Gimme Shelter
12/10/2011 in gardening, native plants, shade garden, winter gardening
The Garden Under The Magnolia
It’s frosted multiple times, but under the protective leaves of the magnolia, the blooms continue.
A tiny garden, that has a wide selection of plants.
With winter coming on, the surprise is in having any blooms.
The monarchs are long gone, but the milkweeds bloom on…
A bi-color milkweed as well.
There’s no humming bird presence here now either, but the salvia continue to bloom.
Would you believe peppers?
And black eyed susans….
Even a toad lily.
I planted this tiny garden of perennials at a friend’s apartment, the landlord is cool enough to allow us to plant a garden in the front yard.
My friend thinks that it doesn’t look much like a flower bed, but looks like a patch of wilderness due to the variety of plants.
Apparently her expectation for a flower garden is a patch of bedding plants…
The cat tending the garden, she likes it a lot better than the blah turf.
In planting a tree garden, I have to use a soil detector… Especially under magnolias and maple trees. There is small pockets of soil among the roots that are to be found on the soil surface. When gardening under trees, I’ll add a small amount of compost, and shoe-horn the plants in those small soil pockets. The plants in this garden needed watering a couple times a week during the dry spell, but in keeping the garden small, watering this much wasn’t the onerous job that it would have been in a larger garden.
Christine @ The Gardening Blog said on 12/15/2011
I think your cat is cute! Lovely blooms for this time of the year in your garden. Love the toad lily!
stone said on 12/15/2011
Thanks, Christine…
I surfed over and had a look at your garden in South Africa… nice!
I totally appreciated your about page showing y’alls garden critters!
I need to work on one…
Mizz Chairman said on 01/22/2012
That toad lily really is unusual. Not sure I’ve ever seen them before. My milk weeds finally froze a few weeks ago. In past years, I allowed the seeds to fall to the ground thinking they would come up again next year. It never happened. Too much leaf mulch, I guess. So this year, I brought the seed pods inside and put them on a plate. Now, those fuzzy things attached to the seeds are floating all over the house!
stone said on 01/22/2012
While the seeds come up very easily, there is an easier way to propagate tropical milkweeds.
I’ve taken photos of the process, and still haven’t put up a propagation post… I need to get that done… someday.
Tropical milkweeds root very easily. I take cuttings that are about 6 inches in length, and set them in a container of sand, or any potting soil, covered a few inches up the stem… keep in a sunny window, set the new plants out in the garden in the Spring.
I also dig the plants (in bloom), before frost, and they continue blooming all winter… I set them outdoors when the temp is above freezing.
Tropical milkweeds are even easier than Brugmansias…
There are several types of toad lilies, they are Autumn bloomers, like a damp shady garden, protected from deer. They will grow in fairly dry conditions, but will not bloom while being grazed by Bambi.