Holiday Garden Additions

It was a good holiday for the garden.

I got a new pair of my favorite gardening gloves, which are stretchy and close fitting, so no bulk hanging off the ends of one's fingers, but with nice leather on the palms and insides of the fingers for dealing with thorny roses.

Mom and Dad gave me a bird feeder with pole for my birthday.  It's made by a company called "Droll Yankee," which they assure me is the best.  So far, it seems to have defied the squirrels and doves, so it's an all-round success.  (Also, I've switched to safflower seeds, which are said not to appeal to S & D and which fit better in my existing bird feeder anyway.)

New bird feeder in G-n-R bed, embellished with new baby grasses

 The climax, of course, was the awesome new Savio 2050 pond pump, which is currently sending gushing torrents of water through our waterfall. It's so strong, it picks pebbles up from the bottom of the pond and sends them through the waterfall. Yowza.

The amazing pumping power of the our new Savio 2050.  Actually, the camera doesn't really capture the full volume.  It's like this, only more.

 Then the denouement was my birthday present from Matt--eight (EIGHT!) new 'White Cloud' Muhlenbergia capillaris (the grass we saw at the Atlanta Bot Gar that almost made me miss my cousin's wedding) and a sample pack of 12 more grasses that Matt picked out for me from Dove Creek Gardens in Tennessee.  (Why isn't there a major grass nursery here in Texas???  We have lots of grass. And not a lot of water. No brainer.)

Matt's sampler of interesting grasses

Here's what was in the sampler pack:

Andropogon scoparius 'Prairie Blues' (little bluestem--some debate as to whether this cultivar is in Andropogon or Schizochyrium)
Carex buchananii (leatherleaf sedge )
C. pendula (weeping sedge)
C. testacea 'Prairie Fire' (sedge)
Eragrostis elliotii 'Blue Eros' (blue lovegrass)
Festuca actae 'Banks Peninsula Blue' (blue fescue)
Miscanthus sinensis 'Nippon' (maidengrass)
Panicum virgatum 'Heavy Metal' (switchgrass)
Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Moudry' (fountain grass)
P. messiacum 'Red Buttons' (fountain grass)
P. villosum 'Cream Falls' (feathertop)

We're using the 'White Cloud' as the background matrix for the Grass-n-Roses bed, studded with the various sampler grasses.  So far, everything is tiny little dry tufts, so it's a little hard to tell what it will ultimately look like.  I imagine some fine-tuning will eventually be required, just as it was for the Mexican feathergrass (Stipa/Nasella tenuissima), 'Dwarf Hamlin' fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides), and 'Blonde Ambition' big grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis) we had already planted.  Oh, and the cute little nimblewill (Muhlenbergia shreberi), sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula), and big muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri).

Pennisetum messiacum 'Red Buttons,'
glowing in the sun

 All told, that makes 18 kinds of grasses in the G-n-R bed.  Plus inland sea oats in the shade bed: 19!  Not bad.  It's not quite the Grass Garden at Kew, but still--not bad.

Another view of waterfall & G-n-R bed

This Grass Almost Made Me Miss a Wedding

Masses of 'White Cloud' Gulf Coast muhly

Matt and I were in Atlanta last weekend for my cousin's wedding. We went to the Atlanta Botanical Garden during the day, where we saw the awesomest grass--'White Cloud' Gulf coast muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris).  It makes frothy masses of pale blond billows, and it is very aptly named: it's like being surrounded by a fluffy, luminous cloud.

In my excitement over sharing pix of this beautiful new grass with my brother, I kept the three of us from leaving the hotel on time, which meant we had to slip in the side as the bride was processing up the aisle. Oops. The irony is, my brother doesn't really care about plants at all ("Sure. It's awesome," he said, appeasingly.  He did not say, "Can we go now?" but I'm pretty sure that was in the subtext.)  The further irony is that none of my pix really do the plant justice.  You'll just have to take my word for it: in real life, it's awesome.  AWESOME.

More 'White Cloud' in the background

Anyway, the ceremony was very nice (flowers were very stylish--terra cotta orange lilies and lime green accent flowers. And the boutonnieres were made of moss and yellow globes of the disc flowers from some sort of asteraceae--very funky.  And at the reception:  sashimi!).  I don't think anyone noticed our late entrance, aside from my gimlet-eyed grandmother.


And we really enjoyed the botanical gardens (good thing, too. Admission was $20 a pop!  Yeesh.)  It wasn't a super-geeky bot. gar.--labeling and signage was spotty; you got the feeling it was more into design than botany.  But it was very pretty, and intelligently pretty.  Sometimes this kind of pricy destination garden depends on waves of gaudy annuals (yuck) to wow the visitor.  But when the heart of your gardens is perennials and shrubs, you have to know how your plants will work in all four seasons.  In Atlanta, for example, they left spent hydrangea heads on the fading shrubs, which is wonderfully seasonal and melancholy; not the Disney World approach.


My second favorite plant, after the inestimable 'White Cloud' was this radioactive Japanese maple, 'Yama Kagi' or "Full Moon" maple.

Acer japonicum 'Yama Kagi'

Here's a closer view, showing the brilliant color and interesting leaf shape (click for a bigger version).  I started making sounds about digging a really deep hole, filling it with peat moss and sulphur, and trying to grow this glorious thing back in Texas.  Matt just snorted.  Maybe he was remembering my earlier attempt at this kind of thing with the doomed farkleberry. Ours is a cruel, cruel climate.

Closer shot of 'Yama Kagi'

Also of interest was this espaliered loquat--who knew you could grow them this way?  Matt thinks it's insincere, but I think it's a very clever way to enjoy your loquat without having to find space for a giant, shaggy monster.

Espaliered loquat (Eriobotrya japaonica)

Other than that, my favorite thing was the orchid house, which was really a wonderful place: tons of freaky strange orchids, several very nice water features, and three staghorn ferns that were bigger than stags.  No lie. Beyond that, it was just a place that felt nice to be in, maybe because it featured a stimulating balance between formality and wildness.

Orchid house with giant staghorn ferns

This was one of many nifty weird orchids in the orchid house.

Strange pink orchid

Finally, my other favorite thing of the whole trip. I give you--Bugscuffle, Texas. It's better than Oatmeal, Dime Box, or even my old favorite, North Zulch. To whomever named this town: my hat is off to you.

Bugscuffle, Texas