Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

Dateline: July 12, 2007
Margaret and I revisted Arley Hall Gardens again today. I never tire of it because, of course, it’s never the same. The underlying structure is the same but the varying combinations of plants and colors constantly reveal new surprises. Updated photos when I return to Texas.

Dateline: August 31, 2005
I can’t suppress my discontent over my own sorry garden now wasting away in the last days of a Texas summer, not when I remember some of the magnificent gardens we visited in England.

Recently the gardens at Arley Hall, in Cheshire, have been voted one of the top ten in England. In a nations full of beautiful gardens that is no small feat. Arley Hall is still home to the Viscount and Viscountess Ashbrook whose family has lived there for thirteen generations. While Arley Hall lacks the grandeur of Castle Howard, one can’t help but exclaim, as Charles does, “What a place to live!”
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Hands down ‘Persimmon’ is the best tomato I’ve ever eaten. And I will absolutely grow it again. However, it is the most challenging tomato I’ve ever grown. So far, we’ve gotten two tomatoes, each tipping the scales at over a pound.

Unfortunately, we’ve mostly gotten misshapen tomatoes that develop rot.

Twining Vine Garden says that ‘Persimmon’ requires “heavily fertile evenly moist well draining soil”.

I agree that it’s a heavy feeder. Although ‘Persimmon’ was planted in a newly dug bed filled with compost, it produced a giant deep-green vine (over 6 feet tall) with no flowers until I gave it some tomato food. It wasn’t that I’d filled the bed with high-nitrogen fertilizer or anything, just sifted compost from my pile out back. The other plants in the same bed flowered just fine.

The same site says that without calcium it will develop blossom-end rot. It did…not just at the blossom end but along the ridges and cracks.

Thomas Jefferson is said to have grown ‘Persimmon’. I’m amazed that it’s been around so long. The flavor and texture takes the tomato to a new level. It seems like some mysterious cross of tomato and mango (or perhaps persimmon)…almost something dreamed up in a laboratory. In short, ‘Persimmon’ is almost too good to be true.

Am I the only person who has trouble growing it?

We made a dinner of tomatoes, fresh mozzarella (from Central Market), salami, and southern burgundy walnut bread (also from Central Market).

The yellow tomato ‘Persimmon’ was the best tomato I’ve ever eaten in my life. It was both tart and tomato-y. The texture was fantastic, almost like a ripe mango (but not stringy). It was all flavorful flesh and very little gelatin.

The ‘Black Krim’ continues to be a disappointment. Two of the five that had ripene. ended up having split without my noticing and were rotten. For the most part they make a very pretty fruit but they seem watery and bland. Neither of us liked ‘Black Krim’ at all and I’ll never grow it again.

Here’s something you don’t see very often at Zanthan Gardens…a green lawn. Yep, June is my best month for lawns and the reason why, in my mind, June is the merry month of green. May showers bring June lawns.

2006-06-11. Even in the midst of the 2006 drought, some late May rains greened up the back lawn temporarily.

This year we’ve had May showers and June showers and April showers. In fact, it’s been raining in Austin since SXSW in mid-March. Today we had another inch to 4 inches, depending on where you were in Central Texas. (I think Zanthan Gardens got about an inch.) I’m not complaining! I’m celebrating. According to Jim Spencer, just half way through 2007 we’ve already received our normal annual rainfall.

Is your xeriscape rotting yet? The tallest of my yuccas keep falling over.

Over the years I’ve replaced quite a bit of my lawn with flower beds. But as you can see from the photo, this area is a bit shady for flowers or cactus or ornamental grasses or roses or herbs. The St. Augustine is more or less happy. And even after one of its unhappy years it always makes a comeback. I have not yet watered my lawn this year. In fact, I rarely water my lawns any year. Nor do I put any chemical fertilizers on it. This lawn is entirely caffeine driven. I mow it with a push mower so I feel absolutely zero lawn guilt.

I went out to check on the tomatoes. So far we’re not having very good luck. The very first fruits were munched on by caterpillars when they were about the size of a cherry.

A month later, as the first ‘Black Krim’ tomato started to change color, we covered the plants with bird-netting. However the day we decided the first ‘Black Krim’ was going to be ready, we went out to pick it and something (probably raccoons) had beaten us to it. I don’t see how they got in and out of the netting without making a mess or getting tangled up in it but they did. A couple of days later we picked a semi-ripe tomato and let it ripen inside. Maybe we ate it too early, but we weren’t much impressed with its flavor.

‘Black Krim” tomatoes ripening.

That was a couple of weeks ago. Now a lot more are starting to ripen and we’re licking our lips. So I went out to check on them this afternoon and saw a lizard (Tree Lizard, I think, or maybe a Texas Spiny Lizard). Unfortunately it saw me too and made dash for it, right into the bird-netting.

Luckily it didn’t thrash around but held very still even when I got close to try to free it. It had somehow managed to get half its quite large body through the 1/2 inch square mesh. I got some manicure scissors and carefully cut the netting away from its delicate claws and arms. It held very, very still. Then as carefully as I could, I tried over and over to get the scissors under the mesh that was wrapped around its body. When I snipped my final snip, it dashed past me faster than I could see it. Whew! I was glad it held still long enough for me to free it. I’d be very upset if the birds or fire ants had gotten there first.

Now how did it manage to get under the netting in the first place?

Carol at May Dreams Gardens invites us to tell her what’s blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.

June 15, 2007

Last night we had a surprise rain. Quite a relief after a fortnight of temperatures in the low 90s. It has been very humid and the air is thick with mosquitoes. So my gardening season is mostly over until fall. Don’t be mislead by the length of the list. Some plants have only a flower or two left. However, the heat means some of the summer flowers that have been slow to bloom this year (with our lovely cool, rainy spring) are finally coming into full bloom. Yep. Summer has hit Austin. Dammit.

• Abelia grandiflora
• Antigonon leptopus
• Asclepias curassavica
• Canna ‘Bangkok Yellow‘
• Centaurea cyanus ‘Black Magic‘ — all but faded but maybe the rain will revive them)
• chili pequin
• Commelina erecta (day flower) — the weedy perennial. I much prefer its false cousin)
• Commelinantia anomala (false day flower) — a couple a last flowers
• Consolida ambigua (larkspur)
• Cosmos bipinnatus–one self-sown flower
• Engelmann daisy
• Eschscholzia californica ‘Mikado‘
• Hibiscus syriacus
• Lagerstroemia indica
• Lantana ‘New Gold’
• Lantana montevidensis — one white flower
• Lavandula heterophyla ‘Goodwin Creek Grey‘
• Malvaviscus arboreus
• Mirabilis jalapa pink
• Mirabilis jalapa RHS red
• Oenothera speciosa (evening primrose)
• Oxalis triangularis
• Nerium oleander ‘Turner’s Shari D.’ — full, gorgeous bloom
• Pavonia hastata — one flower
• Plumbago auriculata
• Polanisia dodecandra — full bloom
• rose ‘Blush Noisette‘ — a second flush from my best heat-loving rose
• rose ‘Ducher’ — one bud just opening
• rose ‘Red Cascade’ — one flower
• rose ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison”
• Rudbeckia hirta — full bloom
• Ruellia (Mexican petunia)
• Salvia farinacea ‘Indigo Spires’
• Sedum album (white stonecrop)
• tomato–we’ve eaten cherry tomatoes this week
• Tradescantia pallida (purple heart)
• Tulbaghia violacea (society garlic) Thanks, Pam!
• Verbena canadensis
• Vitus agnus-castus

The concrete foundation was poured on May 22 and for almost three weeks nothing much has happened onsite while the concrete was setting up. Offsite the special joints were being welded. There was a flurry of activity last Saturday when the concrete block wall was erected. Then on Monday after they’d put a coat of stucco on it, the workmen had to cover it with tarps and leave in a hurry because a big storm hit north Austin. Apparently it poured and hailed up north, but down here south of the river it remained sunny and we didn’t get a drop of rain. However, the pond still has a lot of water in it from the rain the night before and on Memorial Day.

Today work recommenced. More stucco was applied. And the support columns are going up. From the kitchen it looks like some Greek ruin…well, a modern rendition of a Greek ruin.

I find it a bit wearing to try to garden around the piles of boards and wire and rebar and lumps of cement and cinder blocks. It’s hard to be very enthusiastic about gardening this week anyway as summer is really weighing on us. We decided it was finally time to turn on the AC last night and…it’s broken. It was 80 in the house this morning before 8AM. So my enthusiasm for everything right now is rather low.

When the garden house is finished I’ll just lie out in the screened porch on days like this. Really! That’s my plan. Lay about and drink iced drinks. Austin is the slacker capital of the world and it’s time I participated in maintaining our reputation a bit.

Dateline: June 2, 2006
Like so much of my garden, the banana plantation evolved out of unrelated events rather than by forethought or design. Last fall I got the stonework on the front of the house repaired. That so improved the look of the house that the yard looked grungy by comparison. So I cleared the flagstone path of St. Augustine grass which encouraged AJM to move the stones to the backyard and motivated me to buy stones for a new path. After Christmas I carted home loads of ground up Christmas trees and and heaped it over the remaining St. Augustine grass and monkey grass.

2005-10-26. Before.

On another front I attempted to divide my Musa lasiocarpa because the mother plant had died. Most of the pups snapped off at the root an I thought they were dead. I replanted the largest one in the same place, potted another, and put three more without roots into pots. I put a couple into water in a vase inside the house and threw the rest into the spare shower where they could keep warm over winter. To my amazement they all survived.

As far as I can tell Musa lasiocarpa is like some large fleshy above-the-ground bulb. The roots anchor it in the soil, but it sure doesn’t need them to live…at least it can get by over the winter.

Now that it’s warm, all the banana plants were putting out new growth. Where to put them? Ah. Here’s a bare spot. Voila! Banana plantation.

2006-06-01. After.

Still to do: build a short fence to separate the banana plantation from the driveway. I love the little wattle fencing that they make in England. I don’t have a willow tree, though. So I will have to come up with something similar using native materials.

Update: June 2, 2007
It’s taken almost six months since the first winter freezes for the bananas to start leafing out again. Despite all the water of this very wet spring, it’s temperatures in the 90s that seem to get them going.

2006-11-27. Just before the first freeze. Notice how this spot goes from full shade to full sun after the leaves fall.

2006-11-29. I wrap yellowing leaves around the stalks for extra insulation and then mound up cedar elm leaves to cover the banana stalks.

I will have to think what I can plant in the interim period from November to May. Overwintering annuals like snapdragons or violas might be nice as they’re finishing up right about now when the bananas leaf out. However, I do like the simplicity of having just the bananas. Still in winter and spring, until the trees leaf out, this is a very nice sunny area in a prominent place. I should do something more with it. Hmmm…what a wishy-washy gardener I am!

PS. Austin garden bloggers…for those who want them there’s definitely passalongs in your future.

I don’t usually write movie reviews on this site but then again I don’t usually come across a movie that involves gardening as a major plot device. (The only other one that comes to mind is The Secret Garden.)

I rented Greenfingers primarily because Clive Owen is in it. But I stuck around for the gardening.

Gardening is a national passion in Britain. From the fancy designers at the RHS Chelsea Show, to rural villages competing in Britain in Bloom Campaign, to urban guerilla gardeners, everywhere you look, you’ll find gardeners. Even in prisons. Clive Owen plays a murderer who is sent to a progressive prison where he discovers he has greenfingers (the British equivalent of our greenthumbs).

If you believe in the restorative power of gardening, then you’ll probably like Greenfingers. It hovers in the territory of heartwarming without quite being treacly, thanks to a great cast. Helen Mirren is especially fun as Georgina Woodhouse, a Rosemary Verey/Penelope Hobhouse/Martha Stewart-type gardening doyenne.

I was hooked from the opening sequence because I recognized the village that Clive Owen was riding his bike through as Lower Slaughter, which we visited last year. England in the movies always looks so impossibly charming that it can’t be real. So I was very excited to recognize this very street.

Although we spent only a couple of hours walking around the Slaughters, they made quite an impression.

This is a very sweet movie; however, gardeners with children might care to note that it is rated R for language and sexuality (romp in the woods with visible male butt, unfortunately not Clive Owen’s).

A few years ago Valerie @ Larvalbug gave me some seeds for the wild magenta four o’clocks that you see growing all over Austin. These things are monsters and once they get hold, they don’t let go. Not only do they profusely set seed but they create deep tuberous roots that are don’t take any efforts to remove them seriously.

One year when I participated in the RHS seed exchange I got some more refined four o’clocks. The plants were much smaller, only about a foot high and wide. The leaves smaller and deeper green. The flowers were cherry red, although in photographs I can see a little magenta star inside. Unfortunately the scent was bred out of them.

The RHS reds have a magenta star in the center.

Last year I dug out the corner of the bed where the red four o’clocks had lived. I didn’t see any roots so I thought they were gone. But no. I’m talking about four o’clocks here. They came back just as strong.

I try to keep all of one kind together but there were two plants I couldn’t tell whether they were red or pink. Turns out they were neither–or both depending on how you look at it. My two four o’clocks had crossed and produced a third type which I like better than either parent.

2007-05-30. New flower in the middle.

The flower is frilly and has the scent (although less strong) of the magenta type. I like the color, a cerise pink, much more. The plant is somewhat bigger than the cherry red type but not as large or aggressive as the magenta. The flowers are larger and more frilly than its parents’ flowers.

Defying their name, the four o’clocks all open at different times, too. The original magenta flowers open first around 5PM. The new cerise pinks open around 7PM. And the RHS reds don’t open until past 8PM.