My partner and I just bought a house in South Austin and have always dreamed of having a thriving garden. For the last several years we mastered the indoor plant game, but are now feeling a little overwhelmed of where to start and what it takes to have a thriving garden. Any recommendations for new Texas gardeners? Books? Best place to start given that it’s still the heat of summer?
The front of our house is full sun and faces south. Backyard is partial to full shade from tree cover.
by C_Mone_y
2 Comments
Austin Grow Green guide. I have a physical copy, but I don’t recall how I got it.
[https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Watershed/growgreen/plantguide.pdf](https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Watershed/growgreen/plantguide.pdf)
Shade limits the amount of vegetable and flower gardening you can do, but there are ways to landscape it with layers and texture.
You have a lot of nandina, and I would start by removing that from the sunny areas, at least, as you have more options to grow things there, and also the bed off the back porch, as it can get big and unruly. Personally I would like to remove as much of it as possible. It was very popular with older generations but it’s invasive.
I do not know enough to make serious recommendations, but I’ll write down what we did.
We avoid using grass and insecticides. Using local plants helped with watering and reduced the amount of attention. Texas has awesome flowering bushes, perennials, and annuals…
We replaced grass with decomposed granite. Allowed horse herb to spread on it as a beautiful ground cover.
Turk’s cap, lantana, beauty berry, and angel’s trumpet are some of the bushes we planted. We have a few local grasses- bear grass and bunch grass are my favorites. For the section near the road, we put bunch of annual wildflower seeds. They are replenishing themselves now. March through August, we have bunch of flowers and butterflies and bees galore.
Ladybird Wild Flower Center has sales every so often. Totally try them out. Also, Tillery Street nursery often have a good selection of local plants.