Pretty in pink (and red) Holidays at San Antonio Botanical Gardens

The San Antonio Botanical Gardens are looking good this year.  Just a few finishing touches left before the final phase of a multi-year update opens.  I treated myself to an annual membership recently so I plan to check in there at least once a month.

Pink Muhly in the parking lot is fully fluffed out in early December.  It might appear that a cloudy day isn't the best for photos but our sunshine can often be so intense as to wash out colors like this.  Silvery artemesia adds just enough contrast.  

The parking lot is now a "parking garden" and the plantings were designed by Christy TenEyck of Austin.  A new entrance (right) is easier for visitors to find and the front plaza designed for assembling groups.  A re-grading of the site allows for level entry instead of a rather steep uphill climb up from the old entrance.  

The old carriage house is beautiful but imagine walking up and down that steep ramp multiple times each visit and trying to gather a group on the narrow space by the door at the bottom of the ramp.

Stopping in at the new discovery center we can see what's in bloom.

What's happening at the gardens this week?  It's tamale season and they are right in sync with the community.

#SABOT with free WiFi throughout the gardens.

First stop is the conservatory and orchid/tropical house set with poinsettias.  SABOT doesn't have a big holiday display but their nice subtle touches are appreciated.

Always lush and full.

Native Russelia in bright red and green dress a walkway in holiday style.

Looking back at the conservatory.  Ornaments pick up colors of lantana at the agave's base.

The colors used here are just different enough to add a fun touch.

Prickly Pear has a few of its natural ornaments left.



More natural holiday cheer in the form of aloe blooms.

The "Muhly Maze" in the children's garden is like walking through tufts of cotton candy.

And back out to that amazing Parking Garden.

Merry Christmas from our beautiful new gardens!

Drive by photos? It's a compliment!

When a car stops in front of the house I have to peek, especially since this one also backed up.  She rolled down the window and out came her phone.  It's a drive by photo!  I'll take it as a compliment.  

The video is amusing.  Bloggers will recognize this move and I've done it many times.

Often when a car stops out front they're trying to find one of our neighbors.  We live on a confusing curve where the street names change for no apparent reason.  Even more confusing is the other street has the same house numbers except odd-even switches sides from left to right.  "Your destination is on the right", "or left (maybe)."  We've had to run up the street to redirect a few guests who ended up at the wrong house.  Some of my neighbors on the same street even live in a different town which adds to the fun.

This time I'm pretty sure it's the landscape that caught her attention.  I wanted to tell her it does look better than this in spring and fall, but maybe seeing how good it looks on a hot summer day is even more informative.  Just a few Pride of Barbados blooms by the garage because the Salvia greggii along the street has just finished blooming.  This view doesn't change much in the winter as I noted in a post last March.

With a significant increase in water bills this year due to a new tiered system designed to target irrigation systems we've seen a renewed interest in cutting back on lawn.  No lawn here.   This area is hot in the summer so most turf grass would brown out anyway.  That doesn't mean an absence of grasses.  Mexican Feather Grass has turned from green to tawny for summer.  It'll need a little grooming in early spring, otherwise it's pretty easy.  I used to pull out extra grass seedlings to maintain the original planting design.  I like the look so much better now with grasses popping up wherever to soften concrete and stone.   We've planted native Muhly grasses:  Pink Muhly, Lindheimer's Muhly, El Toro Muhly, Deer Muhly, and Seep Muhly.  African native Ruby Crystals grass is best along the driveway where even Mexican Feather Grass couldn't stand up to the heat.

While our neighbors fire up their lawnmowers each week, we cut back the grasses every few years in January and Salvia greggii gets a light haircut after blooming several times a year.  Grasses bloom in the fall, their soft colors adding so much more to the landscape than turf grass.

I very much enjoy knowing our choices are appreciated.  So thanks anonymous drive-by for stopping to snap a few shots of our landscape!

Walking in the rain

Hurricane Vance brought rain all the way over the Sierra Madre from the Pacific coast of Mexico.  We've had a lot of rain and it has been fun watching it pour down since Tuesday evening.  The rain gauge says 4" but it seemed like even more.  That wiped out half of our annual rainfall deficit in a couple days.  Thursday morning the rain stopped enough to head out with the camera and get rare shots of the garden all wet.  Plus it's been a while since I took you on a garden tour.

Peeking out the front door.  We don't see a lot of puddles since most rain either runs off into the creek or soaks in quickly.

Celebrating Texas Native Plant Week in the garden

This week (October 14-20) is Texas Native Plant Week and I'm celebrating by highlighting native plants in my garden.

We learn over and over that "you can't fight Mother Nature".  Two years of drought and record heat here in San Antonio underscored the need to emphasize native plants in my gardens.  As you might expect, the Texas natives came through with flying colors while even many adapted plants gave up over the past couple years. 

Plants like Gregg's mistflower (Conoclinium greggii) have kept bees and butterflies busy all summer.

Driveway Landscaping Completed

Cross another big project off the list -- the driveway landscaping is done!

Oh my, Muhly, how you've grown!

Another tale of ungardening and regardening.  Earlier this month I wrote about my regardening efforts by replacing the mystery grasses in the front island bed with Pink Muhly (Muhlenbergia Capillaris).  This was how the garden looked after putting the new Pink Muhly in place

This is how that same garden looks a couple weeks later

Notice the difference?

The Pink Muhly has "grown" pretty fast.  Well, not exactly.  It was actually Regardening #2, as I replaced the still new 6" Pink Muhly with even newer, larger ones.  I had looked all over town for the large size Pink Muhly before settling on the 6" plants thinking I needed to get them in the ground.  Of course, as soon as I did I spotted the larger 10" plants and decided to make another switch.  Sooo...  Regardening strikes again in the same spot.  And of course DH has been so very pleased to help...ha ha ha.

A bit obsessive? Perhaps. But this is the most visible spot in the front yard, the area we see first every time we leave or return.   My concern was the smaller plants might not bloom well this year and after eighteen months of sad looking grasses there I'm ready to see a nice display this fall.  Sometimes obsessive makes good gardening sense.

I'm really, really, done replacing these now.  Unless of course I find the five gallon size ready to bloom....

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.