THE MOST POPULAR PLANT IN MY GARDEN

This pretty little native flower with the charming name Barbara's buttons, Marshallia caespitosa,  has become a springtime favorite with pollinators in my garden. I doubt their is a plant anywhere that attracts as many diverse pollinators as this flower. 

No one seems to know who Barbara was but the plant itself is named for the the botanist Moses Marshall. The grassy, compact rosette of leaves appear over the winter sending up bloom stalks around April. Through the summer the perennial plant dies back below the ground. It has naturalized very well in my front courtyard and is now ready to be moved to other places.

The flowers have a wonderful fragrance. Is it this that attracts all manner of flying insects? I counted no less than 12 insects on the flowers one afternoon and many of them are new to me.

 

 There must be something really good in there to attract so many.

My original plants came from the LBJ Wildflower Center but since then I have both transplanted and scattered seeds in my front courtyard to increase their numbers.

HOW TO DO IT WITH WILDFLOWERS

The front courtyard garden is blooming with Texas native wildflowers and has entered its most floriferous season. Using short season wildflowers in the landscape requires some structural specimens as well as hardscape. We are fortunate to have some great agaves that do the job well.

Under the whales tongue agave, A. ovatifolia, the once blooming flowers of Tulipa hummilis, have been replaced by flowering purple skullcap, Scutellaria wrightii, and yellow blooming square bud primrose, Calylophus berlandieri. The skull caps will bloom all summer if given a trim back after flowering.

And on the other side beyond the Mexican feather grass is the damianita, Chrysactinia mexicana with its aromatic, fine-leaved shrubby foliage.

Of course the bluebonnets, Lupinus texensis, being an annual will soon be gone but the accompanying blackfoot daisies, Melampodium leucanthum, will bloom all summer and will be at their best in the fall.

Blackfoot daisy

The claret cup cactus flower, Echinocereus triglochidiatus, is one of my favorite. The flower is longer lasting than many cactus flowers.

In a shady corner, and there aren't many in this garden, baby blue eyes, Nemophila phaceliodes.

A few seeds gathered from some flowers on an unbuilt lot and I now have several clumps of Barbara's buttons, Marshallia caespitosa. They are perennial but when summer comes the foliage dies back only to appear again in late winter.

Lyre leaf sage, Salvia lyrata, pops up all over the garden and would make a great ground cover with its attractively pattered leaves.

One of my favorite places to sit in the garden is in the breezeway between the garage and house There I can enjoy the view of this part of the garden with flowers and bubbling water feature. Yesterday I watched the wrens flying back and forward building a nest in-between the pots on the top shelf of the cactus theater.

Such messy builders but such fun to watch.

I hope you are enjoying spring in your garden wherever you are.

YOUR GARDEN STYLE

I have met people who never look back. Maybe it is a function of age but I think mine was triggered by a box of photographs I inherited and by a sudden interest in genealogy. And, as a life-long gardener, I began to realize my younger self might have influenced my style of gardening.

From a very young age I loved wildflowers. You see me here with a bunch of straw at hay making time. At a similar age, on holiday in Devon, I wanted to pick the big white bindweed flowers growing along hedgerow. My father chastised me telling me I must leave them for others to enjoy! Bindweed? I ask you !! And there was the time my parents thought of taking over the lease on a pub in the countryside and I was thrilled to bits because the bank alongside the pub was full of primroses. It never happened... but I know I would have been thoroughly happy living where I could walk the country lanes. Making daisy chains, searching for four leaf clovers, marveling at the tiny flowers of scarlet pimpernel, the cowslips, buttercups, sucking the honey from the purple clover flowers, celandines and marsh marigolds growing in the brook and the seed heads of shepherd's purse. I have plenty of that on my septic field right now.  It was always about the native flowers growing around me.

Fast forward to arriving in Texas in early February1968, just in time for the wildflower season. This time no one telling me not to pick the flowers!

And I am still that lover of wild flowers today and it is reflected in my gardening style. It is a free-for-all cottage garden style.

The sunken garden May 2019

It's why I love the little puffball flowers of Barbara's buttons, Marshallia caespitosa.

April 2019

 The common corn poppy, Papaver rhoeas,  flowering in profusion.

Sunken graden 2019

 And weedy Love-in-a-Mist, Nigella sp.

And a summer flower of the English hedge row. Foxglove Digitalis purpurea,. I have tried growing them from seed with only modest success so I now buy them in 4" pots,early in the year, potting up as they grow larger until I can finally move them into their larger pots. I think they are going to bloom earlier this year as I see a flower spike starting. What color will they be? I have no idea although they say you can tell by looking at the underside of the leaf. If that is the case they will be all white.

February 2020

Front courtyard April 2019

And the delicate blooms of Blue Gilia Gilia rigidula

March 2019

And of course our state flower the Texas bluebonnet.

And it can all become a little unruly after a while and that is why this year some changes are in order.

Herb garden May 2019

 I must endeavor to keep the pathways clear of all but the smallest and tidiest of plants. And that means alyssum, narrow leaf zinnias and possibly the daisy fleabane. Possibly the odd tidy grass and if there is space enough to walk by, the Verbena bonariensis. And I might just allow a few coreopsis and blanket flowers. This is not going to be easy.
For the moment I am excited to look at photographs from last year's spring and to know what is soon to come.