Taking Stock of the Midwinter Garden

Mild winters in South Texas allow for working in the garden most days.  In fact, winter is the best time for big projects because soon enough it will be too hot to do much of anything out there.  Midwinter is a great time to take stock and begin spring preparations.  With longer, warmer days just ahead, I'm taking you along on a tour as I figure out what needs to be done.  Let's see what's working, or not.

There's only a little work to do in the front garden this year and that's by design.

We planned for low maintenance and the same look year round.  Yes, that's a lot of concrete!

Out at the end of the driveway, three beautiful Yucca 'Color Guard' plants died after blooming last spring and Agave lophantha 'Splendida' offsets were planted as a quick (free) replacement.

The agaves are the green, spiky plants behind dormant Salvia greggii.

I miss the bright yellow accent provided by the yuccas.  Instead of more short-lived yuccas, I'll plant Agave shidigera 'Shira itoh no ohi'.  A cold hardy, full sun plant that rarely offsets and promises to stay put for 10-25 years is just what I'm looking for here.  I have one, just need to find two more.

Freshly mulched driveway bed all ready for spring.  Ruby Crystals (Melinus nerviglumis) grass replaced Mexican Feather Grass (Nasella tenuissima) at the base of the Silverado Texas Sage last fall.  Mexican Feather Grass spends too much time in a brown, dormant stage for me.  Ruby Crystals has stayed green so far this winter and is even blooming in spots.  A prolific reseeder, Ruby Crystals should spread quickly to soften driveway edges and it requires very little water to look good year round.

Pennisetum grasses with seedheads provide winter interest in the driveway island.  These were entirely free of charge since the seeds blew down from my neighbor's garden several years ago and I've been transplanting seedlings ever since.  A Vitex at the corner of the garage will be removed this year.   Pruned into tree form by the original owners, it looked great for about 20 years.  Blooms and leaves have been sparse the last few years so it's time for it to go.  As for a replacement, I'm currently shopping for a tall Yucca Rostrata that hopefully doesn't require a second mortgage!

Here's a corner that definitely needs work.  I replaced underperforming Spanish Lavender with those three grass-like Flax Lillies (Dianella 'Baby Blue') last fall.  When I couldn't find enough matching plants, I added Dyckia 'Silver Nickel' in the triangle end.  But it was too wet for Dyckia (that sad grey plant on the right) so what's left will be potted up and, if I can't find more of the same Dianella variety, the original three will be divided.  They'll be small but at least I know they work well here.

Love the blue-green color of this variety of Dianella or Flax Lily which will eventually produce small blue flowers.

A small agave bed along the front walk is coming along.  Copying a popular idea I've seen on garden tours in Austin, my plan is for small agaves nesting within silvery ground cover.  After losing the first planting of Wooly Stemodia groundcover to torrential downpours last spring, we've reworked the soil to try again with better drainage.

So far, so good with the new plants surviving late fall torrential rains.  Wooly Stemodia is the best choice for the look I want since deer avoid it while devouring similar options.  It still looks sparse so I'll add a few more to get the gravel mulch covered faster.

The bistro set looks a little lonely without its usual topping of potted plants.

Most are cold hardy but I've moved them to the porch just in case.  They'll be moved back out soon.

Duranta 'Gold Mound' usually dies back so I'm enjoying its bright color during this warm winter.  Not much to do here since last fall I added a few variegated Liriope to fill in along rock edging.

Now looking through the gate, evergreen Rosemary provides spots of deep green in the circle garden.

We expanded the crevice garden last fall for more places to plant sun-loving cacti and succulents on a slope where nothing else would grow.  As some of my favorite plants offset, I'll add them here.

Perennials await cutting back in early March.  I usually wait until then in order to protect new growth from late freezes and provide winter cover for birds and insects.  We've even got a few blooms on Henry Deulberg salvia.

Over the south fence, I see more work to do!  The dry creek needs clearing out and sedges along the walk should be divided.  Still I am reminded this area has come a long way over the last couple years.

Duranta 'Sapphire Showers' has grown massive and will either be transplanted or removed so the entire bed can be reworked.  I love the delicate blue flowers but it's not a spectacular plant in any other sense especially when it overwhelms the narrow space.

Now I have my work planned, I just need to get it all done!

First new plant of 2013!

In my last post I asked for recommendations to fill the spot in the front garden where two Texas sages had recently been removed.

The votes were cast by readers, tallied in a secret location, and delivered by computer. The unanimous choice of the Academy of Blog Comments (ABC) was......Envelope please! 

 The "New Mexico Agave" or Agave neomexicana!  Here it is just after I brought it home.  Isn't it cute?

Before and After: October 9, 2012

Shortly after beginning to write this blog last year I posted my yard for the first time on October 9th, 2011.  I resolved to check on progress consistently and I chose the date primarily because I had a good photo from the previous year on the same day.

This year's October 9th photo looks so much better because it's been a good year for rain and (relatively) cooler summer temperatures.  Even though I now document progress throughout the year in this blog, I still plan to do this annual assessment.

Plant ABCs: N is for Nasella Tenuissima

The ABCs of plants in my garden series highlights the letter N for Nasella Tenuissima or Mexican Feather Grass.

Plant ABCs - I is for Ilex Vomitoria

My series the ABCs of plants in my garden continues with the letter I.  I is for Ilex Vomitoria or Yaupon Holly.

What a name!  Vomitoria?  Apparently early European settlers thought the native populations used the leaves as a tea to induce vomiting.  That turned out to be a misunderstanding since the active ingredient in the leaves is caffeine.  I found a few secondary references to the tea still being available in St. Augustine, Florida, but could not find the tea for sale.

While the yaupon holly is native to Texas, it is not native to San Antonio or the Texas Hill Country.  It is one of the few varieties of holly that will reliably grow in our hot, dry environment here.  There were other holly varieties planted years ago in the neighborhood, but many bit the dust in the recent drought.  Those varieties also prefer acidic soil, so they do not do as well as yaupons in our limestone soil. 

The dwarf yaupon (Ilex vomitoria 'nana') is in my yard as a hedge, and this row along the front was planted by the original owners' landscaper.

Yaupon holly is evergreen and very drought tolerant, we only watered this hedge a few times during the recent drought and never water the native ones.  These have reached their mature size at around 3' high and we keep them naturally shaped by only trimming a few rangy branches now and then.
This one dwarf yaupon in the driveway island intrigues me since it was not part of the original landscaping and must have been planted by renters.

I kept it when we reworked this bed because it adds a green counterpoint to the mostly silvery plants here.  Just for fun, I keep it trimmed in a softly rounded shape to fit better with the style of this section of the garden.

The yaupon holly is also available in a very attractive weeping form (Ilex vomitoria 'pendula') and I have just the place for two of those which I plan to add in the fall.  The Ilex vomitoria has been a great plant for my garden.

Regarding Re-Gardening

Sometimes a good garden requires several attempts.  Take my driveway island...please!  I've been working and reworking the west half of this small spot for three years.  Maybe, just maybe, it's now right.  The driveway island was one of the first areas completed in the front yard makeover and by the fall of 2010 it was looking just as I had envisioned it.

The Zebra Grass (Miscanthus zebrinus) planted there looked especially good while dormant so I crossed this spot off the to-do list.

Not so fast...

A  year later the Zebra Grass and Ruby Crystals Grass (Rhynchelytrum nerviglume) in the front island bed had been reduced to toast by the drought and heat of 2011.

Clearly a rework was needed and since this is a highly visible spot, it moved quickly to the top of the to-do list.  I replaced the miscanthus with three drought and heat tolerant Lindheimer's Muhly.

Or so I thought...

Soon after planting the "Lindheimer's Muhly" I noticed they didn't look quite right.  These plants were purchased during the fall sale at a very reliable independent nursery and all three were labeled Lindheimer's Muhly.  No reason to doubt, except they didn't look nearly as nice as the Lindheimer's muhly planted a year earlier.

In fact, they looked weedy and more like field grasses.  Definitely not a good look for the front yard where I need plants to hold up through the winter.  They were dormant when planted and I was pretty busy last fall so I decided to wait.  When they began to green up this spring I compared the blades and, sure enough, they are not Lindheimer's Muhly. 
  
This all worked out okay because I had changed my mind about what I want there anyway.   I decided to add Gulf Muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris) to my yard after seeing the most amazing displays of them all over town last fall and noting that they continued to look good all winter.  The Lindheimer's Muhly originally appealed to me because I didn't think I would like the Gulf Muhly pink as much.  Plantings like this one along Josephine St. changed my mind.

The unidentified grasses have been moved to new beds in the back yard.  Fortunately my husband disliked the mystery plants even more than I did and was more than willing to help me move them and plant the Gulf Muhly.  We also relocated the Ruby Crystals Grass and replaced them with the more drought tolerant Mexican Feather Grass (Nasella tenuissima)

That looks better already!  Well....at least to me it does.  It will take about 18 months before they mature, but these plants will stand up much better to our weather and drought.  We finished just in time for rains this weekend.

The three misidentified plants were deeply discounted in a fall sale last year and I've found a new spot for them so I'll just let the nursery know what happened.  It'll be a fun surprise to see what they are when they bloom in the fall.

It's such a prominent spot that if this doesn't work, I'll rework it again.  Meanwhile, I love it when I change my mind and it works out.