WHAT’S NEW IN THE GARDEN.

 What's been going on in the garden. That is what I was thinking when we returned from another 3 week trip. My eyes eagerly scanned the front bed as we pulled up the driveway. It looked as though monsoon rains had been kind. The damianita, Blackfoot daisy and skullcaps were flowering. And no damage from javelina due to having left the dog fencing across the driveway. ( No letter from the HOA as yet)

Damianita Chrysactinia mexicana.

Blackfoot daisy, Melampodium leucanthum

Arizona Purple skullcap,Scutellaia potosina. with damianita

And then my eye caught a newcomer. What was this? My first thought was Arizona poppy, Kallstroemia grandiflora. A plant I had heard about but had never come across. A search for Arizona poppy confirmed this. Where had it come from? Maybe turned over  from deep in the soil when David had run a new sprinkler line. It is a rather rangy plant and would suit an open desert setting better than the narrow place in which it has inserted itself. Despite being called a poppy it is not in the poppy family but can mimic the look of the spring flowering California poppy. It may take several years to germinate because of a hard seed coat and usually springs up after monsoon rain. It is right on cue. 

Arizona poppy,  Kallstroemia grandiflora

 

And along the driveway the tree I love in summer but despair of all through the winter and early part of the year. All is forgiven! Those gorgeous white blooms on the Texas Olive, Cordia boissieri

One thing I try to do is to remove the fruits before they fall to the ground where they germinate. This year there are so many I will have to do a little weeding. I am now familiar with the first leaves which are nothing like the secondary leaves. 

 Along the side of the house the smaller leaved olive, Cordia parvifolia. The cordia are the desert blooms of the monsoon season. 

The first planted pomegranate tree has, this year, 6 pomegranates, the largest of which I have protected inside a bag. The others are quite small. As yet they are unblemished and I have no idea if they are ripe. I remember the same with my fabulous pomegranate tree in Austin but it was easy to sacrifice one each week to check for ripeness, there were so many.  It was usually later in the year. 

And the bougainvillea just coming into flower after the rain and moderation in temperature. 

So far so good. Then I noticed my prize prickly pear cactus had the starts of a cochineal infestation. From just a couple of pads this had grown quickly.

A little work with the toothbrush and the pads are as good as new. 

The back and sides of the house receive more visits from desert wildlife and they had been busy. One small agave eaten down to a nub. A spineless prickly pear just about annihilated. The pereskia had lost its drip line along with all its leaves. I'm not sure it will make a comeback. Death by rat and drought.

There were holes dug in the ground-the grub hunters were on the prowl. My neighbor has raccoons playing on her roof at night and using a corner of the roof as a toilet. They have professionals trying to trap them. Their wildlife camera spotted a skunk passing through last night. Another grub hunter. Was it the skunk that had ripped out two plants in order to root for grubs? But the worst of all happened last night when leaf cutter ants removed every single leaf from a Tecoma plant. It appears as though they had more cutters than gatherers and choppers, with hundreds of cut leaves beneath the plant and chopped pieces left along the pathway. This all done under cover of darkness. I could follow the trail of the few stragglers heading for home. It crossed my garden and up the wall into next door's garden. From there they crossed and climbed up and over the back wall of the property and down into the desert where the vegetation is too thick to track them to their nest. It is the most devastating thing to have happened yet and it makes me feel the closest I have ever felt to giving up gardening. "Get over it" say Tucson gardeners, who have had similar visits and  hope the plant makes a recovery. We are due to leave again next week for the last camping trip of the year so I imagine in a month's time I will be doing the same inspection. 

MY DESERT GARDEN COMES TO LIFE

Spring is a wonderful time for all gardeners but particularly so for desert gardeners. It is the season of spectacular bloom brought on by winter rains. I have taken advantage of that by adding many blooming plants to my garden to complement the cactus and succulents. Some are perennial and some are annuals like this scarlet flax Linum grandiflorum rubrum. Annuals like to seed themselves along the edge of the paths where they driven by rain. Not always the best place.

Flax are dotted all over the front garden among rocks and cactus. I have always favored growing from seed and finally had success with damianita, Chrysactinia mexicana. This one I grew from seed planted 2 years ago. If I'm not careful it will be crowded out by these penstemon seedlings and a desert marigold. Despite the enormous numbers of seed they produce I have only ever found one growing naturally in my garden. No doubt the fault of the hungry quail who frequent the garden.

Damianita, blackfoot daisy and skullcaps are perfect low-growing perennials for the desert rock garden although not easy to come by. I did manage to find 2 purple skullcaps but unless they are in bloom they are sometimes miss-labeled and turn out to be the more common pink variety. Despite the many flowers and seeds produced it is very difficult to get these three to self-seed.

I'm trying to maintain a good balance of flowers and succulents for the quieter time of year when the cactus are center stage.

The damianita will  need to be sheared back soon so they can bloom again when and if the monsoon rains come. 

 

Just coming into bloom is the chocolate daisy, Berlandiera lyrata. I bought one plant 2 years ago and have been able to grow several more plants from seed over the winter. It has always performed well throughout the year opening new flowers every day. It is a morning bloomer, closing its petals by noon. It's chocolaty fragrance cannot be missed when walking around the garden. 

 This is one of three hedgehog cactus, Echinocereus triglochidiatus, I inherited,  which has bloomed successfully each year.  Their location is not ideal as they receive sun only in the later parts of the day. A place in a more open spot would probably result in a more spectacular bloom. I have allowed this native cudweed to remain. I love its silvery soft leaves which are the closest we would get to growing lambs ears in the desert. Some call it pearly everlasting as the flowers do well when cut and dried. 

My desert marigold,  Baileya multiradiata, has become so successful that it threatens to overgrow the driveway. I think it must be getting too much water. It reseeds quite readily where the layers of rock are not too deep or too large.

Spring is a very yellow time of year in the desert and I think I may just have a little too much of it. Between the brittle bush, damianita and the desert marigold I need to find a happier balance. Brittle bush is a wonderful desert plant which also reseeds heavily. I think it is underused as a native plant filling the roadsides with its yellow and dusky sage colored leaves. 

 

Seeds of blanket flowers grown from seed last year have been immensely successful. They are acting as though they are perennial. Last year they bloomed all summer long. You couldn't ask more of a plant in this desert climate.

 And there are frequent pop-ups in the spring of native wildflowers like the verbenas.

                                                         Verbena gooddingii

                                                              Moss verbena, Verbena tenuisecta

 The mix of colorful annual, perennials, cactus and succulents is a joy to behold on my early morning stroll around the garden. And it is always early.  Spring and summer in the Sonoran desert is a time to get up early to enjoy the cool mornings. The sun rises early and we must make the most of the best part of the day. Now we are in our dry summer with no rains expected until the monsoons arrive in July. Fingers crossed we will get good rains this summer.

HOME FROM THE HILLS

After 6 weeks away you can imagine I was a little nervous about how my garden would look. The summer monsoon had not materialized and temperatures had been unseasonably hot. Tales from the DBG in Phoenix told us of the saguaro suffocating in the unusually high night-time temperatures. We are a little higher in Oro Valley (3000') which makes us cooler by about 8° More than my fingers were crossed when we pulled into the driveway. But I had to wait until morning because it was already dark too late to walk around. We had arrived home to a strong thunderstorm and temperatures in the 70s so next morning I was delighted to find the front garden looking very good.

The bougainvillea on the front walkway had a few blooms. Just enough to brighten the wall. 

 It looks as though a bird has been busy making a nest. For now it is just a platform of twigs and may even have been abandoned. Possibly a thrasher or cactus wren. Our comings and goings may be too much for it.

 

The chocolate daisy, Berlandiera lyrata, opens up with new flowers every morning, so I was happy to see it was still putting on a show. It is getting a little lanky and could do with a prune but is now the right time? Like most I am not happy to cut off a good bloom.

And the blanket flower, Gaillardia pulchella, still going strong. It was blooming when we left six weeks ago.

Other native plants likes the skullcap, Scutellaria potosina ssp platyphylla add a splash of purple in front of the young Whale's tongue agave, Agave ovatifolia. Despite all the structural plants I am not happy to do without a little color.

Along with the bright white of the blackfoot daisy, Melampodium leucanthum. 

So many of these plants are a reminder of my Austin garden, although there the barrel cactus were in pots. I regret now that I didn't bring the larger ones. I think I could have pulled them out of their pots and brought them bare root.

There are only a few large agave remaining. This one is on the corner beneath the palo verde. But wherever we took out the Agave weberi new pups are springing up. I am potting some of them up to plant out behind the house. There is good value to be had out of these large structural agave and I find I miss them. For the first time ever I have started to protect them from the weevil by using the systemic Imidacloprid around the base.

 Another very spiny agave guards the edge of the driveway and is forever in risk of being run over. It is a slow grower but it puzzles me why they would have planted it so close to the edge. It has produced only one pup which I relocated.

I am really quite fond of the brittle bush, Encelia farinosa, which blooms in the spring with masses of yellow flowers. It reseeds around the garden and I leave some of them to grow into small bushes.

One of the plants I was most concerned about was the Meyer lemon tree. It had lived in a large pot for 12 years, providing us with tens of lemons every year. We brought it with us and last year planted it in the ground. It looked good during the winter and produced many blooms but it wasn't happy and by May almost all its leaves had turned yellow and dropped off. I full expected it to be dead and was already planning to put in a new one this winter. Amazingly extra watering and some summer showers had brought it back to life and there is new growth.I will always give any sign of life in a plant a chance so it remains to be seen whether I will be replacing this after all.

Also down the side of the house the grapefruit tree is looking great and the 6 grapefruit are getting bigger. They have about 4-5 months to grow to full size and ripen.

It is my potted plants that suffered the most and many died. The lime tree had fallen over along with the plumerias. I must try to get the lime in the ground although the Mexican lime is one of the least hardy of the citrus. I may just have to give up in the plumeria. A large jade plant had completely rotted away. I don't know if it was the heat or lack of water but there was no9thing left of it. Of my herb and vegetable raised planters only the basil, sage, chive and peppers survived. David had put in a new water line to water them from beneath but I think they were getting too much water being on every day. This was really due to there being mixed water need plants on the same circuit. There is a lesson to be learnt here, although I think I have had the same lesson many times before. A constant presence in the garden is the only answer.

 Another storm blew through and was the trigger for all the Mammillaria grahamii to bloom. They have certainly put on a big show-a show always worth waiting for. 

One of the benefits of living in an arboreal desert.

DON’T BE SO TIDY IN THE GARDEN

"Don't be too tidy in the garden" I have heard these words spoken many times before by well known gardeners and horticulturalists. It gives me an excuse to be the gardener that I am. Someone who loves the cottage garden look and can never pull a plant out until it just screams to be gone. Even when a plant no longer looks at its best it may still provide a meal for something. 

These are the spent flowers of Verbena bonariensis. They have been blooming for weeks and a few tiny flowers still remain even through the plant has gone to seed.

Those tiny seeds, and they are almost microscopic, are the reason I am leaving the plant a while longer. Every evening we enjoy the antics of the American goldfinches as they swing and do their acrobatic tricks on the stems of the plants. Many of the long stems are bent double and nearly touching the ground but the finches are so light and agile that they manage to stay balanced on the stem as they pick off the seeds. 

Easier to manage are the seeds on the blanket flowers, Gaillardia pulchella, which are more than happy to grow anywhere they can find a foothold. 

Not looking their best after days of 100° but the finches are not interested in looks. They are interested in the ripe seed heads. Many of them are just picked clean. Fortunately for me they are somewhat untidy and leave plenty off seeds scattered around which will serve for next years crop of flowers. 

That common mullein wouldn't win any prizes. 

The soft fuzzy leaves that always looked so perfect earlier in the year are crispy brown at the bottom. Every evening the stalk is nothing but a brown stick. But every morning a few new flowers open and there is always a bee having its breakfast. Seeing those flower buds on the left makes me realize that it will be quite a few days before I can pull the plant out. 

Those same solitary bees are also busy on the purple skullcap, Scutellaria wrightii and the snapdragon vine, Maurandella antirrhiniflora.

 

The first time I saw this vine was in Pam Penick's old garden. It was climbing up the pole of a beautiful Dovecote. It was quite large flowered which might have been due to better sil conditions or being a cultivar. Either way my native one is a small flowered scrambling, rather unattractive vine which has scrambled up to almost take over the Carolina jessamine. But the bees are on there every evening so I feel reluctant to remove it. 

Lizards scurry around in the leaf litter and the Carolina wren is often rooting around in there too. Clearly here are some tasty morsels hiding in there. There will be plenty of time in late fall for doing a big tidy.

How about you. Are you a tidy gardener. 

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.