Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

Everyone who visits my garden in April or May is stopped dead in their tracks by Acanthus mollis. It’s so big. And it’s floral spike is bizarre and somewhat menacing.

Acanthus mollis is not really a good landscape plant in Austin, although it can be useful if you have a very shady site. It needs lots of water. As soon as the temperatures reach the 90s, it wilts and looks about as attractive as cooked spinach. Once the summer gets really hot, it fades away leaving a big hole in the border design. But when temperatures cool off in the fall, it’s back again. Fall and winter (if it’s not too cold) are it’s best seasons. In spring, the leaves are often ravaged by spring cankerworms and whatever beetles are about.

It’s one tough plant, though, and keeps coming back despite my neglect. People in more temperate climate consider it a pest.

2003-05-09. Acanthus mollis. Austin, Texas. (zone 8)

Well, the promise of rain went unfufilled, despite dark low clouds, and thunderous rumblings in the sky these last two days. Today the clouds cleared off and it got hot and then hotter. Austin broke the previous high temperature of 92 degrees with a 96 degree high. All the flowers that looked so spring like yesterday withered from the shock. Even the sun-loving tomato plants were caught off guard. No rain in the forecast for two more weeks at least.

I fell in love with tall bearded irises the first time I saw a photo of ‘Seakist’. The photo made me send off for Schreiner’s Iris Catalog and then I fell in love with a dozen more varieties of iris. I couldn’t afford ‘Seakist’ that first year or even the second year. But when the price fell to $15.00 a rhizome, I was determined to have it, even though it was the most I’d ever paid for a bulb of any kind.
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This week the Lady Banks rose is doing a perfect job of hiding my neighbor’s clothesline from view. I bought this rose in a gallon pot three years ago for $8.95 at Barton Springs Nursery. It’s doubled in size each year and is now about eight feet tall and twice as wide. I planted it about five feet from a chain link fence to give it plenty of room, which it’s going to need. The thornless canes are very flexible and easy to train.

The leaves are small, glossy and bright green. The small double flowers bloom in bunches like bridesmaid’s nosegays. They are warm buttery yellow. Flowers on this variety, ‘Lutea’, which is common in Austin, are scentless. The Lady Banks rose blooms but once a year, but then so do azaleas and pear trees and no one faults them for that.

Update: 2005

I’m very sad to report that this beautiful rose died in the hard freeze we had in December 2004. None of the other roses was affected.

Iris albicans surprised me this week.
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Sunday was clear and sunny and almost hot. The temperatures reached the high 70s and the men rowing and jogging along Town Lake had doffed their shirts. The car was so hot inside that we turned on the air conditioning.

This weekend I was busy noting numerous first flowers: the redbud, the viola (from seed), the ‘Trevithian’ daffodils, and the grape hyacinths. Several bluebonnets were flowering. The ‘Ice Follies’ and ‘Quail’ narcissus and the summer snowflakes were in full flower. The smaller Mexican plums were just beginning to bloom. And the Bridal Wreath spiraea and the Lady Banksia rose were covered in small buds.

Then Monday dawned drizzly and cold, as most of February has been. Around 5PM, AJM called me from North Austin to say it was sleeting. I went outside and it was sleeting here too. I moved the potted plants back inside, but there wasn’t much else I could do. I was completely unprepared for what followed.

The Big Freeze (a photo gallery).

The scent of paperwhites ushers in the New Year. I can’t stand the scent of the modern paperwhites, ‘Ziva’ and ‘Galilee’, but I’ve love the scent of their tazetta relative, Narcissus tazetta v. italicus. It is the scent of the first flower of the New Year.

I had always thought that N. italicus had a lovely, citrus-y scent. But over Christmas, when JQS was working at my desk, he said, “Mom, do you smell airplane glue or something?” I came over concerned and then laughed. “It’s just the flowers.”

If you don’t like the scent of paperwhites, try growing Narcissus tazetta v orientalis (the Chinese Sacred Lily) instead. It is scented with orange essence. I always buy bulbs to force and plant them out in the garden afterward where they come back year after year.

In this photo, the N. italicus are on the left and the Chinese Sacred Lily on the right. In my garden the N. italicus grow on stalks 20 to 24 inches tall, the Chinese Sacred Lily on stalks 12 to 14 inches tall.

The foliage of N. italicus is a much deeper green than the gray-green paperwhites, the strappy leaves are almost an inch wide. They grow straight and tall in the fall and finally flop over. Although they are my first narcissus to bloom, the leaves are the last to disappear in the spring. Sometimes it is May before I can divide them.

I always plant them where I can see them through a window from inside the house. Then even on a miserably cold day like today, I can enjoy the garden.

In Other People’s Gardens

I don’t really know if my bulbs really are Grand Primo as they were in the garden when I arrived. Mine don’t look anything like the photo at Old House Gardens.

However, mine do look like the Grand Primo pictured in this photo from the Stephen F. Austin State University. Notice how the cup is much smaller and a paler lemon yellow. Also the petals are slimmer and more pointed, often twisting back.

Although the same photo is enlarged here and these flowers do not have as narrow tapering petals as mine.

Update: February 25, 2004
I’ve corrected this post because I determined that I had two different Narcissus tazetta growing in my garden. For more information, see A Tale of Two Narcissus

technorati: ChineseSacredLily bulbs garden

Angel trumpets is a common name applied to plants both in the genus Brugmansia and the genus Datura. Although they have been recognized as different types of plants for over 100 years, and officially recognized as two separate genuses since 1973, the confusion continues.
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Yesterday, I woke up with a splitting sinus headache, my personal harbinger of rain. In the morning, it drizzled on and off. In the afternoon, we had a nice rain.

This morning when I went outside, I was surprised by a shock of cool, dry air. The first cool front of fall had blown in and the temperature had dropped ten degrees (though the low humidity made it feel even cooler). What a glorious day! The sky is a vivid blue and it actually feels good to be outside.

I had no choice but to spend the day gardening.

I began the stump garden on April 29th of this year to solve several other problems. First, I needed to move bulbs from an area which I had used as a nursery but which is slated to be a patio. I decided to move them to a wild spot under a cedar elm tree on the edge of the lawn in the back. That spot is too dark for most wildflowers and the shallow roots of the cedar elm suck moisture and nutrients from the ground, making the soil very poor indeed. Worse, the site is on a slope, so the water tends to runoff rather than soak in.

The other problem was I have a lot of bits of sawn tree trunk leftover from the tree which fell on our garage last November. I decided to use some of these pieces to create a structure on the slope and plant bulbs and other shade-loving plants between them. I placed the tree trunks close enough together that I can jump from one to another to water or weed. Then I planted garlic chives and oxblood lilies which bloom together in the fall; the rest of the year the garden would be various textures of green from palm grass, liriope, monkey grass, and ferns.

Last weekend our first fall downpour, a gift from tropical storm Fay, caused all the oxblood lilies to burst into bloom this week. The effect is better than I ever hoped it would be. But although the flowers will fade in a week or so, the arrangement of stumps provides a structure that has made this little garden pleasant all summer.