geranium – variegatagal

First plant purchases of the season!

I’ve caught the spring fever bug if you’ve sneaked a peek at my Instagram. Temperatures in the North Texas area are in the low 80s for the past week. It was time for my seasonal commute to North Haven Gardens and big box stores around town.

First, off to North Haven Gardens…herbs, colorful annuals and perennials snagged:

I wanted to start some lemongrass from seed, but haven’t found any local retailers selling seed. Calloway’s Nursery in Denton had this one specimen in stock, so I figured I’d pick it up…along with a bag of expanded shale. The kitties like inspecting grassy things.

I need to shop for some catgrass seed!

I finally found some Red Rubin basil seeds at Home Depot. Couldn’t resist picking up lily bulbs and more annual/perennial color. Weekend garden project, here we come!

Scenes from the April Garden

Scenes from the March Garden part 2

The (nearly) everblooming Double Knockout Rose is off to an energetic start this year.

This is the first time since planting that I’ve seen multiple blooms on the Mountain Flame delosperma.

Tiny but mighty pink blooms on this groundcover thyme. (Can’t remember which thyme this is…Elfin? Woolly?)

Betony, salvia and Autumn Lily Azalea:

The bulbs are blooming!

Planter purchases:

End of summer garden inspection

We neglected the front yard beds over the height of summer (June-August) and emerged over the Labor Day weekend to perform some maintenance. I spent a couple of weekends in September cleaning up the beds, trimming back some shrubs, and uprooting the casualties. Some plants obviously did not take too well the stretch of 100+ temperatures in August, most noticeably the young azaleas and our Waterfall Japanese Maple. At first we thought the drip line system to blame, but when we had a contractor come out to inspect our sprinkler system, he recommended that the drip system be run a minimum of 20 minutes–much more than the 5 minute run we had originally programmed. Safe to say that the plants are much happier going into Fall.

The cleanup obviously opened up some gaps in the garden beds to introduce new plantings as well.

Now if I can only muster up the energy to get some spring-flowering bulbs into the ground!

Yard crash progress as of 3/28

It was a back-breaking, sore-all-over labor to work the north-side shade bed and start the task of planting groundcovers and creepers in the stone pathway. But we accomplished a lot over the weekend, including our final tree selections @ Chambersville: a shantung maple and a Viridis japanese maple, both 30 gallon specimens. Due to the wet weather so far, Chambersville won’t be able to deliver our new trees until sometime mid-April.

Before pictures:

After pictures:

We mulled over the idea of adding blue glass to the marble rock river winding down to the path from the gutter. The man also wanted to add a marble rock feature to the front bed, but I’m not as open to the idea.

Plantings in the north bed: Carex Everillo, Hosta Fire and Ice, Astilbe (x5), Lime Marmalade heuchera, Foxtail fern, Cedar Sage, White Star caladiums (x3), White Splash geranium, green oxalis (white-flowered), Hort Couture Glitterati Ice Queen, wild red columbine, Sugar Plum heuchera, Japanese painted fern, Hort Couture Plum Crazy oxalis, Contessa Burgundy geranium, black mondo grass.

Plantings in the north path: Platt’s Black brass buttons, scotch moss, irish moss, variegated oregano, roman chamomile, Grace Ward lithiodora, Archer’s gold lemon thyme.