Lubbock Arboretum Plant Sale 2015

Despite the wind the Lubbock Memorial Arboretum was able to host another successful plant sale. The spring plant sale is their annual fundraiser that helps keep the arboretum, which is run by volunteers, going.

I planned only to buy one plant as a way of showing my support for the place but as usually ended up buying several in addition to 8 packets of flower seeds (they were only 25 cents each) and a practically new cottage garden book. What a deal!

After paying for the plants and tucking them into the car I headed back into the arboretum to explore the grounds. My favorite spot was the wildflower garden with its curving gravel pathways. It was established in 2013 in honor of two of their volunteers. There were several gardens, from the size of a small pocket rock bed to the large wildflower beds, that had been created in honor of someone and plaques were attached to rock formations nearby. I suspect those honored either paid for their gardens or their family did.

Many of the wildflowers have not yet bloomed. I'll have to come back next month and take new photos. I bet this garden is spectacular when in full bloom. 

 I really like the use of rocks, flagstone and gravel throughout the gardens. The Arboretum is definitely a strolling-type garden and several other people were walking around checking out the flowers.

 I hadn't realize how far back the grounds went and was delighted to find several sitting ares with stone benches and pergolas.

This was a grouping of 6 large stone seats with an open circular place in front that seemed made for hosting a small wedding or a small church sermon. The trees surrounding it have not yet filled out with leaves.

 Some of flowers were in bloom already. Pictured here are hardy Gladiolas and Irises. The Winecups next to the Irises haven't yet sent up flower buds but they must be close.

These pink Evening Primroses are doing well in the semi-shade. I've killed it in my own garden the two times I tried growing it. 

The few Poppies that were blooming were gorgeous. I bought some poppy seeds in the sale so fingers crossed I'll have some next year in my garden.

Finally, the irises lovely. I especially liked the black one with gold specks that seemed to shimmer. Took a photo of it but it doesn't show off the glow well so I uploaded this one instead.

Scented Irises

The Iris display this year has been good. Generally 20-25% of the irises bloom while the remainder give me nothing but leaves. Don't know why. Even after dividing and transplanting that ratio seems to hold up.

 

Only 1 Dutch Iris bloomed this year. The other five bulbs probably died due to the prolonged drought.

The surprise has been the reminder that the majority of the tall purple irises blooming are scented. Heavily scented to my delight. They were pass along plants from a colleague who think they might have been "Memphis Belle" irises. 

 This lovely pink iris was another pass along from a different colleague. Unfortunately it's planted underneath what is now a 7 foot tall rose bush and not getting enough sunlight. Guess I'll have to dig it up in the fall and move it.

The other purple iris I have is a smaller one, faintly scented one that grows between 12-15 inches tall. It's not very impressive. The local Garden and Art Center is having their annual plant sale next weekend and I plan to dig up some irises and daylilies to donate to the sale. Particularly the daylilies, which have run amuck everywhere. Since I'm not certain what color the unblooming irises are I'll just have to label them purple since 90 % of the blooming ones over the years have been purple. Don't think the plant sale folks will care since they specifically asked me last year for irises. Plus, maybe I'll get lucky and find a different colored one at the plant sale. Would love to have more pink ones and add yellow ones to the strolling garden.

May 15th Garden Blogger's Bloom Day

It's been a while since I updated the strolling garden blog but now that things are green and starting to bloom I hope to update more regularly. The rain situation is still dire out here in West Texas. Rain is hit and miss here and the Lubbock area has not had even 3 inches since January. Cotton farmers have delayed their plantings in the hopes that May rains would occur but so far we've only mostly had a few sprinkles with little measurable rain. And the temperatures are suppose to hit the high 90s before the end of the week. Not good news. We just need a good, long soaking rain to penetrate the ground.

All is not bad news though. The garden is green, vibrant and blooming this month. It's easy to forget we're in year three of severe drought when wandering around in my back garden. The fence repairman made my day when he described my garden as "zen" as he walked around checking out the plants. And I didn't even prompt him. Blooming abvoe is snapdragons, dianthus, pincushion flower, and and purple salvia. The irises, hollyhocks, shasta daisy, and rose blooms are still to come. The wonderful thing about this whole grouping is that it is all perennial to my garden. Didn't have to plant one thing here this year as it all came back from last year.

Close up of the angel statue and rose bush planted in honor of Basil, my sweet tabby cat who passed away. If you want a very robust, striking plant that will keep multiplying I recommend this white saliva plant. I had three originally and have dug up seedlings to put all over the garden. Great as a background filler plant. It does spread out though, so give it some room.

This pretty, small (not even 2 ft. tall) iris bloomed unexpectedly this past weekend. It's the first time in 5 years it has bloomed since I planted it and I adore the color. Softer colors such as pastels and particularly blue-purples stand up to the intense sunlight and heat of West Texas better it seems. I have probably 100 irises scattered around my small suburban property but only about 20 percent ever bloom each year. I must be planting them too deep, or rather the dirt shifts over the bulbs due to dust storms and watering.

Neepeta Walker's Low is a must for the small garden. Blooms for months, the blue colored flowers are like a soft blue cloud in a flower bed, and the bees love it. I'm afraid of bees, and especially wasps, and yet I want to encourage the bees to come into the garden to pollinate the plants and the fruit trees I've planted this spring.

Been dividing the pincushion plants and spreading them around the garden. Awesome plant and I like how their blue heads bob and sway in the wind, which is something we never seem to lack out on the open plains here. The larkspur has reseeded everywhere in the grass and I've been slowly removing it by hand. Will have to get the lawnmower to finish off the rest otherwise the walking path is hard to navigate. Penny the Pill, my garden cat, loves to romping around in the larkspur stalks but she's very naughty and uses it for camoflauge as she tries to sneak closer to the birds feeding in the center of the garden. She gets rather dismayed when I reveal her location to the birds.

The Zebra Mallow got its first flowers this weekend too. They're only about 2 ft. tall and so much better behaved than their taller cousins the hollyhock, which are reseeding everywhere. Have chopped down the same hollyhock plant underneath the dining room kitchen twice now and will probably have to do it again. It would grow to 8 feet tall and block the window otherwise.

One of three clematis blossoms so far. The vines were doing so well and had climbed up to 4 feet on the Climbing America rosebush when three rounds of late spring freezes, the last one being last week which broke a weather record here, killed most of the buds and leaves. Doubt I'll get much of a clematis display this year.

There's lots more blooming in the strolling garden. I'll post more later. Meanwhile, please check out what's blooming in other gardens for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

The Weekend Plummet

Like clockwork, the temperatures always seem to drop 10-15 degrees as soon as the weekends roll around. We reached 70 twice this week... then come Friday and the temperature drops to the low 50s. No wonder the plants are confused. This sad little Iris put up a stunted flower stalk this week. It shouldn't be blooming until April at the earliest. Hopefully the flower will open and blossom before another cold front freezes it on the stalk.Perhaps the combination of a little blessed rain and a few unusually warm days has encouraged early blooms on the plants. One Pincushion plant has had a 3-5 blossoms on it since December.

Last Saturday we had half a day of drizzly rain and was cloudy all day. So nice! The Sunday before that we had snow all day. So beautiful when you get to stay inside and enjoy it. Not fun when you have to slog to work the next day - though we got to go in late so that the roads cleared. The cats had a great time watching "Bird TV," especially after I sprinkled bird feed around near the windows. They weren't too bothered about the snow as every day is a snow day for the furr butts. I must confess that I too loved watching the birds playing in the snow and hunching down on the tree when the winds got too strong. I'm sure the garden appreciated the moisture as those 3 inches were the most we'd gotten so far.

Looking Back Part I

I ran across some photos of the garden from two years ago and thought it would be fun to do a "Then and Now" post.  This is my fourth year in my new home and the lot is the usual small city size.  Part of the reason I decided to do a strolling garden is that I thought by breaking up the space and making it so that one would have to walk through the bed that yard would feel larger than it actually is. Granted, the poor folks who mow the yard probably look at it, shake their heads and mutter four letter words under their breath every time they visit... usually because I've dug up a new path or bed since the last time the visited. I don't know what I'm going to do when the yard is finally all dug up and planted. I'll probably have to buy a new home then. Course, I'd then have to figure out how I'm going to drag hundreds of bulbs and plants to the new home... hmmm, maybe it would be worth it to stay in the current home for a big longer. But I digress.

The above view is looking south through the west arbor. The garden is two years old (2009) and the beds are small. The Bermuda grass [which I hate incidentally] is looking really nice and green here. Obviously there was a good amount of rain in 2009. One thing I tried to stick with since the start was to have as many perennials and bulbs as possible so that the garden would become more lush over time. I have been able to divide many of the plants over the years and move the freebies around the gardens, front and back.

This is what the back beds looked like in 2009.  The bed is a sideways U shape. The west arbor is in front of this bed and you have to walk around to the back bed. I realized this year that I should have made the path from the arbor straight through to the back bed with one long bed on the side. But I didn't want to dig up all the iris bulbs, salvias, snapdragons and other bulbs to continue the path. I should have planned this better from the start. Oh well, c'est la vie. 

This is the west arbor today. The beds have been expanded, and will be expanded even more along the fence in the years to come. It's slow going as the Bermuda and clay soil is really tough to cut through. The bird bath had to be moved over a bit so that a lawn mower can get through to the cut the  lawn on the pathway. Hence the unsightly dirt square. Ignore the red basket on the left, those are new plants waiting to be planted. If only planting were as fun as buying and reading about plants!

The birdbath is also kind of sad looking. It was a solar one that I bought from QVC two years ago. It worked great for a year, then hail smashed the solar panel. The replacement panel I purchased ran for about two weeks than completely quit. So the birds have had to settle for a plain ole water bowl with a rock to land on. They frequent it heavily, especially since there is little water in the area available. Still, I miss the sound of the bubbling water. I've always been a little worried about having an electric fountain running and there being a fire or short when bad weather occurs and the solar birdbath solved that problem. Maybe someday I can get another moving fountain. Meanwhile, need to find something to cut down the algae or whatever it is growing in the fountain. Yuck!

A look at the curved walkway under the west arbor. Love the little pavers I found at Lowes. They were only $0.39 each and light enough to easily move around. Unfortunately Lowes has been out of these the last two times I've visited. I hope that doesn't mean they stopped carrying the pavers. I still have a lot of pathway to edge. The Climbing America is two years old and doing well. The larkspur came back from last year - yay! - and is just this weekend starting to bloom. I love this plant and have started putting out seed in other places. The white Rose of Sharon behind the rose bush is not doing well this year, though. Boo!

The white salvias sure do put on a show and help light up the space at dusk. I've made a point of adding more white and light colored plants this year to prolong the time I can enjoy the garden. If the wind doesn't get you here in West Texas the extreme heat of the day will. Late evening and early morning are really the best and sometimes only times you can enjoy the garden. I had planted a purple plum tree the second week I was in the house for shade but the neighbor's dog dug under the fence and killed it... and several other plants along with that. Later that summer I bought a corkscrew willow from my school's greenhouse sale with the hopes that it would add some shade. Yeah, the tree [see below] is still not that big. It's really cool and adds nice movement in the wind, but doesn't seem to be growing all that tall. It's a willow, the sucker should have doubled by now, darn it.

Here you can kind of see the back bed, the curved pathway in front of it and the long bed that edges the curved pathway. The daylilies, asiatic and oriental lilies and minature roses are in full swing. The yellow achillea was a little seedling I found growing in the grass near the mother plant and transplanted to this bed. I took a year but it's now blooming and doing well. I love free plants!

This view is from the curved pathway looking north, towards the house. You can see in from this vantage point that the yard really isn't all the deep. The large yellow achillea in the upper left corner is the mother of the seedling plant. All the daylilies are filling out and should start blooming in a month or so. Several of these are pass-along plants from my friend Lyn. Her plants are so vigorous and healthy, better than any I buy from the store it seems. Every gardener should have a friend like that  :}

And in celebration of Easter, here's the bunny that watches over my garden. He's a little rotund and has a good sense of humor. The sunglasses were courtesy of one of the lawn crew, or at least that's who I think put them there. They just appeared one day.

The Wind does not want to go

One of the best comedy skits ever done was Carol Burnett's "The Wind Done Gone" and boy do we here in West Texas sure wish the wind done gone. But she's still lingering around, refusing to budge for long. Today has been a particularly ugly day throughout Texas as the local news just reported that seven counties were battling wildfires. The weather forecast shows winds through most of the upcoming week. We're suppose to finally catch a break on Friday. Ugh, what a waste of days during which I could be gardening.

During those few times in the day when the wind is catching its breath, I'll wander out into the garden to see what's happening. So much is blooming, it's as if a switch was turned on and everything went into overdrive. The irises have started blooming which is unfortunate as the winds are causing the petals to curl into themselves. I managed to peel back some of them to get a few shots. The three below are passlongs from a friend's garden.

We have no idea of their names, if they had any, so I just call them Lyn's Irises. The first one is the shorter of the three and the most hardy. I have dug up the bulbs for these, replanted them in another bed and still they bloomed three weeks later. A VERY hardy iris, to say the least. And prolific too, as I've divided them each year to spread around the front and back beds.

This one always makes me crave grape jelly on toast. 

This one is a little more blue and taller than the two above. I only have a few of this variety but hopefully they'll live long and prosper so I can spread them around the garden beds. Their height, along with the striking sword-shaped leaves add vertical interest to the beds. 

The main wind damage I've noticed is to the largest and most full of the four Climbing Americas. Several stalks have literally had their leaves and buds completely ripped off in large sections. It's sad to think of all the roses I won't be seeing due to this. I had around a 100 blossoms on this huge plant last year. I probably should prune these down to where the leaves are but I so hate to cut the plant down.

Fertilizer Friday - March 25, 2011

Today was a gorgeous, very warm day. The plants are basking in the two weeks we've had of warm weather, despite the still cold mornings and yo-yoing temperature changes of 15-25 degree from day to day. Moving around the garden beds I was surprised to see several things that weren't there two days ago. For example, three irises had buds on them in the back garden and three in the front garden bed. It seems awfully early for the irises to be blooming. I could have sworn them don't start blooming until the end of April.

A new variety of daffodils, my favorite little ones, have finally started blooming too. Aren't they sweet?

The first of the perennial salvias had its first bloom too.

The salvia stalks are popping up all over. Can't wait for the purple blooms to start waving in the wind.

Since the weather was so nice I decided to tackle another garden task - dividing up the congested side bed. There are two beds in the back gardens that seem to do well for growing beds. Plants grow and spread in these two spot more so than any of the other beds and the last two years I've transplanted plants from here to other spots in the garden. Last year I planted two catnip plants in the side bed for my brats. They were thrilled with the fresh mint all summer long. Apparently the catnip was happy too because it's gone wild in the bed and is crowding out the scabiosas, daylilies, salvias, other plants in that small bed.

I finally dug up two-thirds of the catnip and put them into pots to be shared with friends with felines. Don't you just love plants that you can share with others? It's a great deal when you consider that a small container of the stuff costs around $3 each, making one of the long planters below worth probably $15 worth of catnip.

The salvias also had a good time in the bed. Last year I planted 4 salvias in this bed. This one spot had six of them - a momma plant and five babies. I dug several up and placed them around the garden so that they may grow and prosper. Not a bad deal for a $3 plant! Also transplanted four scabiosa plants into other beds too.

I should have taken a picture of the bed before it was all dug up and plants move so you could see how overstuffed it was but the sun was so bright today I wouldn't have been able to get a good shot. It is a hassle not having any shade in the yard. Anyway, everything in the bed below came back from last year.  

Still need to transplant four of the oversized daylilies. They're huge! Can't wait until they bloom so I can see which ones they are. This is the problem with having a cottage-style garden and moving plants around all the time. You forget what's what until it blooms. Notice the large hollyhock in the lower right bottom? Seeds blew across the yard the year before and took root around the edge of the patio. There are four of these growing around the patio edges and I haven't the heart to rip them out. They are so happy there. And who doesn't love a happy plant that showers you with beautiful flowers?

Visit Tootsie Time to see who else is participating in "Fertilizer Friday" and showing off what's blooming in their gardens.

A Little Black Magic

Today was cloudy, cool with a soft but steady wind and, for the most part, quiet outside. A gardener's dream day to work in the yard. I'm suppose to be a "gentle gardener" for the next 8 weeks, per doctor's orders, to help heal an injured shoulder but it's so hard to ignore the call of the green thumb. What started out as only a short expansion to a corner in order to dig up a white salivia that was overgrown and crowding out other plants ended up being a 5 hour dig-o-rama complete with the digging up of several plants to relieve overcrowding. [Oh well, advil and icy hot patches here I come tonight.]

     It's always thrilling to find that plants have grown so well that they now need to be divided and you get a two (or more) for the price of one situation. Gardening is an expensive hobby, despite all the claims that it's a cheap hobby with everything being able to be grown from seed. I can only grow a few select plants from seed. Everything else comes store or nursery bought.

     Speaking of dividing, I have probably 100 bearded iris plants in the front and back gardens. All but 5 of these were gifts from friends. Well, mostly from one friend who had purchased a home with huge iris beds. Once a year she and hubby divide the overgrown beds and I (and others) are luckily on the receiving end. I knew I had two different types of purple irises from her but this past week discovered that wasn't true. There was another purple, a white and a yellow. [More about the yellow irises at a later date.] Anyway, as I was inspecting one bed I discovered a "new" purple iris. It's a deep purple, almost black. Don't know if the iris somehow got cross pollenated or if this one was there in the last two years but didn't bloom until after I had divided the bed this past fall. Sigh. That's one of the pluses to gardening. It's always a surprise what you find blooming the next time you walk along the beds. My only regret is that I should have photographed the bed before I began expanding it so that I could do a "before" and "after" comparison.