SPRING IN THE SUNKEN GARDEN

 The area between the house and the pool was a blank canvas and perfect to create a sunken garden. The inspiration was partly inspired by the many sunken gardens I have visited in England, my grandfather's garden where I spent my teenage years and the sunken courtyard at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Many of the rocks dug up during the building of the house were saved in order to create a foundation wall around the sunken area. The floor is Arizona sandstone over decomposed granite. I'm sure the builder was happy not to have to cart those rocks away. Nature has done much of the planting and I am happy for that although it does create considerable work keeping it under control. But, both David and I delight in all the blooms that appear-as if from nowhere. The scene changes from week to week and from year to year. Spring is the most floriferous time.

The only step down is along the front and even here it requires some agility as a Gulf Coast penstemon, Penstemon tennuis, has seeded right in the middle of the two stones. How could I possibly pull it when it was so happy there. I love this penstemon but it is prone to root aphids, placed there by ants who farm its honeydew. They are not easy to control and will kill the plant.

A few plants have been with me since the beginning and one is the chocolate daisy, Berlandiera lyrata, 

Compact in the early weeks it does eventually become rather rangy. It has only seeded in one other place and I suspect this is because I usually cut it back part way through the season and the new seed heads may not have time to mature. 

Mullein, may be considered a weed by many but I love its beautiful form over the winter before sending up a tall flower spike with yellow flowers. It is also a favorite of the bees. Many may seed but only a few will be chosen. This was a lucky one on the lower level.

In early spring bluebonnets can really take over and I'm afraid this year I have let rather too many and some of the plants growing beneath have suffered. A single bluebonnet plant can spread to cover 3' and is better suited to a meadow setting.
 

 

Hinckley's yellow columbine. Here there and everywhere as usual.

 It is always interesting to watch how plants grow and move. A large cluster of bee balm was gradually evicted by this yellow iris, so that now there are only a few plants left. Time for the iris to be divided and passed along nd maybe the bee balm will move back in.

 I always let the corn poppies grow wherever they wish. Easy to pull out and something will always take their place later.

One of my favorite views is standing in the sunken garden and looking up to the Sun and Moon Archway. A mix of columbine, larkspur and poppies.
 

The gopher plant, Euphorbia rigida, has flowered and gone to seed. Some of the longer leaves have been removed to leave a small cluster of seed heads for seed saving. Nigella hides the leaves of the faded daffodils above the  mealy blue sage and larkspur.
 

Late April and the wine cups begin to bloom and spread, and spread and spread! Frequent trims will keep them in order. 

There will be a few plants missing this year and they will be missed. Two beautiful Pride of Barbados were lost to the freeze. The seed had appeared from nowhere and we had several years of their summer blooms. There is however, a very small one growing between two of the ledgestones and possibly in a more favorable place. 

 

It's time to get out there and remove some of the more boisterous residents in the sunken garden.

THE BEES AND I

 The bees and I had a lot in common today. We were both out hunting for flowers. Looking for what had made it though the freeze.

 Gopher plant

Flowers have been few and far between since the freeze. The first blooms to appear were those of the muscari and the bees were very adept at finding them hidden among their strappy foliage. The lemon trees are full of flowers but few have yet opened. It doesn't seem to deter the bees from flying around and even trying to poke their proboscis in the half-opened buds. 

No surprise to see a Juniper Hairstreak, Callophrys grynius, getting in on the action too.

 

 

 And there were lots of little pollinators on the gopher plant, Euphorbia rigida. Much as I love this plant, and the bees do too, it is more of a love/hate relationship for me. Loved when in flower and sending out the newly formed shoots, but at other times of the year disliked as it sprawls across the garden with many dead leaves.  It does not seem to do well in our hot and humid summers. In fact last year I said it would probably be their last year. And this year they look even worse because the freeze did not spare them. But of course I am already relenting because, despite their ugliness, the bees adore them and those new shoots look very attractive. I cut off many of the damaged stems because they were unattractive and were not going to flower.

 Fortunately the ipheon. Ipheion uniflorum, were still below ground and have just started blooming. Two shades of blue. I have never seen bees on them so maybe more for my enjoyment than theirs.

And the first of the bluebonnets. Loved as much by the bees as all Texans.

After several warm days the garden is truly coming to life and the first species tulips opened today. And there are several later blooming daffodils showing buds

 Crow Poison, Nothoscordum bivalve! I remember being quite excited about this clump of flowers showing up many years ago. It looked like the perfect rock-garden plant. Now I am careful to remove the heads once they finish flowering but it is too little too late. They are everywhere and impossible to remove as their bulbs go deep beneath the soil. But they do have pretty little flowers. If only it would clump.

But it isn't just flowers that I am searching for on my many walks around the garden. I am also looking for signs of life on some of the larger shrubby plants and those that have gone dormant beneath the soil. I was excited to see that, over the last few days, with warm temperatures, the hybrid musk rose Felicia rose was sending out new shoots  from the base. It really needed a good pruning so I took out my big Fiskars pruners( a raffle prize I won at the Austin Garden Bloggers' Fling) and cut the rose down to the ground. Maybe this time I can do a better job of guiding it onto the pillar. I love this rose for its clusters of pale-pink, fragrant blooms and its habit of blooming several times through the year. 

I also see shoots emerging from the ground on my five Clematis, 2 natives and 3 hybrids. And possibly a couple of seedling Clematis versicolor. A few leaves have appeared on the Philadelphus but nothibng so far on the Philippine violet.

Things are definitely beginning to look up and with the first day of spring just a week away I have new hope for this year's garden. 

LESS THAN 6 WEEKS TO GO

I was looking back through my photographs from last year to see when I can expect the Gopher plant, Euphorbia rigida,  to start flowering. Or at least looking better than it does now. These photos where taken the middle of February last year, just as they were coming into flower.

But the main reason I was looking back was because I am looking at my plants now and wondering if their life-span has come to an end. They are looking pretty wretched, long and lanky with masses of missing leaves along the length of the stem. Of course that always happens whether from drought in summer or excessive rain at other times. They certainly got a dose of both this year.
 In my opinion this plant has two good seasons. The season when it flowers and the season when the new leaves have reached about 12". Then they take off, snaking across the garden. The two good seasons follow each other.  First the flowers on the old stems and almost immediately the new growth.  If you don't want to collect the seeds after flowering then the stem can be cut back to tidy the plant.

If you are growing this plant for the first time don't be tempted to cut off those lanky stems because if you do you will be cutting off this year's flowers. There may be one or two stems that clearly are not productive but hold fast on the rest.

So what do mine look like now?

Long, lanky, twisted and scarred from a Texas year.

The stems are badly scarred and there are stumps from last years old stems which were not cut off down to the crown. Those can be tidied up by either pulling them or snipping at the base. That's all the new growth at the base and will plump up over the next month, growing longer over the summer until they flower next February.

I am asking myself if I can live with this mess. For the time being I will give the plant the benefit of the doubt and see how it performs this spring. Then it may be a case of starting over again or planting something less untidy for much of the year. We shall see.

LONG LASTING SRING BLOOMER

Gopher plant, Euphorbia rigida, is one of my favorite early spring bloomers. I don't know why it is called gopher plant unless it is because gophers don't eat it... nor do the deer. That would make sense because the milky sap produced by all euphorbias is not only poisonous but can be extremely irritating to the skin of some people. Care should be taken to wear gloves when cutting the stems.

It is a mystery to me why it was given the species name 'rigida' because it is anything but rigid, the stems trailing along the ground like the tentacles of an octopus. It needs  plenty of room to complete its annual growing cycle.

The foliage is a delightful blue green and when the bracts on the tips of the branches begin to turn chartreuse in the early spring they light up the garden.

That change in color is a sign that the plant is about to flower, although you will have to get down close to view the flowers as, like many euphorbias, they are quite discreet. This morning the plants were buzzing with the sound of bees.

I have them growing above my sunken garden where they can trail over the edge but they look just a well where they are allowed to soften the edge of pathways or patios. They also would dress up a large expanse of mulch or decomposed granite. The bonus is that they are drought, heat and cold tolerant but do require good drainage for best performance.

When the flowers fade you can either cut them back living next years new growth or leave them to set seed. They reseed easily.
At the base of the plant is the new growth which will elongate over the summer in preparation for next year's flowering. Strangely this year it looks as though the new leaves at the crown are also going to flower. That may be due to our late fall and seemingly short winter. I hope the plant has enough umph to make new leaves for next year. During hot, dry weather the stems may lose leaves and become bare but it does nothing to detract from the magic of their long-lasting spring show.

I bought one plant originally and the rest are from seed.

IT FEELS LIKE A RESTORATION PROJECT

I have worked all this past week on the sunken garden. Unfortunately the heat and humidity mean only a 3 hour slot in the early morning and two of those hours in the full sun. There is still much more to be done.

I'm afraid I am one of those gardeners who has great difficulty removing plants. It is even difficult for me to remove a plant that is not performing well as I will always give it one last chance. I pulled most of the blanket flowers just leaving one or two that look as though they will make it to fall. I hate to pull them all because the American goldfinches love their seeds.

With some semblance of order on the lower level, I turned to the surrounds. A few years ago a Pride of Barbados, Caesalpinia pulcherrima, seeded in front of the pool. It dies back to the ground in winter, and is slow to return,  so it never becomes hugely overgrown. It is a good companion for the iris. I don't think there are many plants that shout 'Summer' quite as loudly as this.

Last year I saved some seeds and finding them among my seed store just 10 days ago, I soaked them in water and those that swelled I planted in seed compost. They are now an inch tall. I will hold them over the winter and plant in the from next year.

Along the low wall there was a tangle of Russian sage, Perovskia atriplicifolia, mixed in with Ruellia and errant strands of fig ivy, Ficus repens It feels liberating to have removed the lot. All that remain is the gopher plant with some underlying pink skullcap. In the fall I plan to add some santolina to be backed by columbines.

Working further along I reached the squid agave, Agave bracteosa. Judging by the fact that I removed over 50 pups it has been quite a long time since I did a clean out.

I saved the best. What on earth am I going to do with them all? I potted up a few and planted about 6 outside in the areas where we cleared yaupons this year.

And as I promised myself this past spring I removed all the muscari bulbs growing along the edge. I was tired of their scrappy foliage and few blooms. After pulling out the bulbs I begin to see why they didn't perform. They were all too small to be a success. Probably due to poor dry soil which I plan to amend. Many of my bulbs we3re blind this year and this points to poor care on my part.
I'm taking back my rocks. No more ruellia, mealyblue sage, pink crystal grasses growing in the holes.      And I really mean to keep to this.

THE GREENING OF THE SUNKEN GARDEN

David commented on a marked change in the sunken garden following rain and warm temperatures. If I don't get around to doing some culling we won't even know the sunken garden is there. But what would I do without all my little self seeders.

The blackfoot daisies,  Melampodium leucanthum, and the dahlberg daisies, Thymophylla tenuiloba.

The Indian blanket flowers, Gaillardia pulchella,   and the sedum, Sedum potosinum.

the gopher plant, Euphorbia rigida. I didn't really want it down below in the sunken area but here it will stay.

The blue eyed grass, Sisyrinchium angustifolium.

The chocolate daisy, Berlandiera lyrata. This one has been here for years enjoying a cool root run under the sandstone pavers.

The California poppies. I am so glad this white one is back again this year. Eschscholzia californica.

But there are plenty of orange ones too.

And the first of the corn poppies, Papaver rhoeas.

There are a few seeders who can be a little annoying. The false garlic, Nothoscordum bivalve, with the white flowers and yellow centers and wild onion, Allium canadense, with pale purple flowers. Both are pretty but are the devil at seeding themselves and once the bulb forms they are not so easy to root out as the bulb works its way deep into the soil. This year I struck a deal with them. They can flower but they can't set seed!

We may not be able to grow those lovely pom-pom alliums but we have our own and I love the flowers.

Nothoscordum bivalve

Allium canadense

They make a pretty addition to a rock garden. All these plants seed freely in the sunken area of the garden. Because the specs between the pavers are less than 1" it would be difficult to plant without self sowing plants.