Xeriscape - Drought-Adaptive Horticulture
The Gone Native Drought Adaptive Garden
Scenes from May 4, 2006
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When the big pad prickly pear begins blooming, the peak of bird migration is occurring, and the often the peak of the native wildflower season has been reached. Summer's relentless heat has not begun, and cool fronts come every week to create perfect days.
A Prickly Pear blossom is one of the most perfect flowers in the world - its beauty is breathtaking!
When a person looks very closely into a prickly pear blossom, a "zillion" different tiny bees, flies, beetles, bugs, moths and more.
When the trees have become fully leafed out, shade becomes important for the humans, but becomes a challenge for the gardener. The competition from the tree roots and the shade cause the understory plants to decline unless they are specifically adapted for that micro-habitat.
Damianita is native to Palo Duro Canyon and other locations on the eastern side of the Llano Estacado. A small evergreen shrub, in the spring it bursts forth with a golden glow.
When blackfoot daisy is at its peak, it is a wonderful counterpoint to sandsage - and the pairing can be found sometimes in the sanddunes to the west of the Llano Estacado.
Lantana horrida is the most freeze-resistant species of lantana. Gone Native has two varieties - one that reaches 3 feet in height, and another that has grown to over 8 feet tall.
Sometimes a garden has something other than plants - this collection of a metal frog, metal cicadas, metal lanterns arranged on a stump has significance for me. For me, it is an arrangement that I look at as I leave for work and the sight of it gives me a feeling that the day will go well.
After looking at the preceding ornamentation, I lift my eyes to look south, and this is the scene in May.
This species of Bird of Paradise (Caesalpina) was brought to West Texas with the first settlers. It is a native of South America, and was brought by early Spanish settlers to New Mexico as early as the 1600s. So were the geraniums, and the garden seating is of a Spanish design as well.
Native yucca and native sleepy daisy (Aphanostephus) with phlox from the hill country presents another light and airy combination for the May landscape.
Sleepy daisy, garden sage, agave along a dry streambed are highlighted by a beam of sunlight through the trees.
At a pond surrounded by a grove of chinese pistache, small willows grow among the rocks at water edge, and in the water are water lilies and moneyplant (Hydrocotle). The moneyplant is native to the upper Llano River in the Hill Country of Texas.
Sometimes a juniper becomes covered with berries - and when it does, it becomes a "beaded curtain," like one we have in the house of a loteria card. (Loteria is a card game in Mexico.)
Red yucca present bright slender columns that are replicated with the columnar trunks of trees in the background.
A garden is not a garden without birds - and I am always cheered by the presence of scissortails.
Along with scissortails, western kingbirds also return to spend the summer at Gone Native - and their constant fussing and chattering becomes part of the music of the place.