Xeriscape landscaping....

Dear friends,

As the unusually high temperatures here in central TX stay in the 100's and higher, we've had issues with keeping our veggie garden watered. It looks drab and crispy by now, and there's not much we can do about it but hope that we'll get some cooler weather.

Our landscape plants, however, are thriving! I learned about Xeriscape gardening over 15 years ago, and believe me, it works. The concept is simple....use native or highly adapted plants in your landscape that don't need a lot of water. Mulch like crazy, cut down on lawn areas or plant things like buffalograss that are native, low-water grasses.

A great resource for information on native plants, wildflowers and native grasses is the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas.

One of my favorite front yard shrubby plants is my vitex tree. This is a young one, planted just over a year ago. When full grown, it will probably be around six-feet tall.



The purple spikey flowers on it appear off and on in all the warm months, and look great against the yellow house. I'm glad to see that a lot of the landscapers around here are using vitex in their commercial designs now. The small, shrubby tree makes a great companion to rosemary. The bees love both, and once established, almost never need to be watered. Other plants I use in the front are autumn sages (salvias), artemesia, Russian sage, lavenders, salvia guaranetica and Texas bush sage. Notice all the sages/salvias? I use them because they are great plants, attract bees and butterflies, are drought tolerant, and are very hardy in this crazy climate.

This morning we're dumping another carload of mulch on the front to help keep the runoff in the yard instead of flowing down the street into the storm drains. That is, WHEN it rains.

For more information on low-water gardening using Xeriscaping, check out this website. Water conservation is already an issue here in Texas, and will become more so as years go by.

Oh, and for more information on Xeriscape landscapes, check out this website.

Dig it!

bobbi c.

Front yard landscaping

Since I caught some small children (AKA "brats") picking up landscaping stones from my front garden and throwing them into the trees, I've decided not to put much food out there until I can put up some kind of barrier fence. It will be mostly decorative, but I hope it will also help deter the little pests.

So, in the meantime, I've been working on a general landscape using native Texas plants, herbs and small shrubs and one new Shumard oak.

The first photo is part of the front flower bed, right underneath the windows against the white limestone. Herbs such as lavender and rosemary do extremely well there.



This is the way I landscape, a little at a time, willy nilly, and THEN, all of a sudden, it pulls itself together into a cohesive design. LOL. It drives friends NUTS, but this is the way I work. I'll plant one thing, then add something else next to it, then mulch them together, in a sort of planting island. Future medium sized shrubs will grow to eventually hide the neighbor's driveway and trash cans.



I'll add smaller plants next to them farther out, adding more mulch. Eventually, the plan is to have the yard filled with all plants and mulch, with some paths, and NO GRASS.



This photo is a little planting pocket to the right of the driveway, next to the neighbor's yard. Eventually I want to extend this all the way out to the road. Pink native salvias, rosemary, red salvias, coreopsis grow happily with a pavonia.


An existing flower bed was there when we moved in, but was filled with black mulch and houseplants. UGH. Since then, I've replaced them with lemongrass and butterfly iris underneath the faucet where it's moist, and added rosemary, more salvias, Mexican bush sage and seasonal bulbs to fill in.



It's shaping up, a wee bit at a time!

Dig it!

bobbi c.

A new start

Hi friends!

It's been ever so long since I posted here. I've been busy painting the concrete floor in our new little cottage, and that's turned into a huge job. I despise carpet, and have dust allergies to boot, so almost the first thing we did was remove it and I filled in all the nail holes with patching stuff...over 750 of them! A few more days of scraping and cleaning and it was ready for paint. Yesterday I finished up the last top-coat of paint/stain, and now I need to put on the finish coat. Luckily it is a *small* cottage. LOL.

The garden! Well, it's going slowly. I have a good reason...it's been over 90-degrees here for the last few weeks, and that's not good for new plants. Still, I couldn't resist putting in a few herbs in the existing flower bed alongside the house. Some boob planted crotons there and covered their roots with BLACK mulch. Good grief. I like crotons, sort of, but they are not bedding plants; they are houseplants. And black mulch just isn't good for anything in this climate.

Not to mention that it's black because it's been dyed. As I said, good grief!

So in their place are new rosemary, lavender, Mexican bush sage and salvia plants. I know all of those will appreciate the heat bouncing back off the light colored house and the concrete driveway beside it. I'm going to love getting out of the car and brushing up against them when they're larger, causing them to release their scents.

And I also planted a wee little fig tree there in the back garden area. It's about 8" tall now, and came from a cutting I took from the fig tree here at the Big House.

I'm sure you'll understand how happy I was to find earthworms in the soil there. That was exciting. (Yes, I get excited over worms. Don't you? LOL)

More later....some photos eventually, too!

Dig it!

bobbi c.

The hummers are here!

The Earthly Gardener by Bobbi A. Chukran
March 23, 2007

Mornin' earthly gardeners!

I’m up early this morning for some reason. It’s still dark so I can’t look out the window to the garden.

I had a thrill yesterday when I was sitting here and heard a distinctive roaring sound go by my window. It was the first hummingbird of the season! That’s always exciting to us here. Like I’ve mentioned before, when we first moved into this house, there were almost no birds that came near the garden. After ten plus years, we’ve attracted numerous new species to the property by adding a water source, plants that birds love, shelter and food. Husband is the official Keeper of the Hummers here, and lovingly boils up a combo water and sugar for them and keep the feeders full and clean. Bacteria grows easily in sugar water, so it’s important to clean out the feeding tubes once a week or so. We don’t like to use the commercial foods out there, because many of them have harmful dyes. The water doesn’t need to be red as long as the feeder has some red on it. Believe me, the birdies will find it!



Thought you might enjoy seeing a photo of a tropical canna that I’m growing in pots here. This is from last year, and just last weekend I divided the bulbs and repotted them into several larger containers. These things multiply fast, and the bright colors also attract hummingbirds.

I also grow a lot of native salvias here, and the hummers love those, too. I have white, but mostly grow the reds and dark pinks. They also go for the rosemary when it blooms, which was a surprise to me. Since discovering that, I’ve planted lots more rosemary, which does well in our Mediterranean-like climate.

Other things that attract the hummingbirds is the red trim on our porch. LOL. Our birds are feisty, and have been known to buzz our heads if we are too late in the morning getting the food out. Although we can’t be for certain without tagging them (and neither of us wants to deal with that) I’m pretty sure that some of the same birds have come back over the last few years, and they bring their friends with them. Last year, we had at least four pair of them that nested here. It’ll be interesting to see how many show up this year.

Happy spring!

bobbi c.
All photos and text copyright ©2005-2007 Bobbi A. Chukran

Hummers!

The hummingbirds are in full force this year. Every year since we’ve started feeding them, the numbers have grown. We have two feeders, and consistently have four or five hummers hovering around each of them throughout the day. I’ve been trying like crazy to get good photos of them, but alas, that hasn’t happened yet.

I did run across this website though, that has some excellent photos of hummingbirds as well as maps, other information, etc.

And here's some good information, Q&As, etc. about hummingbirds over on the Birdwatcher's Digest website. And another article there lists the thirteen best plants that will attract those tiny feathered friends!

As well as the food we put out for them, we also grow native plants that they love. One of my favorites are the native salvias. Almost indestructible plants, they bloom off and on all year here, and the bright red and hot pink blooms attract the birds. That's the key--bright colors, and especially red!

dig it!

bobbi c.