Go, go, go!

No time for a blog this week!

We have trees going to Dallas, Frog Fruit going to San Antonio, Blackfoot Daisies going to Rockport.....

Here comes the San Antonio run.

Walking down the driveway gets bit dicey this time of the year.  You're apt to get splatted on the front of a delivery truck.

...and there it goes. 

Spring Break '11!!

Groundcovers

I’ll start out by saying something that I know will elicit boos and hisses from some sectors: I like St. Augustine grass.  And like the governor of New Jersey, I said it… and I did not vaporize.  I think turf grass has its place, just a very specific, very defined place.  BUT, for those places where turf just isn’t going to work, whether because you want to reduce water usage, or just want something more interesting than a solid green mat, groundcovers are the way to go.  There’s a whole world of ‘em.  And now I’ll say something to make greenskeepers cringe: as much as I like St. Augustine in some places, I generally like groundcovers better. 

Sod has its place

The stuff we all know- Asian Jasmine, Dwarf Mondo Grass, Boston Ivy- are all valuable plants, but just about everything that can be said about those plants has been said, so I’m not going to try to add to it.  Instead, I’ll give you a few ideas of groundcovers that you’re not likely to see, for example, around a college dormitory or a shopping mall parking lot.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that… 

Like anything else in the plant world, groundcovers run the gamut of colors, textures, and sheer, unabated voracity.  There are dainty, ground-hugging species that might surprise you with their tenacity, and there are big, bulky, don’t-stand-still-or-it’ll-swallow-you plants that can be managed with a weed eater. 



Wedelia trilobata



Wedelia is one that walks a fine line.  Wedelia will behave itself to a certain extent, but before you know it, it’s crept over the sidewalk and is dodging in and out of traffic.  With little, bright yellow flowers set off by the dark green, rough textured foliage throughout the warm season, Wedelia is pretty enough that you’ll keep it once you have it.  But as you’re hacking it back in mid-July, you’ll wonder if it was a good idea after all.  It was, it was.  Wedelia is equally happy in full, hot sun or part shade.  It needs plenty of room, but doesn’t need a whole lot of water or attention.  Wedelia will only get six to eight inches tall, but seems endless in its reach.  The tendrils will root wherever they touch the ground, and continue growing from there.  Let it freeze in the winter, cut back the dead vines in the early spring, and get out of the way. 

Sweet Potato Vine 'Marguerite'

Sweet Potato Vine is NOT an ingredient for a Thanksgiving pie.  The name comes from the yam-like tuber that the plant makes underground, given time.  There are three main varieties that you see used in landscapes.  There’s the chartreuse-colored one that’s called ‘Marguerite’ or ‘Margarita’ or ‘Margarite’, and there are two that are so dark purple that they’re almost black: ‘Blackie’ and ‘Ace of Spades’.  ‘Blackie’ has leaves that are deeply lobed, giving it a softer, more airy look.  ‘Ace of Spades’ has more rounded, fuller leaves.  All three grow like mad.  Sweet Potato Vine can take a little bit of shade, but they’re happier in full sun.  They need a bit more water than some other vines, and tend to wilt a little on summer afternoons.  Just give them a little drink, and they perk right back up.  These get ten to twelve inches tall, and can probably reach fifteen or twenty feet.  There are other colors as well, though they’re not as common.



Ceratostigma plumbaginoides



Leadwort looks like a much darker blue, groundcover form of Plumbago.  It’s much more easily controlled than the previous two plants.  Sun or part shade is fine for Leadwort, and it’s pretty drought-tolerant.  It can reach three to five feet. 



Polygonum capitatum



Okay, so, a weed by any other name, right?  Right?  Knotweed is Polygonum capitatum, and Polygonums are hated in some places, and maybe justifiably so.  But Knotweed makes a pretty cool little groundcover in areas where they can really stretch out and fill in all the little nooks and crannies.  Knotweed can take sun or shade, it doesn’t care too much.  The more sun it gets, the darker red the leaves will be.  It makes cute little round, pink blooms that look like little candies.  BUT, (say it with me everybody) DON’T EAT YOUR LANDSCAPE!

Creeping Jenny

Lysimachia, or Creeping Jenny, is a ground-hugging, small-leaved groundcover.  The leaves are a pale yellow, which look good in large areas, or creeping in and around rocks and hanging over the edge of a raised planter.  Creeping Jenny isn’t quite as drought-tolerant as some of the others, and appreciates an occasional watering.  It can take full sun, but will grow faster and won’t wilt as easily with a little afternoon shade.  Lysimachia only gets about a half-inch tall, but with time can cover a three-foot area.



Dichondra argentea



Silver Ponyfoot has little fuzzy, silver leaves that can shimmer somewhat in the sun.  It spreads very quickly and needs very little supplemental water.  It makes a great  groundcover and looks good under Texas Star Hibiscus or red roses like Martha Gonzales. 



Aptenia cordifolia



There are several succulents that will spread out under larger plants or just fill in a space and put on a show all by themselves.  Baby Sun Rose (Aptenia cordifolia) needs very little water, blooms all summer, and the leaves seem to shine in the bright sunlight.  It comes in red, pink, or yellow.  Mexican Sedum (Sedum acre) is covered with bright yellow flowers in the spring, and displays bright green, tiny leaves the rest of the year.  Both of these succulents will quickly spread to fill in a three to five foot area if you let them. 

variegated 'Purple Heart'

Okay, I said I wouldn’t mention the same ‘ol, same ‘ol.  But there is one that I have to bring up: Purple Heart.  Think Purple Heart is boring?  Think it’s overused?  Your grandma had that in her garden?  Maybe, but Grandma didn’t have the variegated version.  It’s just like Purple Heart, but with a pink streak on each leaf.  Unless your Granny is one of those bungee-jumping, purple-haired grannies.  And God bless her if she is. 

A Tale of Two Roses

There’s a picture I first saw probably eighteen years ago, and it has stuck in my memory ever since.  After some internet searching, I found the picture again and tacked it to the wall here at the nursery, where it stayed for about a month, which seems to be the time limit for any picture to stay tacked up there.  Martha Gonzales stands next to ‘Martha Gonzales’.  Martha looks straight at the camera from behind large glasses, her arms straight down at her sides.  ‘Martha’ reaches a couple of branches out from its otherwise compact form.  Martha is wearing a light blue, quilted housecoat and scuffed, serious-looking black shoes.  ‘Martha’ is nestled at the corner of a small house, the small leaves showing up against the weathered white siding.  This is Martha Gonzales, an elderly woman standing in front of her house in Navasota, Texas, and ‘Martha Gonzales’, a tough-as-nails little red China rose.  This is no nonsense.  This is getting stuff done, never mind drought or freeze, or fancy shoes, or regularly applied compost, or newly painted siding. 

Martha Gonzales

Pam Puryear and Joe Woodward were out ‘rose rustling’ in the early eighties and saw the dark red blooms of a sturdy looking, small rosebush, as well as the roses ‘Old Blush’ and ‘Mrs. Dudley Cross’.  The homeowner, Mrs. Gonzales, gave them permission to take cuttings, and over the next year, the merits of  the small red rose became obvious.  When Pam went back a year later, it looked like the house was vacant, the rose was gone, and she assumed Martha Gonzales had passed away.  That was the end of the story for nearly fifteen years, until 1999.  That was when Pam Puryear and the other ‘rose rustlers’ found out, through the granddaughter of Martha Gonzales, that the woman in the picture, the woman who originally gave them the cutting of their hardy little red China rose, was still alive!  She passed away a year later, knowing just how famous that little rose had become.  ‘Martha Gonzales’, found by chance in a yard in Navasota, is now a landscape staple and can be found in yards throughout the South.  This is the kind of history you get with Antique roses. 



'Martha Gonzales'



‘Martha Gonzales’ is listed as being introduced in 1984.  By way of comparison, another rose introduced in 1984 is ‘Dolly Parton’.  ‘Dolly Parton’ was named after Dolly Parton because she’s… Dolly Parton.  That’s the story.  That’s it.  There's nothing more to it.  Well, she did sing a song with Kenny Rogers.  So, there is that. 

Dolly Parton

That’s the beauty of Antique roses.  That, and, you know, their beauty.  Antiques make great landscape elements.  Most of them are full, vigorous shrubs that happen to bloom repeatedly without pruning, fertilizing, or fuss.  But aside from that, they have a back-story.  China roses, for example, have histories that go back at least to the early eighteenth century, when British explorers “found” them in Chinese gardens.  The fact is, Chinese gardeners had been growing those roses for centuries before the explorers showed up.  In fact, there are references to Chinese gardeners growing roses as early as the eleventh century B.C.  But it was nice of them to let the British think they had discovered them, wasn’t it? 

The long history of Antique roses isn’t necessarily just wrapped up in dry stories about international trade and guys with really impressive sideburns sneaking roses out of China.  

Ambrose Burnside and his intimidating chops

These long-lived roses lend themselves to involvement in personal stories, too.  There are stories about people like Pam Puryear, driving past little, overgrown houses in Texas and scanning the yard for roses.  There are stories about roses that were found, lost, and then found again.  There’s my story of how I met my wife at the Antique Rose Emporium.  There are stories about roses surviving the floods of hurricane Katrina.  There’s the story of a woman with a neglected rose, whose picture wound up on a nursery wall thirty years later. 

I went to work for the Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham when I was sixteen, and I’ve had Antique roses around me since then.  Even during my nomadic years, when I lived in various apartments, I always had a couple of Antique roses in pots on the patio.  When my wife and I bought an old farmhouse to fix up, one of the first things we did was plant a ‘Cramoisi Superieur’ rose in the front yard, a rose that she grew from a cutting.  

'Cramoisi Superieur'

I’m sure there are other plants that have this kind of legacy, these kinds of stories, but I’ve just never felt the need to carry, for example, a pansy around with me from one apartment to the next. 

Watch out for the Ice-Sloths

Here are a few pictures of the ice at the nursery from last week.  They seem to divide themselves into two categories.  There are the documentation type of “here’s ice all over our plants” pictures, like these:

And there are the photos that look like they’re from Zorgoth the Ice Planet. 

They don’t really look like anything familiar at all, but it’s nearly impossible to resist taking close-up pictures of the otherworldly ice formations. 

Not only plants froze; our soccer field took a hit, too.

We went a little bit crazy with the picture taking, so there’s a whole file full of ice pictures.  I’ll save those until August, though, when they’ll look even stranger.  As a final note, we cheated when we took our ice pictures.  We left all of our faucets on to keep them from freezing solid, so the water they sprayed out nearly instantly froze when it hit the plants or the ground.  It was cold here, and there was ice from frozen rain, but not nearly as much as these photos would indicate.  They're just nifty pictures. 

Drinking the (grape) Kool-Aid.

Last summer, I went to see some family in Missouri with several examples of “Texas” plants in the back of the Jeep.  There was a Texas Star Hibiscus back there- and it’s just a wonder some curious trooper didn’t want to take a closer look at it- there was an Esperanza, and there was the one specific request: a Texas Mountain Laurel.  My aunt was here in Texas in April and decided she had to have one for her yard in central Missouri.

            Here in Texas, when we think of a Sophora, many of us think of grape Kool-Aid.  The Texas Mountain Laurel (Sophora secundiflora) has a purple, wisteria-like bloom that smells to me just like grape Kool-Aid, and really, there are a lot worse things to smell like. 

When we in Texas say Mountain Laurel, we usually know we mean the evergreen under-story tree with dark green leaves, incredible looking and smelling blooms in the spring, and nifty red seeds in lumpy seedpods in the late summer.  We have to be careful, though, when we say Mountain Laurel.  As my aunt in Missouri pointed out, the name in other states refers to a different shrub entirely (Kalmia latifolia). But, well, they’re not Texans…

            Here in Texas, the Mountain Laurel is seen more and more in landscapes as more people become aware of it and how absolutely glorious it will be in the spring.  They really jazz up and anchor a landscape.  Very often you can smell the flowers in bloom before you see them.  Here in the nursery, a whole row of blooming Mountain Laurels can literally stop traffic on the road coming in to the nursery.  We love it when they do that.  The Texas Mountain Laurel is one shrub that sells itself.

            The seeds of Texas Mountain Laurel look like bright red marbles littering the ground under the tree.  They will fade to orange while the hard seed coat softens enough for the seed to germinate, which could take a couple of years.  Apparently, different cultures have used the seeds for everything from a hallucinogen to jewelry.  They’re incredibly hard, and they’re substantially toxic, so I’m not sure why you would bother.  But I’m not into hallucinating or wearing jewelry, so I’m not a good judge.

            There is another Sophora you can see alongside Mopac or loop 620, and increasingly in landscapes.  Sophora affinis, Eve’s Necklace, has finer foliage and a softer look than the chunky Texas Mountain Laurel.  The small flowers of Eve's Necklace are pretty when seen close-up, but don’t stand out like those of the Mountain Laurel.  But the seedpods on the Eve’s Necklace are little jewels in their own right.  Little shiny black jewels.

 

Eve's Necklace flowers



Eve's Necklace seeds



            Another interesting, though not quite as useful Sophora, ‘Silver Peso’, is rarely seen in landscapes.  The leaves are silver and fuzzy, and it’s interesting by merit of being different from the Texas Mountain Laurel that everybody knows and loves.  On its own, though, the ‘Silver Peso’ doesn’t perform nearly as well in the Hill Country as the Texas Mountain Laurel or the Eve’s Necklace.  Maybe because of the pubescence on the leaves, it tends to attract mold and begin a slow general deterioration. 

            The Texas Mountain Laurel is one of the things we Texans look forward to in the spring.  It let’s us know spring is really here.  After all, the bluebonnets in Washington County, the Texas Mountain Laurels in the Hill Country, and the deep green grass have to be enough to get us through the long summer months ahead.  And they do so admirably.

Just Hold On!

Yeah, it’s cold outside and it may seem like there’s absolutely nothing to do until April.  Not necessarily, though.  The last freeze date for Austin is generally around March 15^th , but everybody and anybody can tell you story after story about having a beautiful weekend on March 7^th, and an inch of snow the next weekend.  So we could have up to two more months of cold.  Plan your gardens, just don’t pack up your hoodies just yet.  In any case, remember, this is Texas: We’re going to have some bitter cold weather in the winter, it’s going to be broiling hot in the summer, and in between we’ll have the kind of weather when no one can stay inside.  So until it’s time to dig out the shorts again- actually, until it’s time for you to dig out the shorts again (I’m always jealous of folks that don’t burn to a brittle cinder with the least little bit of sun exposure) there’s still plenty you can do in the landscape.  

Go hug a tree, Austin.

            A lot of trees are bare right now, and it takes a little imagination to envision them full, lush, and green.  But this is the time to plant them.  Both trees and shrubs can be planted now for a spectacular spring show.  Remember, this is Texas, so the ground doesn’t freeze.  Plus we’ll have the odd 72 degree day here and there, so the roots will not only be protected from freezes, they’ll even get to do some growing occasionally.  So prepare the soil, plant your trees (not too deep!) and commence with the most difficult part of the whole process: waiting. 

            There is a long list of evergreen shrubs, if you need something green throughout the winter.  Evergreen Sumac is, as you might guess, evergreen.  Agarita stays just as dark green and thorny as ever, even with icicles hanging from it.  Southern Wax Myrtle beats the heck out of Ligustrum for an evergreen, tough shrub, as does Yaupon ‘Pride of Houston’.  And then there are those shrubs that really shine during the winter.  

Coralberry

Coralberry really grabs your attention with magenta-red berries along its bare stems. 



Coralberry berries

 The absolute champion of berries in the winter, though, is Possumhaw. 



Possumhaw

 A 15 to 20 foot shrub or understory tree, Possumhaw can blend into the background for nine months of the year.  But once the leaves fall off, it is impossible to not notice the bright orange berries, especially when everything around it is just dull grey and brown. 



Possumhaw berries

 Roses, too, put on their own kind of show during the winter.  Roses like ‘Knockout’ and ‘Martha Gonzales’ acquire a bronze tint to the leaves once the temperatures get into the thirties.  Other roses, such as ‘Belinda’s Dream’ or ‘Carefree Beauty’ put on large orange hips as well. 

            And now for the zen part of the blog: even without leaves, the bare limbs of trees and shrubs have a beauty of their own.  Burr Oak branches stand out starkly against the deep blue sky on these clear, cold days. 

Go outside, take a walk around and look up.  Appreciate the twisted and contorted shapes that you just can’t see April through October.  You can make up a haiku about it.  Or, if you’re like the staff here at Native Texas Nursery, you can take pictures of it.  And if we dip down below freezing during the night, you can find all kinds of interesting shapes the next day. 

Be warned, though, once you start snapping pictures of burly branches or Possumhaw berries, it can be difficult to stop. 

It was cold and wet all weekend, and now it's... cold and a little less wet.  Well, January makes us really appreciate July, right?  All the perennials are nestled in the greenhouses, though, and are growing away happily, obliviously.  And this spring we'll have a new size: two gallons.  A two gallon Majestic Sage in bloom is a glorious thing to see.  Tree digging is still going on, and the White Oaks and Mexican Plums will look pretty awesome this spring.