Garden Project 2009: before

**I know I said I'd write a post on choosing native Texas plants next, but I want to do some more research first! **

Today was warm enough for me to take “before” pictures of my project space. Deep breaths. I am getting a bit intimidated.

Currently: I don’t know what this shrub is on the far left. It has little red berries and the leaves come to a point.

Trey? Do you know what this is?
I’m trying to decide what to do with it. It’s pretty, sure, but it’s all by itself in the very middle of the area. It may end up being transplanted to the other side of the house if it will live.

The long leaves you see are the irises. These things are everywhere. Literally everywhere. And we don’t get rid of these irises. They were given to my mom from my grandmother’s neighbor, and some of these are antique bulbs. The peach flower irises cannot be purchased in stores anymore. They’ll be transplanted somewhere…but I don’t know where. The thing about irises is that you have to completely cut them down to the ground and let them grow back again, so we have to find something to plant with them for when they’re in their ugly phase.
We’ll clear out the rest of the brush. There are some plants I’ll encourage that others call weeds, though.

There’s one of our trees. I am going to try to get those brown leaves off so maybe we’ll get more green leaves this spring.
The millions of bare shrubs are althaea, the Rose of Sharon variety. They’re beautiful but out of control. I will probably thin them out a bit, prune them back a little so they won’t scrape our faces when we walk to the sidewalk. The branches are just tall enough to meet the other trees’ branches in the yard, so in the summer we have a nice bower going on that makes me happy. It’s a good place to read if the nosy neighbor doesn’t come.
I’m also going to plant a groundcover and a few taller shade-loving plants among the Rose of Sharon because it looks so bare.
The hose is all crazy right now but I’m going to find a way to fix it. There is a little bit of ivy climbing the corner, but not too much. I’ll probably cut it down so it doesn’t ruin the mortar. I’ll also try to scrub the green stuff off of the wall. The gutter leaks so that every time it rains the wall gets wet.

More irises and a stray Rose of Sharon plant. Maybe I can sell them to neighbors. Ha.
This is actually where I hope to plant the cutting garden. I think if I can control the irises I can grow them in the back, and then plant some dahlias, maybe some coneflowers, some zinnias, and I really really want to plant balloon flowers. The buds puff up like balloons and then burst open into star-shaped blooms. The pictures I’ve seen make me laugh. There are so many flowers I want to plant.

This is ground ivy. It grows pretty prominently in the yard and is considered a weed. However it is one of my favorite little wildflowers and sprouts the cutest little trumpet shaped purple flowers in the spring and smells good when it’s mowed over. I’m thinking of transplanting it to go under the Rose of Sharon, because neither one of them will push each other around. They’re tough. And cultivating a “weed” in my garden will drive my nosy neighbor (who is pretty much the male incarnation of Mrs. Cravitz from Bewitched) absolutely bonkers.

The other side of the bay window with a huge chunk of irises. They’re everywhere!
This is the garden in front of the porch. The shrub is called Variegated Privet. I’m going to prune it down so it isn’t above the porch railing. I think I’ll plant some flowers in front of them, in two levels. Maybe some herbs. Who knows. There are irises here, too.
Persistent weeds. They even filled up containers.

More stinking irises on the other side of the porch.


Okay, now this is the part that kind of makes me want to cry.


This used to be my vegetable garden.
Here’s more:

It used to have cucumbers and tomatoes and carrots and basil…
The piled up brown leaves you see are calla lilies (given to my mom from a lady who owned a bed and breakfast..I don't really like them. They're messy.). I’m going to cut off all the brown stuff and mulch it. They’ll come back.
The window by the porch will have the big shrub so Mom won’t have to sit in the sunlight. I haven’t decided which yet. I think the window by the fence will maybe have herbs…or some sun loving flowers…or another shrub for some symmetry. I just hate covering up windows.

More ground ivy (Hey! It’s evergreen!)

This used to have plants in it. They don’t do well because of that hideous weed cover. That will change. I probably will do something about those bricks, too. My shadow looks weird because I’m wearing sweatpants that are way too big for them.

These trees bloom really well and cover the whole yard in shade. My parents planted every single one, fighting against the clay.

This little part of our driveway has a car-scraping crepe myrtle and used to contain river rocks. They’re there somewhere under all that confounded grass. The myrtle will be trimmed and maybe some flowers planted right there.

This had to end with happiness: The ornamental pear with buds just waiting to burst. They bloom for a few weeks and then there’s always a humongous rainstorm with wind so hard that it blows all the white petals on the ground and makes it look like someone had a confetti party in our front yard. The leaves are this beautiful waxy dark green and sound so very strange when they blow in the wind.

As you can see, this will need a lot a lot of work. Again I welcome any information people have, from native Texas plants to gardening in Zone 8 to gardening in clay soil. Any encouragement or commiserating is good, too.
Sorry for the long post. Thanks for sticking with me if you did!
Kate

Excitement abounds!!!

After a bit of research and recalling several happy memories, I have decided to plant a garden! Or rather, reclaim several of our gardens. Today when Mom got home I asked her for my "bit of earth," to evoke the Mary Lennox image, and she agreed to help me plan! There are many obstacles to our plan and process, but thanks to work my mother has done over the years, I am fairly certain that we'll be okay.
Allow me to tell this in story form (because my two year olds at Sunday School just don't appreciate storytelling yet):
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Kate. She loved looking at plants -- flowers especially -- and had wonderful experiences getting pansies from the local market and planting them with her mother.
But then one day Kate's family moved just a few miles to the south, less than five, but even at that short distance everything changed.
Kate's mother and father labored to make the garden beautiful, but the land worked against them. The men who built the house had buried extra concrete in the yard, forcing Kate's father to dig deep holes throughout the front and back yards. The house was at the bottom of a small hill, and the first time it rained, water rushed in through the front door. Bulldozers had to be brought in to change the level of the ground, and still water pooled near the door. Worst of all, the soil was nothing but red clay and bedrock. Kate watched as her mother and father chiseled through the earth with their shovels and barely made headway. Kate even tried to help by jumping on a shovel, too, but she didn't weigh enough to drive the shovel into the clay-filled ground.
Kate's parents struggled to make the yards beautiful. They staked trees and dug deep trenches by the house, replacing the clay with good soil. They bought books and went to seminars. They tested soils and finally brought the garden to something they could enjoy until they could really landscape it. The whole family often spent whole days in the yard, spreading fertilizer and planting flowers, weeding and edging and mowing. They were happy days of not knowing what was contained in fertilizer until after her little brother played in it, of picking out what they wanted to grow that year.
And then things began to change.
The garden went into disrepair because no one could tend it any longer. Kate's mother could no longer shovel for long periods of time, nor could she be in the sun. Kate went to college and missed prime planting time for the spring. Other things came into priority over making the yard beautiful. It saddened Kate, remembering happy times in the garden, planting and getting splinters from woodmulch, and the excitement of planning and arranging plants.
So when Kate came back home, she developed a plan: SHE would bring the garden out of its slumber. She had experience enough and her mother had knowledge. She and her mother planned a large shrub that would block the light from coming through the window on her mother's side of the living room so she could join the family downstairs at other times than night. She would plant herbs or berries by the water spigot and make a cutting garden in front of the dining room window. Along with that, she would clean up existing plants and garden areas so that her front yard once again was a paradise that would encourage her to venture outside with a book.
And to combat the harsh growing conditions of her Zone 8 Texas Climate, she would plant all hardy, native plants. This would save water and keep her extra work to a minimum. All organic materials would be used. No chemically treated fertilizer (as she read that it actually inhibits plant growth along with causing runoff pollution), no pesticides (she would do her best to use companion gardening and invite good insects to combat the bad ones), no growth syrum, and she would use her compost pile for topsoil.
Kate decided as well to invite her blogging friends along with her on her journey, especially those with experiences gardening in Texas (a hostile environment for many a garden!).
To Be Continued!


So the plan so far is:
Cutting Garden:
Dwarf Dahlias, Zinnias (I'm not sure what species yet), Coneflowers, and Cosmos, along with the irises that already live in the garden, but will be transplanted (some of these are antique bulbs...apparently you can't get the bulbs that yeild peach colored irises anymore).
Shrub:
I'm thinking about forsythia. Does anyone in the South have experience with these in the middle of our ridiculous summers? Do they really turn in the fall or is that only up north? I'm also thinking about Texas Sage, which is pretty and attracts butterflies.
Herb/Berry garden:
Berries like Texas heat, but we don't want to deal with animals stuck in thorns. So we may grow strawberries or blueberries. I want to grow comfrey, coriander, and fennel as well, but I will have to do some more research in companion gardening as fennel tends to not like certain neighbors. I'd also like to grow some peppers since I seemed to buy them all the time over the summer. Basil does well here (and I know from experience it does well in our garden), and rosemary can take over anything.

We also have a tiny triangle of land next to our driveway that holds a tiny crepe myrtle tree that needs to be hedged in so it stops scraping cars, and the trash scrub needs to be taken out of the soil there. We may plant small flowers there, too (which would recieve absolute full sun all day).

I will keep you updated, post pictures frequently, and try to talk of nothing else (how's that for sticking to a theme????).

Talk to you soon!