Bring on the Butterflies and Planning for Next Year

 Ahhh, my favorite time of year.  I know I say that a lot, but it's true!  We get a little respite from the blistering heat of summer and it seems like the garden sighs with relief too.

Much of the zinnia that self-seeded throughout the islands beds is on its way out now, but this patch is still vibrant, and getting lots of attention from butterflies and bees.  I've been busy collecting seeds for next year :-)

It took me a while to get this photo of a gulf fritillary nectaring on the zinnia.  He seemed to be overwhelmed by choice and kept flitting from bloom to bloom before I could focus on him.  Finally he settled down and I was able to get some good shots.

This is the first Buckeye I have seen this year, so I was pleased to be able to watch him for a while and get some photos.  I don't know if it's just my imagination, but it seems like we've had more of them, and earlier in the year in previous years.

I had planted native milkweed roots earlier in the year and some of them came up quite quickly.  But for some reason, they didn't thrive.  Not sure if it was because of too much competition from the zinnias, not enough water, too much water, or what, but only one of them made it, and I wouldn't exactly say that one is thriving.  Luckily, we still have lots of tropical milkweed, as this Monarch butterfly discovered.

Sorry about the bad quality of this photo of what I think is a Pipevine Swallowtail, but the photo was taken through the blinds and a rather grubby bedroom window, zoomed in across the garden to the Vitex tree. This is the first of these I have seen this year.

I haven't seen a hummingbird here at the house since last weekend, but was thrilled to be able to capture this photo of a female ruby-throat at Kleb Woods before they all head south.   
 

I suppose it won't be too much longer before I will be cleaning up in the garden, pulling out the spent plants and prepping the beds for next year.

I've looked back on the successes (and failures) from this year and am making plans for next year.

Our garden always seems to be dominated by orange, red and yellow, so I definitely want to add some more variety next year - more whites, blues, purples and pinks to offset all the orange.

I made a start the other week by ordering some seeds from Park -- Achillea Summer Berries, Cleome Queen (mix) and Agastache. And just this morning I spent a pleasant hour browsing through the Native American Seed catalog and trying to narrow down my list!

What plans do you have for your garden next year?


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Time to Plan for Spring

It's that time of year.  It seems like no sooner do the Christmas decorations get taken down, than the seed and plant catalogs arrive in the mailbox.

I'll be first to admit, I tend to get a bit too ambitious as I browse through the catalogs, either circling, or putting large red stars on things that look I want to try, or that just look interesting.

But hey, that's half the fun!

  
Our vegetable garden is tiny, but to see me go through catalogs, you'd think we had acres of tilled earth just waiting for seeds to be sown!

This year, I think I will limit myself to a few simple veggies that are easy to grow, and that I know we will eat -- tomatoes, beans, snap peas etc., and also some flowers to turn the island bed into a butterfly garden.  I spotted a nice mix of Profusion zinnia in a variety of colors that I will be ordering soon.

What have you seen in the seed and garden catalogs that you want to try this year?


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Armchair Gardening

It's pretty cold and windy here today, with temperatures in the 40's.  I suppose I shouldn't complain, as so much of the country is buried in snow at the moment, but it still feels darned cold to me, and the wind just goes right through you.

So any gardening done today will be of the armchair variety.

This month's Garden How-To magazine shared some great links for gardeners, two of which I was especially interested in. 

Gardener's Supply Co. is one of my favorite catalogs, but I didn't realize, until I read about it in Garden How-To magazine, that they have a Kitchen Garden Planner.  

You can either choose one of their pre-planned vegetable gardens or you can create your own using their online tool.  

It's pretty neat -- you drag the vegetable or herb you want on to the garden plan and it spaces them out appropriately, so you know how many you can plant in your bed.  You can save your plans and print them out.  The site also provides all sorts of tips and information about planting and growing vegetables and more.

For the past few years in addition to blogging about my garden, I have kept a garden journal, with the specifics of what I plant, when I plant it, how it does etc. etc.

Well, that's always the plan anyway....  But it seems like every year I'm gung ho for a couple of months, then I slow down a bit and finally, but the dog days of summer, I have abandoned my garden journal entirely.

What starts out as a great idea ends up being barely legible because of my increasingly bad handwriting, and also not user friendly, as it's not easy to find information if I want to look up something I wrote about, but can't remember when.  In addition, at the end of the year, my dear husband kindly offers to scan every page for me, so I don't have to keep stacks of paper lying around.

So when I read in Garden How-To magazine about GreenThumbJournal.com,  I had to take a peek.   

The site allows you to keep a journal with as much or as little information as you want.  It's online, it's searchable and it's FREE.

You can log the weather, your observations, gardening activities etc.   You can also browse other people's journals, share photos of your garden etc.

I'm really going to try and keep up with this.  Even if I just do short "observation" posts, such as making a note of when something starts leafing out, I think it will give me a great record of the progress of the garden.  And it's a record I'll be able to access, not one that will get stacked up in the attic and not looked at again.

Do you have any favorite tools for planning and keeping up with your garden -- either digital or otherwise? 

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Slowly, but surely, I'm making some progress on the garden plan that I envisioned for our back garden in my January post, So Here's the Plan. 

One of the features I wanted to add was a rainbarrel, to help with a drainage problem we have and also to give me some good water with which to water the patio plants and any other plants in times of drought.

Rainbarrel - check.

You might notice that the rainbarrel is not centered on the little pad we built for it and also that it overhangs the edge of the house wall.

For some reason, it seems like everything we try and do in this garden is a challenge. Every project seems to involve a lot of problem solving before it can go into effect. The rain barrel was no different.

In this case, we couldn't line the barrel up with the corner on the wall because the downspout is right on the corner and, as you can see, in order for it to drain into the barrel, we had to move it further right that we would have liked to.  And we couldn't center the rainbarrel on it's pad because there's a sprinkler head just to the left of the pad so we had to move the pad over to the right even more.

On a more cheerful note, remember those utility boxes in the corner that I wanted to hide?  (Ignore the really lousy grass, that will have to be the subject of a separate post, when I have the heart for it)

Anyway, back to the subject, I had originally planned to put an arbor and bench there to hide the boxes.  But we started thinking about it and came to the decision that  because the area is in full sun, we realized we wouldn't actually sit there, so I started thinking about alternatives.

Last weekend, we were in Lowe's and I happened to catch sight of something I thought would be ideal for hiding the utility boxes.  I had actually wanted something like it before but didn't know such a thing existed. I was really excited when I saw it and, since it was reasonably priced, I grabbed it right there and put it in our cart.

It's a little vinyl lattice fence, four feet wide and three feet tall. It has stakes on the bottom, so I was able to stake it directly into the ground in front of the boxes. It hides the utility boxes from most angles. There's a holly bush on either side and a couple of plants in front of it, but I'm going plant behind it also and add some containers in front, including a vine, and create a butterfly garden. I moved the stones out a little bit to make room.

Continuing the good news -- the Mars grape vine my husband chose is doing very well and appears to be covered in bunches of grapes! 

And now for the project that is giving me sleepless nights -- the shady area on the north side of the house, by the patio.

 As you can see, it gets deep shade most of the day (but not all of the day, it does get sun in the late afternoon.) In addition, a lot of the grass died from root rot at the end of last year.  So now it's basically a mass of weeds - very depressing to look out at.

So next on my list of projects is to do something with this area.  On my original plan,  I drew a curved border along the back of the house, but left the details "to be determined."  

I thought vaguely about a mulched area with "low growing plants."  They would have to be low-growing because of one of those challenges I mentioned earlier -- there's a row of sprinkler heads across the back and I don't want to block them by planting shrubs right in front of them. And then there's the choice of plant -- the area is in deep shade most of the day, but in summer, with the sun more or less directly overhead, part of the area would be in blazing sunlight, and it would also get direct sun in the afternoon.

I've been reading up on possibles but really am clueless at this point.  I had considered dwarf lily turf as a ground cover, also known as mondo grass, because I saw an area at Mercer Arboretum like that and thought it looked really nice.  But then I learned that real gardeners frown on mondo grass. 

We may just go ahead and create the mulched border (so I don't have to look at the weeds) and wait for a while before putting anything in it. Or heck, maybe we should haul in some river rock in and dump it there.  

To be honest, the damaged lawn and this shady area have me pretty depressed, even overshadowing the pleasant weekend I had, planting some flowers in the front flowerbed.


If we had money to burn, I'd have a professional come in and give us some ideas, but we don't so we have to figure it out ourselves. 

Or should I say, I have to figure it out myself (with a little help from my friends - that's you!), since my husband is willing to provide the muscle, but admits he doesn't know anything about landscaping or gardening.


Okay, so now it's late and I'm bummed out, let me try and cheer myself up by showing you some bluebonnets we saw last weekend.

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Planning for Color in the Garden

Well it's not really all my fault, but then again, it is.  Other than the pansies and allysum I planted a couple of months ago, we have absolutely no flowers blooming in our garden right now. Tons of things leafing out all over the place, but a total absence of blooms (other than the aforementioned pansies and allysum, which have been blooming, bless their little hearts, all through the winter.)

And seeing other garden bloggers posting photos of the beautiful blooms in their gardens is a little disheartening, but serves only to make me more determined to plan ahead for next year.

My focus with the garden so far has been getting the backbone of the garden planted, planning for winter interest with evergreen shrubs, planting for the birds etc.  Other than a few daylilies and lilium, I haven't even got started with flowers yet.

Still, the garden is new, and we're planning on living here a long time, so if I can just find a smidgeon of patience, in a few years we should hopefully have the garden that I dream of.

I started thinking about blooming seasons and how some plants bloom early, but fade as our summer approaches.  Others are late starters but can take the heat of a Houston summer.  I'm sure that experienced gardeners can roll off the facts:  this plant blooms from early March through May, that one blooms from July through September, etc.  I, on the other hand, don't have that experience and knowledge. I'd have to look everything up and then try and remember it when planning my flower borders.

So I thought about making a chart that would show the information in a graphic format that would make it easy for me to see a) what I currently have and b) where there would be "holes" - times when nothing was blooming. 

Here's the sort of thing I came up with. Just an excel spreadsheet that I can print and keep in my garden journal.

What I'll do is to start with the flowers/flowering shrubs that I have already, and mark their bloom times on the chart. Then I'll easily be able to see, what seasons I need to plan for so I can get planting!

I could do one for the front border, and another for the back border, or the corner garden etc.  I could color it to match the plants so I could get an idea, especially in the planning stages, of what would look good and what would clash.

I can't wait to get started :-)

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

So Here's the Plan...

Over the last few weeks, I've spent a lot of time dreaming about how I want our garden to look. I started scratching around sketching things out on paper, but then, being me, I decided to digitize it in Photoshop :-)

Here's what we have right now. I'm concentrating on the back yard here, so I haven't filled in any detail in the front yard yet.

Figure 1 - What we have now

Our problems include drainage issues and utility boxes that need to be hidden. In addition, I decided, right after my husband laid the stones, that the border that we put in last year is just too shallow to accomodate the plants I want in there.

Another problem is shade. The patio faces north and so only gets sun in the late afternoon. That makes it a wonderful and shady place to sit most of the day, even in the heat of summer, but the lawn along the back of the house has really been struggling.

I think that shade, combined with a downspout that dumps gallons of water in the area every time it rains, are probably the cause of the poor lawn performance.

Figure 2 - The plan for expanding the border

The first thing on the agenda (much to my husband's chagrin) is to expand the border. There's a utility easement containing the telephone and cable lines (electricity comes in overhead)  We have a pretty good idea where the cables are because there is a trench across the yard where the soil has sunk and it lines up neatly with the telephone utility box. However, a reader who read my blog on HoustonGrows.com suggested I call 811 and have the utilities come out a mark their lines, so I did that at the weekend and they should be out this week.

Since we're also dealing with fence-to-fence sod, courtesy of our builder, I discovered the easiest way to create beds and borders was to outline them with whatever material we're using (stone left over from the builder in this case), dig planting holes if we have anything to go in the ground when we're at this stage and then lay down landscape fabric (or sheets of newspaper) and a hefty layer of mulch over the whole thing.

Over time, this kills off the sod underneath and next year we'll be able to dig, add soil amendments and add plantings.

To solve the problem of the area that doesn't get much sun, we're going to put in another border on the back of the house. Again, we'll edge it and cover the sod with landscape fabric and mulch to kill off the grass. Eventually the area can be planted with some low-growing plants and groundcovers that can handle a combination of shade for most of the day with late afternoon sunlight - hostas perhaps. We also want to put a rainbarrel under the downspout that dumps into this area, with an overflow pipe to run any excess water to the shallow swale that is supposed to drain water off the property. we'll be able to get fresh rain water from the barrel to water the plants on the patio.

Figure 3 - Placement of the Rainbarrel and Arbor/Bench

I've added the rainbarrel in the above image, as well as my solution for the utility box eyesore. The builder put in some bushes to hide the boxes, but they're just not doing a great job. I thought we could add a bench and arbor on a small paved area. The bench will hide the boxes from view when we're sitting on the back patio, and when we're sitting on the bench, we'll be facing the other way - problem solved!

This is the sort of thing I have in mind -- photo courtesy of SimplyArbors.com.

The expanded border there will allow us to surround the area with flowers - perennials, annuals, maybe a flowering shrub or two. I can just imagine sittng there watching the butterflies!

Figure 4 - The Final Plan for the Back Garden

So here's the final plan. Please excuse my very vague representations of the actual plants! I'm holding off on making any plant purchases until we have the border ready for them.

I'm hoping that this plan will give us the Green and Serene retreat that we have been looking for. My husband freely admits to being a "Non-Gardener" and has given me full rein to go ahead with the planning process. Although I've noticed recently he's started to roll his eyes when I suddenly jump up from my computer and say "You know what else we could do?"

Hmmm......

Planning for Year Round Interest in the Garden

As I strolled around my garden last week, I realized that, while I do have some bright spots in the garden, there is so much more I can do to create some winter interest in the garden.  And I have a feeling that whatever I do to improve the garden in winter will also benefit the garden in summer.

There's not much I can do right now, of course, about the St. Augustine grass going dormant and creating a yellow blanket on the ground, but in the borders and (future) beds, there's a lot I can do to create some winter interest in the garden.

For example, right now, we have a vast expanse of (dormant) lawn, with a backdrop of beige wall, flanked on either side by bland fence.

Last year, we started work on the garden by creating a border along the back wall with stone left over by our home builder, but shortly after my husband moved what he swears was 27,000 tons of stone into position, I realized it wasn't deep enough to accomodate a multi-level shrubbery as I would like. All I had room for was a single row of (dwarf) bushes -- not exactly the effect I was looking for.

I hesitated to mention this to my husband... but after a few pointed comments he got the hint ;-) 

So at some point this spring, we're going to move the stone further out from the wall which will give me more room to have taller bushes in the back, and shorter plants in the front.

I've already got a few things planted. Among them:

• Vitex - Vitex agnus-castus
• Althea - hibiscus syriacus
• Savannah holly - Ilex x attenuata 'Savannah'
• Purple Fountain Grass - Pennisetum setaceum) 'Rubrum' 
• Hummingbird Bush - Anisacanthus wrightii

Now I'm starting to think about what else can go in there. What I want are plants that will be as pleasant to look at in the winter as they are in the summer.  I especially love evergreens, but as I've been researching tonight, I've come across some that change color in the winter.  Others have berries etc., which of course the birds will enjoy eating as much as I enjoy looking at them.

Anyway, I'm not sure yet, but here are some possibilities for larger evergreen shrubs for the back of the border:

• Yaupon holly - Ilex vomitoria
• Indian Hawthorn - Raphiolepis indica
• Agarita - Mahonia trifofoliata
• Burford Holly - Ilex cornuta burfordii
• Glossy Abelia - Abelia x grandiflora

For the front of the border, I could choose:

• Dwarf burford holly - Ilex cornuta rotunda burfordii (I already have a couple of these, I love them, they are very versatile)
• Dwarf pittosporum - Pittosporum tobira wheeleri
• Barberry - Berberis thunbergii atropurpurea
• Juniper - Juniperus sp.

And then, of course, I want to include flowers (annuals and perennials) to attract butterflies etc.

• Daylily - Hemerocallis spp.
• Purple Coneflower - Echinacea purpurea
• Turk's Cap - Malvaviscus drummondii
• Verbena - Verbena X hybrida
• Zinnia - Zinnia elegans
• Pentas - Pentas lanceolata

So now, as I enter these items on the Wishlist in my Garden Journal I can start some serious planning to get some interest in the garden that will last all the way from spring to winter!

Further information:
Texas A & M - Outstanding Shrubs for Texas
Texas A & M - Top Ten Landscape Perennials