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

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:

Featured Photography

Celebrating Earth Day with photos "Into the Wood -- Spring". Featured photos highlights the beauty of the woodland garden, photos taken in southeastern United States, some formal, some naturalistic. The woodland garden is not one easily duplicated in the Texas Panhandle. Cooling, soothing and relaxing, the woodland garden portrays the delicacy of the flowers, the intricacy and variety of the shapes and shades of green and the wonders of our Planet Earth.

Close up of the delicate epimedium flower

Trilliums -- trilliums have three leaves, three sepals, and three petals.

Trilliums, astilbe and fire pink, Silene virginica

Woodland geranium native to eastern North America, Geranium maculatum

White bluebells fronting a bed of azaleas

Flowering dogwood, Cornus florida 'Rubra'

Featured Plants

Check out my top plants for the season

Veronica x 'Blue Reflection'

Veronica x ‘Blue Reflection’ should be an indispensable evergreen groundcover for you, as it has become for me.

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Mahonia repans

Mahonia repans is one of my favorite plants with four seasons of interest. Low growing and spreading evergreen shrub is native throughout the Rocky Mountains. Bright yellow berries in spring are followed by black berries in summer and reddish winter foliage. The leaves are thick, glossy and holly shaped. Creeping Oregon grape holly prefers amended, humusy soil that replicates its native habitat as an understory plant in woodlands, but is low water-use once established. It will spread to cover an area, but not invasive. Very attractive!

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Mahonia aquifolia

Oregon grape holly is an evergreen holly-like shrub native to the Pacific Northwest Rockies down into California. Upright, it is slow growing but can reach a height of 8 feet. Best when grown in shade, especially out of afternoon sun. Prefers a more humusy soil but will only required once a month watering when established, however, can also be placed in medium and high water-use areas. Bright yellow flowers in spring, followed by dark blue berries in summer. The thick, glossy, holly-like leaves have spines at the points. Leaves turn from green to red in winter.

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Linum lewisii var. lewisii

Linum lewisii, the southwestern and western native perennial wildflower variety of flax was named after Meriwether Lewis, who was first to describe it during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. On July 18th, 1805, near the Great Falls of the Missouri Lewis recorded: "I have observed for several days a species of the flax growing in the river bottoms the leaf stem and pericarp of which resembles the common flax cultivated in the U'States. The stem rises to the hight of about 2 1/2 or 3 feet high; as many as 8 or ten of which proceeds from the same root.

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Eschscholzia californica

Most notable in the meadows and fields of California, the California poppy grows throughout the southwest. Considered to be both annual and perennial, it either comes back the next year or it reseeds. Once you have a stand established, it should continue in your landscape, but not invasively so. This past summer of 2012, my California poppies bloomed in both the spring and our unusual fall. Blooms in April and May. Finely cut blue-green foliage make an attract plant outside the bloom period. The foliage should die back in summer.

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Berberis trifoliata

Native evergreen shrub that makes an excellent hedge plant and wind break. Its blue-green prickly leaves keep the unwanted out (to a point). Please allow room for its spread.

A habitat plant for shelter and as a food source of food for birds and other wildlife that is an attractive addition to the home landscape, where an evergreen shrub is called for in a sunny spot. Sun yellow flowers in March. Cold hardy to -20°, algerita can be found growing from 4000 to 7000 ft. in elevation in Texas, the southwest and Mexico.

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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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High Plains Gardening

High Plains Gardening

High Plains Gardening

High Plains Gardening

High Plains Gardening

My Vision — Gateway to Southwest Gardens

Featured Photography

Featured Plants

Recent Garden Notes

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News

HighPlainsGardening.com Celebrates 15 years of gardening information for the Texas Panhandle in 2020 -- still free and non-commercial!

NEW Featured Photos: Into the Wood -- Spring Edition. Soothing and serene, celebrating Earth Day, April 22.

New Garden Notes: Agave -- Noble Plant of the New World

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