Texas Gardening: What's blooming in your garden now?, 0 by tosaho

tosaho wrote:
silverfluter, thanks for your nice words. My Amaryllis gets no special care and does great. Just hold over the ones from the holiday and plant in your garden in the spring. It will bloom in about a year, at this time of year. By then, it will probably have multiplied and give huge sturdy blooms. I dont' give it any special care other than planting it in the back of the garden near the brick, thinking it would be a microclimate. They also get the irrigation system like all my garden. Mom in Austin area just plants them out in the open, and she has a huge patch of them. I think she occasionally hand waters them but she doesn't do this on a regular basis. She claims they revert back to red over time. Not sure how true this is, if she lost the different color ones and the reds lived... or what. So give it a try. It is amazing how much longer the blooms last outside, and how much stronger and hardier they look when grown outside.

fly_girl, check out the Double KO's at the nursery. They can be given the normal space, unlike the regular KO's.

silverfluter, good idea on the juniper posts, keeping it low maintenance. At our previous house, we had iron arbors over either end of the pool, with Lady Banksia roses growing over. It was lovely and provided shade but not low maintenance. Then the arbor needed painting. A big chore with ladders in the pool, peeling back the roses, etc. I cannot remember how they reached the big peak of the arch. I'll attach a photo of one of the arches.