Rob's plants

Time 2021-06-23 20:27:21

Web Name: Rob's plants

WebSite: http://www.robsplants.com

ID:184963

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Recent topics How tender is tender - plant survival through the 2021 freezeAttack of the Huisache GirdlersA page about our Houston-style rock gardenWhere on earth have I landed?The proper question is: What two places on earth have I landed. This websiteoriginally described our garden on a plot in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley,an hour north of Philadelphia, in the suburbs of Allentown. Wejokingly referred to our piece of zone 6 paradise as "The Lush Gardens ofAllentown", and lovingly tended it for the nearly twenty years we lived there.Through that time, it grew from a bare patch of newly developed land into arichly landscaped garden with many dozens of trees and other mature plantings,two ponds, and a boatload of memories.When time came to move from our family's first home, we lifted our roots andplanted them in the southwestern suburbs of Houston. Our tiny slice of Richmond TXis part of the brand new Harvest Green subdivision (see a pattern here?) withonly institutional landscaping installed in between big homes and bermudagrass front lawns. After settling in for a few months, we started back in on gardening,developing plans for creating a new garden to enjoy around our new home albeit at a smaller scale than our original one (lots are much smaller aroundhere).We'll always have a soft spot for our first "lush garden", so I intend to keep the pages we built to describe that garden up here. But of course I've retooled the site to also showcase our fledgling efforts here inHouston. So if it seems like this website can't quite make up its mind whatit's all about that's why. I hope you'll take some time to explore both aspects. Please feel free to let us know what youthink.Read more about gardening in the Lehigh Valley.Who's a-gardening? Mostly me (Rob), as much as I can, and sometimes Amy (as much as our ownkids as well as the ones she attends to as a fifth-grade teacher lether). Our oldest, Max, is off to college by now; my high schoolers,Ben and Lily, help out in their own ways. Even though back in Allentownthey all had their own little back-yardgardens, they haven't quite caught the gardening bug. That's OK, Ididn't catch it till I had my very own garden hopefully some of mylove for plants rubs off or osmoses into their bloodstream just a little, sothat they can recognize their own opportunities to develop a green thumbwhen they arrive.Our senior cat Bear spends a good bit of his time outdoors, no doubt terrorizing the bird population (in Allentown he liked to behead volestoo, but he hasn't had much luck catching things in Texas yet). Our junior catMilo isn't supposed to go outside, but he's sneaky and fast, so he does manageto get some outdoor time in as well. The latest addition to our gaggle is ourmuttpuppy Hippie, a clueless husky-shepherd mix of sorts who thinks life is notworth living without digging to the detriment of both lawn and borderareas. We're trying to train her to focus her attention on less destructiveactivities, thus far without much success.As for wildlife back in Pennsylvania we had resident squirrels,chipmonks and rabbits, along with frogs and fish in the pond, an occasionaltoad, and even a fox and some deer on the odd occasion. Around Houston, wehaven't found much animal life beyond insects, birds, toads, and(delightfully) lizards. There be snakes in them thar fields, but we've onlyspotted one transient visitor on our plot as of yet. On my bike rides, Isee plenty of flat armadillos and possums (and even the occasional wildhog), but those haven't scaled the privacy fences surrounding all back yardsin our neighborhood. On the bird front, we've been happy to see a pair ofcardinals frequenting our garden, and hummingbird sightings are far morefrequent here than they were in Allentown. With time, we hope this gardenwill support a wide and growing variety of local fauna.What's going on?You can read about the latest musings about what's happening in the garden in my garden journal. I'd write more right here on this page, but I was always forgetting to update the information, and foundsome embarrassingly out-of-date statements - so I'll just try to keep mythoughts in my journal from now on. I'd call it a blog, but I'm an old-fashionedkind of guy.Latest entry: 'When it rains, it pours' on June 07, 2021.What does it look like?We're not sure what our Pennsylvania garden looks like right now we left it to a new family who we hope will appreciate its many treasures,while making it their own. So I can only describe what it looked like whenlast we gardened there... Our almost-one-half-acre plot had plenty ofgarden space the lawn area was constantly shrinking. Oursmallish front yard was strewn with trees, withmixed borders along the front of the house, arock garden, and a "Lane" leading from the front doorstep to theside garden, which at one point was our most display-worthy garden (we directedguests to our back-yard wedding through this garden when it was quite new), butit became a little sloppy over the years, working through the transitions as the huge weeping cherry cast shadewhere there once was abundant sun. Meanwhile, the other side of the house wasflanked by a driveway with a narrow strip of perennial border, which always gotparched in summer we really valued perennials that could survive our driveway bed! The back yard was morefree-form: relatively demure plantings near ourpatio and around the patio-side pond, acutting garden turned 'curve garden'which became a wild playground of annuals, tall perennials, andboisterous herbs. The pi ce de r sistance was our big pond, which along with its waterfall andfiltration bog took up a major swath of the backyard, and ran into our original back yard island with trees, shrubs, a hill, aDutch windmill and lots of perennials with a concentration onprairie-dwellers. And then there were the vegetable garden and the orchard (which doubled as plantnursery/holding area). For a map leading to more information and photos,visit our Allentown garden page.Our Houston garden is very different. Much smaller, for one, and muchyounger of course. When we started shopping around for a home in the Houston area's many'master-planned communities', we quickly realized that everything is bigger inTexas except for lot sizes. Many homes we considered had views of a privacy fence six feet from the walls both left and right, and a backyard justbig enough for a patio and some shrubs. Since we knew we'd be looking foran opportunity to build a new garden, we selected our lot accordingly: ourcul-de-sac home has a narrow front yard, but more space in the back and on theleft side than is typical in our section. That gives us some room to play with;the backyard is steadily losing lawn area to flower borders, and a waterfall pondsits smack in the middle of the space, providing the sound of cascading water,views of fish, dragons and damsels, and a (mostly illusionary) sense of coolin the heat of the Houston summer. The backyard is fully enclosed in 6-foot cedar slat fences; somehow, we got the 'ugly side' all the way around,which suits us fine they're better for mounting trellises on! That provides a very well-defined canvas, compared to our previous experience in Pennsylvania, where backyard lawns flowed seemlessly from one lot to the otheruntil one or both neighbors decided to put up hedges or fences. The front yard is small and the homeowners' association places heavy restrictions on what canbe planted there, so it won't be the focus of our gardening efforts, althoughit does need some sprucing up the landscaping package installed (without any input from us) by our builder is quite uninspiring. So lots to do,and plenty of opportunity to experiment in our new climate and environment. What plants?I haven't tried to keep track of the number of different plants we've grownover the years, but it has to be over a couple thousand. Every year, new ones join the fold,from various seed trades and exchanges, mail-order, and local nursery purchases.For a good number of plants, I've collected some general information andadded my comments, and in many cases photographs from our garden. Accessthese plant portraits from:The plant portrait listings you can search from hereThe plants-for-sale pageThe seed-starting details pageBecause these pages have different purposes, the plants described don'tcompletely overlap. Look around, and see what you can find!I even have a page dedicated to our weeds!The plant portraits below are the ones most recently added or updatedChamaecrista fasciculatapartridge peaDyckia sp.Manihot grahamiihardy tapioca treeAntirrhinum hispanicumSpanish snapdragonYucca desmetiana 'Blue Boy'Billbergia nutansqueen's tearsCuphea hyssopifoliaMexican heatherAristolochia watsoniiWatson's pipevineErythrina crista-gallicoral beanWhen I think of the garden, I mostly consider the plants and thehardscaping. But this business of presenting my garden to the web wide worldhas given me a new appreciation for some of the other things, living andinanimate, that complete our garden. First, there are the many animals scurrying,buzzing, creeping, and fluttering around. I hadn't an inkling of the sheervariety of flies that populate the premises - let alone bugs, bees, wasps, andcaterpillars. To celebrate their colorful diversity, I put up a series ofwildlife pages filled with pictures taken in our garden.You can also take a peek at the most recently added critter photos.Then there are all those fungal lifeforms that rear their heads at varioustimes of the year (but especially in fall). Some are dainty and frail, othersodd, and a few just plain disgusting. But it makes for an interesting collection,which I have documented on my fungus page.Now that we've covered the lively and the merely alive, the last (so far)category of garden essentials is garden art. One can debate whether theeclectic grab-bag of objects that constitutes our "collection" has much at all todo with art in the finer definition of the word - that's why I've titled thepage showcasing it all Garden art?.Seed tradingTo get through the winter, I spend a lot of time growing plants fromseed. That means I collect seed from the garden in summer and fall,and have plenty to trade. I used to do most of my trading through GardenWeb, but since they changed hands, I set up my own trading website, atPlantLinks trading. I alsoparticipate in the annual HPS/MAG and NARGSseed swaps.Note: I haven't quite gotten into the swing of seed-starting since movingto Houston, and our garden offers little in the way of seeding plants so seed trading is on hiatus for now. I do still start my own seeds in winterand early spring, you can check on what new-to-me varieties I'm growing on this overview page.Keeping track of the many seed varieties and trades in progress can getto be a nightmare. To help with this, I put together an Excel utilitythat does a lot of the hard work. If you'd like to give it a try, goto the seed tool page.Other favorite websitesThe internet has become one of the most important tools for manygardeners I'm sure it has for me! On my linkspage I collect web links to sites I've found useful or interesting:informational sites, sources for supplies and plants, and other gardeners'homes on the web. Recently, I joined the growing community of gardenerssocializing and building a plant database at All Things Plants. For even more gardening-related sites, you can also visit the Curlie gardening category.MiscellaneousJust because I have no other place to put this, here goes. I puttogether a nifty little php script to view your server web access logs fromany browser. If that sounds like something you'd like to try, check it out. If you are interested in advertising on robsplants.com, please drop me a lineusing the contact link below. I can accommodate custom ads, or facilitatedirect access to the Google ad blocks on the robsplants.com pages.

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