Coming Attractions!

 Looking around the garden this week, I was happy to see lots of new growth along with the promise of flowers and berries to come.

The vitex tree, now about 10 feet tall, is covered in buds and will soon be covered in aromatic, purple blooms which the bees and hummingbirds adore!

My husband's grape vine, finally now with a sturdy support structure, is rewarding us with bunches of buds and the promise of bunches of tasty grapes to come. Hopefully this year, we'll get to taste some of them and the whole bush won't get stripped overnight like it did last year.

In containers and in the border in the front garden, the garden mums are covered in buds and some are even starting to bloom.  Throughout the year, I will trim these back as necessary to encourage fresh blooms all the way up into fall.

The hydrangea that was passed along to me by fellow Houston garden blogger Ursula last year seems to like its spot in the light shade of the patio and has put out several clusters of buds this spring.

In the front border, the Lantana "White Gold" is also covered in buds.  I like "White Gold" as well as "New Gold" lantanas because they are smaller, mounding varieties and I don't have to hack them back like I've had to do with other varieties. They also don't form berries, so they continue flowering without needing to be dead headed.

I put these bulbs in a pot last year and promptly forgot about them.  They didn't even come up last year, but earlier this spring, several sturdy stalks came up and now they are about to bloom.  I can't wait to see what they look like!

Finally, I had to show off more of the Gaillardia "Fanfare" that I first showed a couple of weeks ago.  This has been putting out a continuous show of 3 inch blooms -- I'm sure it didn't do that last year.


I must be doing something right!


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

The Urge to Plant Something

This past weekend I, and seemingly most Tomball area residents, headed to Lowe's Garden Center as "spring fever" hit and the urge to plant something took over.


I was feeling a bit guilty really, having just had a week of "stay-cation" which would have been perfect for a garden project, but during which I didn't do much of anything but relax. However, it was a wonderful Texas spring weekend, with temperatures in the low to mid 80's, so I couldn't wait to get out there and plant something.  

I think my enthusiasm must have been contagious because my husband joined me and spent the afternoon pulling thistles out of the lawn while I planted in the flower bed.  

(Yes, I *do* realize I have a husband in a million, and No, he's not for rent!)


I concentrated my efforts on the bed outside the dining room window where the daffodils are winding down. I kept it simple and planted a Heuchera hybrid,  Coral Bells "Midnight Rose" and a couple of Iberis sempiverens, Candytuft "Snowflake", along with a six pack of Senecio cineraria, Dusty Miller.

Here's another view of the same bed -- this is as you walk into the back garden from the front gate .

The other project that was accomplished  (a joint effort in that I offered advice and my husband did the heavy labor, i.e. digging the post holes) was this support for the Mars grapevine.

 

Last year we had this vine propped up with some plastic trellis, but it wasn't up to the task and the whole lot collapsed. Not only that, but even though at one point the vine was covered in little grapes, every last one of them disappeared the same night the trellis collapsed.  

We're thinking the local raccoons had a grape party.

We hope this support will a) hold up the vine and b) allow us to utilize some sort of netting or other deterrant to keep the raccoons away from the grapes.  Any suggestions will be gratefully received.

  

In the previous photo, you can see how close we were to the birdhouse that has the nesting Carolina Chickadee, as my husband was digging and I was "heeling in" the posts.  That was when we met the occupant, who sat on the Vitex and scolded us for bouncing her house around.

Here's another shot of the birdhouse - the Vitex is really starting to leaf out compared to the photo of the bird house I showed you last week.

To end my post tonight, I thought I would share a photo of flowers in the front garden.  Another of the Gaillardia "Fanfare" is blooming, and there's also a lot of Verbena blooming.  The problem is, I have been all through my garden journal for last year and find I completely omitted to make a note of what variety it is!

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