Knowing Your Zone

Like any normal person who likes to play in dirt, planting flowers was my number one desire once we were all moved in.  Originally the front garden consisted of some shrubs that I found boring and a couple of rose bushes that needed some serious love.  I ripped out the shrubs completely, which was lot more work than it sounds like.  Then I went to the nursery without doing any research whatsoever on plants that would grow in Houston.  The problem with Houston?  It's really hot.  I made a lot of mistakes with my purchases, but I had one genius moment.  I grant you, it was a fluke, but I have to give myself some credit.

Let's talk about my mistakes first.  Considering the difference between annuals and perennials when planting is very important...yeah, I didn't do that the first year.  So my garden looked really great for about a month.  Then came the heat and the drought and almost everything died, because of my second mistake, having a watering schedule and amending it to account for the heat.  I'm going to do a whole post on watering but just know at this point I had no clue what I was doing.  So once again, death in my garden. 

My genius move though was buying two plumbago plants.  These are Texas native, perennial flowering shrubs and they have saved my sanity.  I love them.  Paul and I talked about raising the garden bed up a few years ago and I outright refused because it would mean pulling up the plumbago.  The past two winters we have actually had some pretty long freezes and I've been worried that they were gone for good, but every Spring they're back and blooming.  Again, I love them.

That tiny blue flower in the middle is the first bloom of the season, soon I will have four feet covered in those flowers.

So I learned my lesson pretty quick.  Drought resistant Texas native perennials are the way to go.  Last year I planted a Gold Esperanza and Purple Salvia and just yesterday I planted a Silverado Sage.  I still use annuals to add color during the spring and summer months but even with care and watering they tend to fail me on a regular basis.  My lesson this year was that Gerber Daisies are just not going to make it in my garden.

I kept the original roses from when we bought the house and last year was the first good year they had so I decided to add another one, we'll see how it does.