Bromeliads, Succulents, and Flora Grubb…oh my

Here’s a few more inspirations from the 2013 Garden Bloggers Fling in San Francisco.

This first one has it roots in my 2005 neighborhood garden tour. These homeowners fashioned their own wire baskets filled with various plants and hung to trees around their pool.

I was so excited when I saw the wire baskets being sold at Flora Grubb, they seemed perfect to re-create this idea that I had seen so many years earlier. Below is my basket planted with a bromeliad and hanging on a palm next to my pool.

Below is a close-up of the basket. I was so excited to get it planted, I didn’t take any pictures of it while it was empty.

My other purchase from Flora Grubb was a couple of these planters.

I think they are made from palm tree trunks, but I’m not positive about that. Here are my two in their new home.

And, since I am on a succulent kick. I bought this old metal bowl at Another Place in Time and filled it with some succulents that I bought at Filoli.

Growing Tillandsias in Palms

Recently I travelled to San Francisco for the annual Garden Bloggers Fling. We visited about 15 different public and private gardens. There were many opportunities for inspiration.

At the Nichols garden in Oakland, I was taken by their use of tillandsias and bromeliads in the Canary Date palm in their front yard.

I have about 15 palm trees at my new house. I think they were planted at least 15 years ago. Mostly they are 30 ft tall fan and queen palms with relatively smooth trunks. They don’t lend themselves to this kind of planting. However, I do have a few where I think this should work well.

Here’s my test case, with two tillandsias that I bought at Ikea of all places (obviously an impulse buy ). Locally, I think Another Place in Time should have a good selection. This tree already has some weeds growing in it, so it will be nice to have something attractive there as well. And one of these days I might get around to pulling the weeds out.

If this works, I think I’ll start adding some more tillandsias and maybe try a few bromeliads as well.

July Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day

I was so excited yesterday when I realized I was going to actually post a bloom day post on the 15th, the actual bloom day. Then, I realized that yesterday was the 16th, so I just went to bed. Lol

There’s not a lot blooming in my garden right now. Most things are just trying to get established in their new homes.

However, there is one star of the show. The potted Brunfelsia americana that I moved from the old house. Here it is in its glory.

Other plants blooming, but not looking as good are pentas, Laura Bush petunia, chenille plant, Flamenco Samba cuphea, and Yellow buttercup Turnera alternifolia.

Thanks for visiting, check out May Dreams Gardens for other bloom day posts.

Perfect Timing

I moved into my new house in February this year. As soon as I was unpacked, I started working on the gardens.

I had the pond removed, an irrigation system installed, the side sidewalk removed, and a new front sidewalk installed. I brought in about 100 pieces of concrete edging, new sod where the old side sidewalk was, and countless bags of topsoil, rose soil, and mulch. By the way, I swear by Living Earth Rose Soil and Houston Mulch, in case you were wondering.

The front yard

I enlarged the tiny front flowerbed.

My house was built in 1885, so I went with antique brick for the new sidewalk.

The Old Pond

First the pond had to be removed. There is also a small pool in the back yard, and two water features were overwhelming to take care of. The pond is gone and the fish have been given a new home.

The act of removing the pond was a fiasco. The people that I paid to do it only made it look like it was removed. After a good rain I found out that I still had a pond. My Dad spent many back breaking hours busting up the concrete that was at the bottom of the pond so that I could have a regular garden instead of a water garden.

The Side Yard

This sidewalk was in an odd and never used place, so it had to go!

I planted a Brown Turkey fig in the small garden by the fence, I am planning to espalier it.

Looking at the side yard from the opposite perspective

The Vegetable Bed

The yard was sodded in November 2012, but wasn’t really cared for so the grass hadn’t rooted well by the time I built this cinder block bed in April. Usually I use the newspaper method to build my beds (laying down newspaper, wetting it, then covering it with dirt, which will kill the grass), but it was pretty easy to pull the grass up inside this new bed. I filled it with about 8 bags of Black Cow cow manure and garden soil mix from the dirt yard.

I guess that was a great combination, as you can probably tell from the picture below. My tomato plants are outgrowing their cages and I’m harvesting tomatoes every day right now.

All of the gardens (including the vegetable garden) are watered with drip irrigation and the grass is watered with pop-up sprinklers. So, why perfect timing, you ask?

Well, because it’s time for the annual Garden Bloggers Fling (in San Francisco this year) and it’s reaching 100 degrees here in Houston these days. With the plants, most of them started from my old garden, in the ground and my upcoming travels, I won’t have to worry so much about watering. I have to say, that if you have the opportunity to put in an irrigation system before planting your beds, that’s the way to go. I did the opposite at my previous house, only after years of moving around a sprinkler on Saturday mornings.

I’m very excited to have this much accomplished in my first 5 months of living here. My next project is one of the “hell strips” in front of the house. Can’t wait…