Herself’s Houston Garden

This weekend I attended the Garden Blogger’s Spring Fling. It was my first time going to meet other bloggers of any sort. It was great fun to be surrounded by other gardening geeks and to listen to talks and tour some wonderful gardens in Austin.

We heard a talk by Tom Spencer, of Soul of the Garden that was wonderful. I took a fair bit of notes and hope it’ll help my garden writing.  I was also able to sit in on a group talk with May Dreams about social aspects of blogging ( clearly not one of my strong points ).

Most fun of all was a tour of The Lady Bird Johnson Wildlife Center ( photos ) which I had not yet seen and James David Private Garden ( photos ).  The pictures do not come close to doing the James David garden justice.  Be sure to visit it if you are in Austin.  Austin has a much cooler, drier climate than Houston and the plants were more of what you’d expect to see in a Texas garden, unlike our little tropical rain forest climate in Houston which allows us greater diversity in plants.

The bloggers from Digging,  Sharing Nature’s Garden, Kiss of the sun, and Zanathan arranged the whole affair and what an amazing job they did. Everything was planned, we had speakers, lovely gardens to visit and no awkward standing around wondering who to talk to.

Austin is colder, drier and a whole lot hillier than Houston.  I enjoyed wandering about the city a bit before the get together and catching the feel of the place.  Austin feels very much like Providence RI. The city is both large enough and small enough to have active groups in many areas including gardening.

If you haven’t already totally blown your plant budget at the Extension office and March Mart sales remember that the Cockrell Butterfly center is having its sale this Saturday, and the Lady Bird Wildflower Center is having its sale this coming weekend.

These bloom profusely early spring and can be seen in clusters in any damp, boggy area. By summer they have vanished. It prefers shaded areas but can be seen in full sun bogs growing wild. They are grown from bulbs and excellent additions to your bog or swale garden. Flowers are on 2′ tall stems. Blooms are fragrant.

The Burj Dubai building is supposedly inspired and designed after this flower.

The name Amaryllidaceae comes from the Greek word ‘amarysso’ which means to twinkle as many of these flowers do have a slight sparkle. Try not to move these plants, even though bulbs are resilient it takes time for the root system to regrow.

Though they prefer moist soil, they will usually do ok in drier areas.

This plant is a Texas native.