Salvia and Cactus Bed Expansion

Now, I talked ALLLLL about the labor involved in expanding this bed to put in a tree and more flowahs on the other blog, so I just want to put more full-garden pics here and talk about what I put in that was new, what I took out, what I moved around, and, in short, provide a complete list of what's in here now (as a record for me later, and for other flower-obsessed persons...)

Like I said before, we wanted another small tree in the front yard that will (eventually) shade the front porch and the picture-window therein. So the anchor to the expansion, which has taken the bed from an oblong shape to something more like a fat kidney bean, is a "Natchez" crape myrtle (large thing far right in the cleared area), which has white flowers and is one of the taller tree-forms--it could get 20 feet).

I really oughta call this bed the Salvia and Crepe Myrtle bed, since there are now, four, count 'em, FOUR crape myrtles of varying sizes and shapes, besides the "Natchez," is the original "Centennial," which is a smaller, red, tree form (12-15 feet); a red, large shrub form, "Victor"(ca 4 feet); a red-violet weeping dwarf variety, "Sacramento"(18-24 inches), and the even smaller pink, weeping "Pocomoke" (8-12 in.--it's the little tiny chartreuse guy on the far left in front of the crossvine). In the shot below you can clearly see the Pink Muhly grass, which isn't blooming yet in early June but quite big; the crossvine was also growing rampantly and trying to grasp everything around it, so I got three poles and put them together tee-pee style for it to climb, which is why it's kinda Christmas-tree shaped. (BTW click the pics for bigger views)


One of the main things I had to do when expanding the bed, was to move the low-growing plants that were planted along the original 'edge' out to the new edge, and then get a few more tall items to fill in the new middle. I had also brought an Esperanza bush from one of the shadier backyard beds when it started to come back from the ground (they are very tender) in the spring; this is the sunniest bed and it should like this a lot better--it got moved farther toward the middle in the expansion since it can get quite large (3-6 ft tall and 3-4 ft wide)--it's not blooming now, but they have bright yellow, tubular blooms that attract butterflies. Some plants were getting TOO much sun in this bed--I had a day-lily getting burnt close to the cross-vine among others, and I've moved them either around the base of the Natchez or on the side closer to the neighbor's yard (background above, or foreground below, where the overhanging branches of a live-oak in that yard provide more shade). Other than the Pink Muhly, I've got a couple other grasses in here, one--that I LOVE, is the Zebra grass toward the left of the pic below--it's bright green with yellow/cream stripes--should get much bigger and have big cream blooms later.I've had the darndest time with the street-side of this bed--it gets really long, hot rays of the sun all late afternoon and until the sun goes down, and is of course dry. I am serious when I say that two sets of the full-sun succulents: Hens and Chicks ('Sempervivum'-- "Always Living"? NOT!) BURNED UP out there! I think these were 'sempervivum globiferum'; I've had better luck with a harder-leaved variety, "Purple Beauty." A tough little dianthus "Frosty Fire" and "Blue Spruce" Stonecrop (sedum) has been there since Spring and seem fine, and I just put out another succulent, Lampranthas or "Ice plant" that has little purple daisy-like flowers--we'll see what that does. Also wanted to note in the pic below that the massive mum just starting to bloom there was planted from a 4-inch pot last October!

Other plants in here, besides the ones mentioned above include: "Floral Lace Crimson" Dianthus; "Blue Daze" Evolvulus; "Sentimental Blue" Campanula, "Loke Viking" Aster (raspberry), Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium), "Red Poll" Daylily (cream with red throat), "Pardon Me" Daylily (cranberry w/ yellow throat); Standing Cypress (Ipomopsis rubra--supposedly tall with stalks of red, tubular flowers, but hasn't done much yet); several dwarf yaupon hollies, red and hot pink miniature roses, pink gazanias, Texas Scarlet flowering quince; Red Autumn Salvia (salvia greggii), "Lipstick" Autumn Salvia, "Raspberry" Autumn salvia; "Lady in Red" Salvia (s. coccinea), Russian Sage ( 'perovskia atriplicifolia' -- silvery foliage, blue flowers); "Strata" Salvia (salvia farinacea, also known as "mealy cup sage," this variety has blue and white flowers); "Sunny Blue Border" Speedwell or Veronica; "Longwood Blue" Blue Mist Spirea (Caryopteris hybrid; also silvery foliage and blue flowers), and "Blue Hair Grass" (Koeleria Glauca, this is supposed to get tall, be blue-toned and then golden-brown in Autumn, but so far it's done a bunch of nothing--probably because it got too much sun where first placed and then moved a couple times...)

"Salvia & Cactus Bed" in Stages

'Kay--so here's one of the beds we put out in the front yard--both to add interest to a really big boring yard, and to reduce mowing space (NOT that there was much to mow when we arrived. The first pic shows the bed right after we put it in, early to mid October. The big green thing on the left is a Crossvine that the previous owner (my mother-in-law) had planted to hid the gas meter; everything else is new. The foundation plant is a Centennial crape myrtle (red and 12-15 ft max), on either side of that are two big ol' gallon-sized pink muhly grasses that we purchased upon making a road trip to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center's Fall plant sale--which is great since they sell natives and native-adapteds only. The rest of the planting is largely sages/salvias in shades of red, a Texas Red quince, and a few dwarf yaupon hollies.



Here's a close-up of the pink muhly grass in flower. We saw a bunch of it blooming at the Wildflower Center and said, yes, both of us, "we gotta have some o'dat!" This grass blooms late summer and through autumn--which is great around here!


Here's me, transplanting a micro- mini rose ("Cinderella," white) IN JANUARY! Look, Ma, no sleeves! Tucked it in amongst the salvias... I had also planted Spring bulbs in most of the beds in Jan.

Next pic is the bed in March. Everything is starting to bloom, and whatever went dormant or died back is leafing out. There's one yellow species tulip there, but what shocked me were all the plants that I'm used to not getting going until the summer-- there's the salvias growing and blooming, dianthus, and pink Gaura (which later got bugs and was ripped out, but still really pretty in spring, and I still have one in another bed).

The cute miniature red amaryllis bloomed in April, and was either one I brought with me in the move, or was mailed to me by the obliging Annabelle.

Below are some close-ups from April: Red Autumn Sage (salvia gregii) and a cream-colored miniature rose; followed by a red miniature rose and blue Drummond's Skullcap. The next month the Cactus started blooming, which you can see, along with the bloom-stages of the other plants in May in the post on the Cactus. In any case--we wanted to attract butterflies and hummingbirds to all of our flower beds, and I have to say that this one is particularly successful--butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees all love the red salvias and the roses.

Cactus Resurrection

So here's the story of The Cactus:

When we moved into this house, which Himself (and his brother) inherited from his mother, the house had been pretty neglected. Mama H. had had a stroke and been in either the hospital, nursing home, or assisted living facility for I think over a year, during which time the house was essentially empty, with the minimum utilities and occasional grass-cutting performed by the brother (we were out of state). When she passed away in summer '03 the house was empty for a while, and then the brother put in a nominal "renter" (really she just paid the utilities), a friend of his and her son while she was getting a divorce--they were there about a year, until just before we moved down to move in and try to fix the place up, with the purpose of selling in a year or two.

When we arrived in Sept. '05 the neglect was pretty apparent in both the house and the yard (I could rant about that for days, but will just focus on the yard/flora here). There had been extended drought in Tejas, it was blisteringly hot for so late in the year, and it looked like nothing had been watered for a very long time. In the midst of moving in I noticed a large white pot on the corner of the porch, with a large, spreading cactus drooping sadly in it. (I seem to be destined to find cacti where-ever I move--at the last rental home up in the cold north, I arrived to find a GIANT upright cactus--as tall as me, sitting in a pot on the porch, fortunately I talked the land-lord into carting it off...) I am assuming this cactus was Mama H's since the renter left it behind, in which case who only knows if it had been watered by anything but the occasional rain for up to 3 years. Good thing it was a desert plant! I don't even know what kind it is--it was not very upright-growing, more prostrate or cascading down the edge of the pot, but I don't know if that is due to its being in a pot or what. It was not terribly attractive, and the thorns were quite wicked. I wasn't too keen on it really. In fact I tried to pawn it off on a few people, who obviously did not take it.

In October we began to dig garden beds in the yard--both to plant garden plants (miniature roses and amaryllis mostly) I had brought with us in the RV, and to put new stuff in. See, I sold it to Himself as a means of increasing the property's value, but it was also a means to indulge the gardening hobby that I had only been able to engage in on rental properties in a rather small way--and we both understood that. I think it was also true that we were (and are) so overwhelmed by the work that needed to be done on the house, that performing hard labor in the yard, which I CAN do, and planting a nice garden bed or six, which I KNOW HOW to do, seemed much more do-able in comparison--not to mention quicker and cheaper. I did put a great deal of effort into learning what would grow here and collecting plants, shrubs, and small trees that would thrive.

And when you are in super hot and sunny zone 8, planting cacti seems like a good thing to do--it had certainly survived in the pot on the porch for years, so I knew it could make it through what little cold-snap winter consisted of here. Thus, when we dug out two large beds in the front yard, I thought, "What the hell!" and plopped the cactus in the ground, surrounding it with a bunch of sage, mostly, and other full sun perennials, decorated with local rock and some bleached wood. Here's a photo of the new bed just after it was put in--you won't be able to see much, but the cactus is in the left corner of it, and one should note the "Dust Bowl" yard--all that surrounding area was not rototilled like the space for the bed--the grass was just D-E-A-D! (I'll do another post about the progress of this bed, now back to the cactus...)

So there that long-suffering cactus sprawled, looking less peaked, though, surely, over the winter. The garden perked up in spring (having gone a bit dormant during the couple of cold spells, but not many things died back completely), a few of the spring bulbs I planted came up, and the sage started to bloom (which really blew my mind--those things to NOT bloom simultaneously in Zone 6!). Then, one day in mid May, I emerged from the house to encounter this:


To which I said: "Wow!"

I mean, lookit those 'cullahs'!
I'm usually not a big fan of fuschia, but the color was so shining and translucent (dig the water droplets in the close-up), almost lit from within--and so unexpected, that, what's not to love?

Next is the view of the cactus "in situ," as Annabelle requested. Travelling left from the cactus and then clockwise, we have: a dwarf yaupon holly, a mum (that was planted in Oct. from a 4 in. pot...), above the mum is 'pink muhly' grass, next are two shades of Autumn Sage (salvia gregii), "Lipstick" and Red, and the short blue-flowered plant between them is Drummond's Skullcap (there's a white- flowered micro-mini rose in there too, but it's difficult to see), the squat round thing on the far right is another dwarf yaupon holly and lastly a "Floral Lace Crimson" dianthus. This show lasted for days, the flowers closing in the evening and opening in the morning.

I thought that was it, but it went through a second flush of bloom a couple weeks later. Here I had tucked in a "Sentimental Blue" balloonflower (campanula) to break up the fuschias and reds of the cactus and dianthus.

Coneflower Obsession

I've always admired coneflowers (aka Echinacea)--their hardy toughness, their sparkler-comet shape, the "cone" pods that look attractive through the fall and winter after the petal skirt has fallen away. But I never had a really big space to showcase them. Now that I do have comparatively lotsa room--and lotsa heat and sunshine in Zone 8--I've been going a little crazy. So far I have three "regular" purple coneflowers in my sun&heat-intensive front beds--and they go very well with the two color schemes: one has a lot of purple, blue, and orange, with a little red thrown in and the other is mostly red, dark pink, blue and white, with a splash or two of yellow.



Here's one particular one in varying stages of bloom (May-June) in one bed, nestled between some rocks and an iris--there's also an orange mum nearby.

Well, this week I got a fateful email from Park's Landscapes, advertising their current web specials-- Coneflowers in all hues: "Get Them while they're hot." Now they must have read my mind... I have been dying to get some of those "hot" new orange shades, but they don't sell those at Lowe's or Wally-World, and when I found a gallon at a local nursery they wanted $12.95 (as I was there to buy a tree--$$$--I had to regretfully decline their cheerful orange invitation). So when I saw them ON SALE at Park's for **$4.00** I came down with a severe case of Coneflower Madness!


And proceeded to order the following:

First: Sunrise Echinacea

Second: Sunset Echinacea
(I feel a show-tune coming on: "SUNRIIIIIIISE! SUNSETTTT!")

Unfortunately, they were running low on both of these,
so not sure if I will be getting them or not.
Therefore I ordered two of the
Third: Orange Meadowbrite Echinacea

And for good measure, the aptly named
Fourth: Fatal Attraction Echinacea

UPDATE: All of the above arrived! I have put them in the ground and we shall see what they do. (As they are fairly small, I'm not expecting anything spectacular until late summer, early fall.)