High Plains Gardening

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Welcome to High Plains Gardening, the free, non-commercial, gardening information website for the Texas High Plains region and surrounding area!

The purpose of this website is to promote a culture of gardening within the Texas High Plains Region by offering information on an easy and successful way to garden. My hope is that many more people will enjoy gardening, and gardening success, in the Texas Panhandle.

My Vision — Gateway to Southwest Gardens

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I have several goals, or visions, for the Texas High Plains region. I envision:

  • The Texas High Plains region will be known as “Gateway to Southwest Gardens”;
  • Area nurseries will stock and sell a huge selection of low-water use plants suitable for our area; 
  • Area nurseries will promote and sell a wide range of organic gardening supplies; and
  • TV gardening programs that focus on and highlight area gardens, as well as being informational about southwest gardening, will be broadcast locally. 

Establishing and creating this website is just one of the activities I do to draw closer to my vision for our area. I believe all four of my goals are attainable. Read through the rest of the website and give it a try. HighPlainsGardening.com is filled with information that will help you create gardens that are:

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Featured Photography

Featured Photos showcases scenes from six desert botanical gardens, all in the Sonoran Desert. Five are in Arizona: Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix and the Boyce Thompson Arboretum in the greater Phoenix area; Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum, Tohono Chul and Tucson Botanical Gardens in the Tucson area; and the Living Desert Zoo Gardens in Palm Desert, California. We visited these gardens, four of them numerous times. Many of the photos are from the renowned Desert Botanical Gardens. For my selections, I mostly concentrated on photos of the plants themselves, rather than garden art, which is often present throughout the gardens. Visiting desert gardens is mesmerizing and can easily become a habit. And if you are fortunate enough to visit at night, you will find walking among the towering columnar cacti a surreal experience.


Recent Garden Notes

Agave – Noble Plant from the New World

11/21/2019 - 10:10

It was with great delight and excitement I first noticed what appeared to be the first tip of the stem. Having watched agave blooms on a weekly basis at our botanic garden, I was elated to be able to watch it hourly, if I choose, but certainly, daily. I took photos of this marvelous plant nearly every day for the first 6 weeks, then several times a week until the it finished blooming. Each morning, I made sure to check its progress. Afterwards, I photographed it less frequently until the end, but watched it daily. From stem to first emergence to the end of flowering was a period of 10 weeks. Here’s a brief viewers guide to our New Mexican Agave's bloom cycle.

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Amarillo -- Degrees of Change: How Much Climate Change has Warmed Amarillo's Weather

02/06/2019 - 15:10

Over the past two decades, Amarillo’s weather has changed noticeably. I thought the weather in 2018 to be particularly hot, but not quite as severe as the terrible years of 2011 and 2012. I didn’t enjoy the heat of these summers. Three really hot, dry, miserable summers within a decade. Will this be our future? Should I consider moving to a milder, wetter climate? How hot will it get in Amarillo, as global warming continues to warm? This article seeks to answer Amarillo’s degree of change.

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A Visit to Longwood Gardens

09/01/2018 - 16:49

Longwood Gardens includes over 1075 acres of gardens, paths through forests, woodlands and meadow, around lakes and grand plazas, fountains and a through a series of glass houses that make up the four and a half acre conservatory complex. Longwood Gardens is composed of 27 separate outdoor garden areas, 20 gardens inside the conservatory complex and four designated fountain gardens. Longwood can boast more fountains than at any other place in America. It’s specialties are many, the most evident being the fountains, elegant European flair, the extensive conservatory complex, dramatic and varied horticultural displays in an environment that feels comfortably democratic in tone through the five Longwood Gardens seasons.

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