Texas Gardening: Gardening with Texas Native Plants & Wildflowers, part 11., 1 by dmj1218

dmj1218 wrote:
Sunday is a great time for reflection; and although the temperature is still very hot, the days are definitely growing shorter in length. I decided to post this over here since I figured it probably would not be of great interest to most of the folks on the Tx forum. This guy, who is my favorite Texas Gardening site because he is a professional photographer, has posted two pictures of a beautiful desert willow cultivar "Brandy' on his site. Another plant I've got to have now.
http://www.soulofthegarden.com/dailymuse0806.html

Now this page of his site has some more beautiful pics, although no desert willows (there is a cool snow on his Austin garden shot and bluebonnets in spring); but if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, right above the orange rose. There is a comment there by someone ya'll might know.
http://www.soulofthegarden.com/contact.html

Since it's a day of garden and general life reflection. I've decided that I'm going to increase the natives even more this year, or at least cultivars of natives. I've recently planted five new Texas native bulbs and have managed to buy/shamelessly beg for all five actual native Louisiana iris species (two of which are native to Texas) to add to my very large collection of Louisiana Iris'. I'm working on organizing them all into my Dave's Garden Diary, but this will take time. I should be out battling the nutgrass that threatens to overwhelm my summer phlox, white Texas Stars, and mexican oregano but maybe I can get home from work early enough tomorrow night to work on that.

As I put in my order to Native American Seeds for some different natives to grow, I look at this area of my garden lovingly referred to as my wild/native/butterfly corner thinking about what would be some other good natives to mix with these red Texas stars, milkweed, and frostweed which is starting to bloom (yes--finally something else out there in bloom). While this is pitiful photography after Tom Spencer's work you have to admit, everything looks pretty healthy with no fertilizer additions or insecticides. Many people would consider this pretty messy looking--and certainly it's not going to make house beautiful's garden pages. But, on the other hand, I haven't had to lift a finger to do any maintence work all summer in this area. Can't beat that. The mulch heavily applied in spring and the bushiness of the plants themselves have completely eliminated the weeds. Even the nutgrass. I think I'm going to try some annual Texas bluebells and Salvia azurea in there next summer.