch a Wave, Inkblot

As long as you don't look too close, the entire back garden looks like it made it through summer ok - Mr. Ripple holding court, as ever.

there are 3 summer projects visible in one picture!

Before talking about projects - this Yucca 'Blue Boy' is rarely featured in pictures, but seems to be enjoying the hillside.

 A fourth summer project was the pots on the top of hill side - first time i've successfully found something that wants to grow in them. In this case, it's bougainvillea.

this is Thai Pink - i think our cooler weather + shade makes it this white-lime color

Watering these once a week became one of my summer gardening rituals, marking the start of my weekends.

barbara karst here - hopefully they make it through the winter!

 More xMangaves - i may have a problem. This one is growing in a pot on the hillside. It seems to be working... the plant looks good, it's not getting eaten by gophers (they got my xMangave Kaleidoscope!) and it adds some interest to hillside.

i lost the tag - i'll have to play process of elimination later to remember which one this is.

 Back to the summer projects - project 1 was replacing the path at the bottom of the hillside with gravel. This used to be compacted decomposed granite (DG), which was brown. It looked like dirt and eventually, lots of weeds grew in it.

the gravel looks much better

The plants are starting to grow back over the edges. I'm also hoping that the gravel will make it easier to trim everything back in the spring. It now also matches the path at the top of hill, which makes my engineer-brain happy (symmetry!)

Summer project 2 is not completely done yet, but has been very exciting!

I got a stock pond!

It's only a little one (3ft diameter) and i'm still trying to figure out plants, and water quality, and lots of other things, but I am very excited. All the basic stuff seems to have settle now, and i'm trying very hard to wait until after winter to experiment more with plants.

A few last pictures before i wrap this up...

Little John is starting to bloom

Sometimes, i think it's funny how plants take their own sweet time deciding whether to live or die. At least for now, my acacia baileyana purpurea has decided to live, and actually grow. 

which means i should probably trim back some of the scrubs?

And finally - agave ovatifolia continues to appreciate the fact that the Palo Verde got limbed up. This is still one of my favorite views in the back garden, even if it needs to be tidied up a lot!

picture carefully cropped to cut out the weird sprinkler situation...

I think i enjoyed this summer in the garden more than any other summer, even though it wasn't any cooler (if anything, it was hotter!). Maybe a sign that i'm starting to get somewhere that makes sense in our climate? Now let's hope everything makes it through winter, and that we get some rain!

Cleaning up the Front Garden

I have been complaining about the planting bed in the front garden that's right off the front door for a while. Early this year, i finally did something about it. Everything had kind of grown together (and not in a pretty cramscaping way...) And there were gophers and leaves and... sigh.

doesn't this just scream "welcome"?

why do all my neighbor's leaves end up here?

Now, yes, these pictures are from earlier this year - but like May (after the Fling), long past when I should have cleaned off those leaves. But they did such a good job hiding this:

i. hate. gophers. 

Leaves cleared off, we end with this lovely view. Once, there was a flagstone path there. 

not sure this is an improvement yet

You'll note that camilla is tied back. While i would like to say that i did that, it might have been left over from when the house was painted... Poor plant. Clean up continued with digging out the bulbine, eurphoria and other assorted stuff. I also flattened out all the gopher mounds (gopher killing had already occurred a few weeks before...)

this is fairly narrow bed

now the furcraea has some room to breath...

along with the red yucca

the bed wraps around to the front, with lower mounding plants

New irrigation was installed. This bed used to get overspray from the lawn (when there was a lawn). While some drip lines were run when the lawn was removed, I don't think it was enough. Hopefully this will help.  

it snakes through the skinny part of the bed, then up to the yucca out of frame to the left. 

Some mulch - rock for where it's super sunny, and shredded wood for the shady parts near the house.

i also dug out and replaced the flag stone

the bulbine got replanted along the house

and the euphoria got a new home as well. 

I also managed to make room for some plants that had been in the pot holding area for a while. Some of them might get too big, but that's a problem for later (or a gardening style...)

looking towards the street

You can see that this happened before the changes that happened later - i.e. the palo verde falling over.

the new view from the front door - much nicer!

So far, everything has been holding up well. The rock mulch around the xMangave has also help keep the snails away - extra bonus! The changes have held up very well over our hot summer, although the irrigation needs some more adjusting.

Finally, Cousin Itt comes to visit!

Taking a short break from looking at Austin pictures, I finally found a plant i'd been looking for! Before our heat got completely insane, i finally found a plant i'd been looking for (locally) for over 2 years - acacia cognata Cousin Itt. I fell in plant-lust with it after seeing it in botanical gardens and blogs, and even figured out the "perfect" spot for it in my garden. And then I couldn't find it anywhere...

I wanted it to replace a pink muhly grass that was in too much shade to bloom well, next to the dry creek bed. Since it looked horrible, and i couldn't find Cousin Itt, i eventually planted a purple cordyline instead. Amazingly enough, it didn't die!

mostly-happy cordyline

I realize that picture doesn't make that spot look particularly shady, but after about 2pm, the sun moves behind the wall on the right side, so it mostly gets morning sun. And in my garden, that counts as "shade".

And then a few weeks ago, i was "just looking" at one of the nurseries, and i found:

Cousin Itt! Fancy seeing you here!

So obviously i bought it. And i did think about whether there were other spots to plant it, but the most likely spot (the hill side) seemed like guaranteed death. So with some quick shovel work, the cordyline was evicted, and Cousin Itt put in where i wanted it 2 years ago.

In place - the green will go much better with the grasses that are further down the creek bed

Supposedly, acacia cognata can take 'full sun' (probably not this full sun), and have low water needs, so that should work. Cold hardiness is a bit of a gamble, but i have several other acacia's that seem to be surviving fairly well, so fingers crossed.

The poor cordyline didn't get tossed - there was a spot in the front garden where something else had died, so it got moved:

The cordyline in its new spot - this might be too much sun for the purple leaves...

You can see that it's now in closer proximity to other plants - i think it should be able to outgrow the neighbors vertically, assuming it survives. Ironically, it's closest neighbor is now acacia redolens. This poor cordyline really needs to compete with all members of acacia for space!