End of Month View: Spring Garden Tour 2018

Those yucca blooms keep drawing me outside, even though I'm trying to blog more (by request).  But whenever I sit at my computer I see this view!

Silvery Yucca rupicola is blooming for the first time having been planted as a small pup about four years ago.  Sometimes yuccas go on the wane after blooming, fortunately it has produced a number of pups to keep going should the originals die out.

Gorgeous!

Since I'm already out here let's take a tour of the spring garden which I'm linking to End of Month View hosted by Helen at The Patient Gardener.  Helen and several other UK bloggers are making the trip to Austin for the annual Garden Blogger's Fling.  I look forward to meeting so many bloggers I know mainly from photos of their gardens.

It's been a good spring with cool to average temperatures featuring more than a few cloudy days.  Clouds are good because we will have endless sunny days all summer.  For now we can use the extended opportunity to get seedlings and transplants off to a good start without a pounding from hot sun.

Just enough sun breaking through momentarily to show off Mexican Feathergrass inflorescences with pink Salvia greggii.  This is the view we see most often when returning home and I love the way everything has worked out.  I'm pretty much done and any tweaks will be minor from now on.

More than one yucca bloom is on the way!  Yucca rostrata by the garage is happy enough to bloom during its first spring in the ground.

Straight on front view showing lots of green and silver.  Later in the year yellow and gold flowers fill in as the green of spring fades.

Experts advise against pruning up the Cycad.  But they don't have to get to the mailbox through all those prickles.  So prune we did.

Entering from the north end of the drive.  A little deer proofing to protect Agave cornelius planted to replace Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' which bloomed and died out.  The garden needs a spot of yellow and green color here and the agave fits the bill.

Pale yellow blooms on purple pads of Opuntia Santa-rita  creates a perfect complementary scheme.



The island bed in silver awaiting more gold flowers later in the summer.

Callistemon 'Little John' nearly froze to death in a rare snow fall last December.  I'm happy to see it has recovered well enough to bloom.

Down through the courtyard garden collection of vintage white clay pots which coordinate much better with Ilex vomitoria 'Grmicr" or "Micron Holly" instead of a random collection of plants.

Wildflowers have changed over from Bluebonnets to oranges and yellows of Greenthread, Firewheel, and Mexican Hats.

I've tidied up the "Flower Bed" and added Salvia guaranitica 'Amistad' in a pot to better watch hummingbirds from the porch.

The view from the porch where I spend a lot of evenings watching darkness cover the garden.

The beginnings of a wildflower meadow on a scruffy slope below the deck.  First task is to get native grasses going but Larkspur has other ideas.

And my tours always end with a peek over the south side fence where it seems that as soon as I clear out potted plants from under the trees, more take their place.

Now there you have it; a dual purpose spring tour of my gardens to both link up with The Patient Gardener and a place to point if someone at the Garden Blogger's Fling should ask how my garden is doing.  It is doing very well, and thank you for asking.