Herself’s Houston Garden

Denise McConnell got tired of the lawn that surrounded her Las Vegas home. The grass needed watering almost every day, mowing every week and a seasonal schedule of fertilizer and weed-control applications. To top it all off, it looked dull. “It was pretty nondescript,” the 62-year-old accountant says. “And my water bill was averaging about $100 a month.”
Giving Up On Grass

Homeowners are trading in putting-green turf and clipped hedges for landscaping that is much closer to what might have been there in the first place.

Inspired by the gardens she saw on a trip to Italy’s Tuscan countryside, Ms. McConnell worked hard and gradually transformed her yard into an oasis of heat-tolerant and water-efficient plants. Today, she is surrounded by beds of flowering perennials, herbs and fragrant vines. Her garden offers maximum privacy, and her monthly water bill? Cut in half, to about $50.

Garden-design strategies that encourage minimal watering, called “xeriscaping”—based on the Greek word for ‘dry’—first emerged in the West, where water resources are thin. Employees of Denver’s water department are widely believed to have coined the term in the early 1980s—and now it is spreading in other regions among conservation-minded homeowners who want to grow beautiful gardens. Read more “Gardening with out a sprinkler and be sure to check out the slide show with the article

It took a little less than 100 lawn and leaf bags, and 1 month but the gardens have been beaten back into submission for yet another year. In spring and more so in the fall I try to take the gardens from a really cool collection of plants to a fine landscaped garden.

I try to follow the basic landscape design rules for small spaces ( see below links ). This time I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by Nelson’s Water Gardens part way through my cleanup and picked up some more advice.

From Nelsons: Remove the mid range plants – keep the tall stuff, keep the low stuff, junk the middle stuff.

When in doubt I used the advice from Nelson’s and that helped.

Other new things I learned:
- Don’t let the sago go, rip those pups out immediately. The sago out front was a two day project all by itself.

Simple rules I use to cleanup
- Remove dead plants
- Remove plants that refuse to stand up straight
- Prune all trees up to 8′ high, remove all branched below that level.
- When in doubt, remove it
- Relocate any plant crowding other plants.

Tips:
- Gingers can be cut back to the ground in the fall or spring if you wish
- Take photos – landscape shots, not individual plants. I find I miss lots of things that are obvious when I take some time to look at the photos on the computer.

I still have to cleanup the yaupon clusters out back, but I’m just about done with this year’s big clean up.

10 landscape design tips for small spaces
10 more design tips for small spaces

Before Last month’s pre cleaning garden shots

I recently attended a talk at Mercer on growing cactus and succulents in Houston. If you haven’t attended any talks at Mercer do consider it. They’d love to see you and I learn a great deal each time I attend.

Most cactus prefer drier environments than we have in Houston. While they all prefer it dry, not all of the cactus and succulents enjoy our heat. Winter rains are the biggest threat to cactus growing here. Wet and cold together will cause many cactus to rot.

Cactus and succulents differ only slightly. All cactus are succulents, not all succulents are cactus. Cactus store water in their stem, succulents store water in the leaves, stem or both.

Cactus have tufts of hair or small spines at the base of every spine, succulents do not. While you can strip a cactus bare of spines with out hurting the plant. It is similar to leaf removal. You can not do so with a succulent. Succulent thorns are connected to the stem tissue. Removing them will tear the stem that transports nutrients through the plant.

Cactus have spines which are leaves which have evolved to a more efficient shape for the climate. The spines offer protection from critters looking for water in the desert and also provide shade for the plant. The more spines on a cactus the more sun it likely needs.

Some succulents have roots that spread along the surface to collect water, some use tap roots to find deep water.

Cactus originated only in North and South America, succulents are found worldwide.

Sand and or soil mixed with larger rocks/mulch or other material that will let water drain works best as a planting medium. Be sure to slope and raise the bed to keep water from collecting near the plants.

Mealy bug occasionally bother succulents, treat with insecticidial soaps. Fire ants will some times build a mound right over your succulent, burying it. Treat them with your favorite fire ant treatment.

Succulent gardens look best and least annoy your neighbors and the homeowners associations when you use several plants of different heights, textures and colors together. Try to use one or a few large plants, then fill in with smaller plants. Also include some dry plants that aren’t succulents. Wild flower bunches blend well. The Succulent gardens pool at Flickr has a nice collection of photos for ideas.

See also:
Agaves
Soapweed yucca
Aloe
Aloe rust
Tigertoothed Aloe