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Showing posts with label wild flowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wild flowers. Show all posts

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Primary Colors

I like my flower colors hot.  Screaming hot.  Blindingly hot.  Maybe that's why I moved to Texas.

Oh sure, I've got some nice pink roses, but for the most part I want my flowers to punch me in the face when I look at them.  No soothing pastels for me.

I tried, really I did.  I went through quite the english cottage-style gardening phase 15 years ago.  But somehow some screaming red or a gaudy orange always crept it's way back in amongst the lovely blues, pinks and lavenders.

In my newest yard I have planted color with abandon - and I blame Georgetown Texas.  One of the first places I visited after moving here was the poppy festival in Georgetown.  Lovely red poppies were sprinkled liberally between the beautiful craftsman homes.  I buy bags of poppy seed at the Wildseed Farms in Fredericksburg and plant every fall. These growing in front of the firecracker fern are particularly eye catching.


Subtlety has never been a word used to describe me. I seem to crash from one extreme to the other, never lingering in the middle for more than a nanosecond.  This trait certainly comes through in my plant selections.

Near the red poppies, sages and roses, a yellow yarrow has just started blooming.  It will go nicely with the yellow four o'clocks and lantana that will be lighting up in a few weeks.
Now that I have a garden full of bright colors, I find that I'm sneaking some blues in.  Bluebonnets, day flowers, salvias and agave complete the primary color wheel.  So let's see, that's three colors - maybe I am finding some middle ground after all!



Sunday, July 25, 2010

Pretty Little Things

My days of cottage style gardening are over for now. A whole yard filled with nothing but flowers is not what I'm currently doing, gardening-wise, but I do miss them.

Luckily for me I live in a place where wildflowers are exalted. Austin is, after all, the home of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Her program to seed Texas roadways makes the spring here a kaleidoscope of color. There is also a local farm that raises flower seed, which is where I got the sunflowers pictured.

So now I'm thinking maybe I can do this flower thing after all. I can plant native seed all over my berms and between my fruit trees. Those blue bonnets are nitrogen-fixing legumes and will increase soil fertility and tilth. Not only that, but the native flowers will attract bees and beneficial insects that will help my garden thrive.

So I guess all those years of subscribing to Fine Gardening and longing to see the great landscapes of the British Isles is going to pay off after all. Right here. In Texas of all places. I think Lady Bird would be proud.