High Plains Gardening
The gardening website of the Texas High Plains Region
Garden Notes
Local Butterflies 2024
I began writing about butterflies I’ve seen locally in the Amarillo, Texas area in the fall of 2020, after spending the year observing and photographing them in my garden. It was the first Covid year, and like many of us, we spent a good deal more time at home and in our own gardens. The first of the Garden Notes on Local Butterflies included photos taken at our home garden in the city of Amarillo, Palo Duro Canyon and the Amarillo Botanical Gardens over a period of years up until 2020. Afterwards, each Garden Note on Local Butterflies included only butterflies seen...
Springtime in Palo Duro Canyon
This spring of 2024, my husband and I made six trips to Palo Duro Canyon State Park to view the butterfly life. The last several springs had been pretty dry starting off, and many of the wildflowers didn’t bloom, or bloom much. This spring, a wetter late winter and early spring assured a decent wildflower bloom, and hopefully, butterflies. (Hackberry Emperor at left on cactus bloom.)
We had last visited Palo Duro Canyon in consecutive trips in the spring of 2019, mainly observing the progression of wildflower blooms. In 2019, our first trip was on May 13th...
2023 brought another exciting year of butterfly observations! Highlight moments included both one of the largest butterflies in North America, as well as the smallest – the Giant Swallowtail and Western Pygmy Blue (photo at right). The Giant Swallowtail made an appearance for only about four hours on August 19th, and the Western Pgymy Blues appeared from September 18th off and on until November 8th. (Female black swallowtail photo at left on Verbena bonarensis.)
This year, I paid even more attention to butterflies in our garden, diligently counting species and numbers each day. I’m...
Butterfly Observations 2022
Last year, 2022, brought another year of butterfly observations. The past two years, I’ve written about butterflies and moths I’ve observed. For those GardenNotes, Local Butterflies, and Local Butterflies 2021, I based my observations on the photos I had taken, conveniently date stamped. (Quartet of Queens on Gregg's mistflower at left.)
At the beginning of last year, I decided to take notes as well as photos to document my sightings. Most butterflies and moths included here were documented by a photo, the best I could obtain given their skittish nature on...
Local Butterflies 2021
This GardenNotes on the butterflies I observed in 2021 is in a way a follow-up to butterfly observations made in the past year. Is it possible for a small home butterfly garden to attract a wide array of butterflies each year? At the end of the 2020 gardening season I wrote and posted a GardenNotes called Local Butterflies. During the first Covid-19 pandemic year, I focused my attention on my home garden and the bees, birds, butterflies and other critters that visited.
The 2020 gardening year and all but one butterfly observation came to an abrupt end on October 23rd...
Daffodil History and Classification
Narcissus, flow’r of inspiring splendor
Trumpet forth Spring’s promised sonnet, tender
Dianne Capell, Excerpt from A Spring Sonnet, 2020
In rural northeastern Oklahoma lies an old cemetery dating back to the days when Oklahoma was known as Indian Territory. On an early springtime day around mid-March, there among the gravestones, you would find clumps of small, yellow trumpet daffodils. Driving in the near vicinity, patches of daffodils line fences and gather around abandoned farmhouses. These daffodils have been identified as Narcissus...
Daffodil Governance
This is the second in the series on Daffodils that describes the various organizations that govern daffodils and the many thousands of cultivars, about the classification and coding system used. The first article, The World's Most Popular Spring Flower -- Daffodils, explores to a certain extent the "why" of the daffodil's popularity throughout history. And in the third of the Daffodil series, How to Grow Daffodils in the Texas Panhandle, l advise on the "how" of growing daffodils.
With over 30,000 registered cultivars, how can anyone hope to make sense of the...
Growing Daffodils
This is the third Garden Notes in the Daffodil series and advises on the "how" of selecting and growing daffodils in the Texas Panhandle. The first article in the Daffodil series explores to a certain extent the "why" of the daffodil's popularity throughout history, The World's Most Popular Spring Flower -- Daffodils. The second Garden Notes in the Daffodil series describes the "what" -- about the governing bodies, classification system and coding, Daffodil Organization. (Photo at left 'Stainless Steel' and 'Thalia' daffodils precede Apeldoorn tulips just beginning to...
Pansies, ornamental cabbage and kale, along with showy purple mustard, color my garden in winter before bulbs and flowering perennials appear. Even now in the midst of winter, all is not quiet. Throughout every nook and cranny of the garden tips of bulb leaves push upward testing day length and cold.
I will add my voice to the many who have written about the difficult year of the coronovirus pandemic of 2020. As I had more time on my hands and few places to go during the year of physical distancing, I spent even more time in the garden working and observing. My gardening year was...
I didn’t set out to make a butterfly garden.
A few years ago, I made it a practice to look for pollinators, mainly bees, on flowers in my garden, to determine whether they were beneficial to the pollinators. Over the course of the past five years, and mainly the last two years, I paid particular attention to the butterflies that visited.
(Throughout this article, at the end of paragraphs, I've identified the butterflies and plant pictured. Painted lady butterfly with 4 small eyespots on zinnia at left, and the American lady on Salvia farinacea 'Cathredal Deep Blue' at right. Note...
A Garden in Focus -- A Visit to the Garden Designed by the Owner of Windswept Prairie Plant Truck
One of my greatest pleasures is to visit other gardeners gardens. It’s a delight to see their on-growing creations. Some are works in progress, as I always think mine is. Others, though still evolving, have a much more polished and cohesive design, largely due to their focus – knowing what they like and how to go about it. A gardener who knows her mind.
I visited one such garden this year, the garden of Julie Fullington, owner of Windswept Prairie Plant Truck, Amarillo’s only mobile plant...
The Illustrious Agave Bloom
Our Agave parryi ssp. neomexicana, formerly known as Agave neomexicana, first showed signs of sending up a stalk in preparation for reproduction – or flowering – on April 24th, 2019. I was given a beautiful 5-gallon sized plant about six or seven years ago, so it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly its age. My best guess is it's around 15 years old, within the typical 8-20 year bloom range. Agave’s only bloom once, they’re monocarpic, so it was with great anticipation I watched its progress.
I have seen agaves in bloom before, on spring vacations to the desert...
I moved to Texas in 1970, and to Amarillo in 1974. I thought the weather was marvelous! I grew up in cloudy, cold and rainy Wisconsin, outside the city of Wausau in the north central part of the state. The weather was completely different in Amarillo to what I knew. I loved the weather here. To me, it was warmer, sunnier, certainly windier, and with milder winters. Yes, milder winters, even though I learned that Amarillo was the Arctic of Texas.
Maybe because I moved here from such a different climate I paid more attention to the weather. And when I started gardening in the mid 1990’s, I...
A Visit to Longwood Gardens
My favorite gardens to visit are gardens that express the owners interest and passion in gardening and horticulture. These gardens reflect the amount of effort and time, not to mention expense, their owner commits to their vision. A great garden is more than just a successful landscaping scheme, although that is certainly important. The extent of the owner-gardener’s investment is reflected in the benefit even a casual visitor can glean from their experience. (Photo at left, view of the Conservatory Complex from the Fountain Terrace; photo at right of the entrance...
Gardening During the Age of Climate Change
The Texas Panhandle is known for its rapidly changing weather, where temperatures race up and down a thermometer on a somewhat regular basis. Now, global warming is bringing the additional challenge of not only changing weather, but a changing climate. Springtime months are warmer forcing plants from dormancy earlier. Blooms can appear two to three weeks early, causing complications in the plant/insect interactions. And once bloomed, springtime gardeners are in weekly fear of a sudden freeze that ends the blooming and leafing out process until the...
Foliage – the Mainstay of the Garden
Every year as the first of February rolls around, the bleakness of the winter landscape stares back at me from the window. Under gray skies, the garden appears desolate. Murky, muddy grays, browns and tans are the colors of late winter; the light and life of even these neutral colors seemingly drenched right out by dark cloudy skies and freezing air. During the dreary season, the landscape in our foliage challenged region makes us long for the warm days of summer. First shoots and bulbs are beginning to appear; hope is kept alive by the promise of...
Canyon’s Edge Plants closed for the season in early October, but work continues for Neal Hinders, 55 years young, owner, grower, plantsman, as he prepares for another season. Plants need to be sorted and repotted for growing over winter, demonstration beds mulched and more importantly, seeds and plugs ordered for next years business. Preparation is well under way for seeding out the hundreds of types of plants that will be on offer next April. (Photo at left of Neal and Nancy Hinders accepting his award, and on the right, from Canyon's Edge Plants Facebook page, with permission.)
By the...
By mid-July, the heat of summer wears me down. I find myself wishing that the cold, carefree days of winter were near. Instead, the reality of at least six more weeks of searing sun, oppressive temperatures, and wind tires me. What must my plants be feeling! Most of the spring and early summer blooming plants are cool season plants that burst into bloom early and wane as the temperatures soar in our hot summer climate. It’s little wonder this inter-season from mid-July into September has left many gardeners, and gardens to repose, waiting for cooler times.
I was schooled on the convention...
Continuing the Spring Bloom with Native Wildflowers
One of the biggest genera to star in mid to late spring and into summer are the penstemons. They are the Southwest’s star wildflower. Penstemons are endemic to North America and can be found in every biome across this huge continent from Alaska to Guatemala, but most are native to arid and semi-arid areas in Western states, with the center of species diversity in the Four Corners region of Utah (71 species), Colorado (62), Arizona (43) and New Mexico (42). Forty six species live in Idaho, 45 species in Nevada and 39 in Wyoming. About two...
One of my favorite mental images is a meadow filled with wildflowers swaying gently among the native grasses. If I concentrate, I can here the buzz and hum of bees and insects darting from flower to flower. Overhead, birds and butterflies flit and flutter in the wind.Wildflowers are plants that grow “in the wild” without cultivation. Would you have a garden of wildflowers? Does that sound too wild? Not really, if one considers that except for hybrid flowers and cultivars, all garden flowers are wildflowers somewhere.When we view wildflowers in their natural setting, we see them growing along...
Annual plants comprise some of the jewels of the garden, used to add sparkle and interest when and where needed, in combination with shrubs and perennials. They have the ability to marry flower and foliage, color, form and texture within your existing garden, or form a garden in themselves that lasts from spring into fall. When grown from seed, this can be accomplished with minimal expense.
There are other reason to use annuals besides a splashy use of color in ground or in containers. Annuals fill in the space in young, immature beds and borders. More importantly now than ever, then can be...
One never knows what they’ll find on their first exploration of a botanical gardens, but one thing you can always be sure of, a city’s botanical gardens is an expression of the people of their city. The Tucson Botanical Gardens, known to the locals as a “tranquil oasis in the heart of Tucson”, portrays the progression of gardening one finds in cities with a large influx of residents from other areas of the country as newcomers develop awareness and appreciation of their native surroundings.
As cities begin to burgeon with newcomers, so do their home landscapes, filled with plants from the...
Agaves For the Texas Panhandle
Landscapes designed and populated with Southwest native plants are in sharp contrast to the more foliage intense English, eastern, southern, Pacific northwest and northern areas. Typically, the evergreens in those landscapes feature shrubs with many needles or leaves. Overlooked evergreen plants of the southwest landscape are often a succulent, a plant with living tissue that is able to temporarily store water allowing it to be independent of another water source through periods of drought or low rainfall. Plants of a succulent nature are found in nearly every...
Yuccas are a genus of plants that are much under used and under appreciated in the home landscape. They are often associated with dry desolate looking native landscapes or poorly conceived xeriscape yards. Yuccas are easy care, drought tolerant natives that will provide a distinctive and interesting evergreen element to many home landscapes.
Yuccas are perennial, evergreen, shrubs native to North and Central America and the Caribbean Islands with about 50 known species. Mexico is the diversity center for yuccas. About 20 species of yucca can be found growing in Texas’ diverse eco-regions...
Pollinator Friendly Gardens
The buzz is missing in the garden; a “silent spring” summer and fall has descended across our nation's home landscapes. Even in wild areas, the sound of buzzing bees and other pollinators has diminished.
The past number of years, one of the hottest gardening trends is to plant a pollinator-friendly garden, for hummingbirds, butterflies and too a lesser extent, for bees. A short century ago, this never would have happened, as gardens naturally attracted pollinators and pollinators were all around. Remember when the kitchen garden included room for cut flowers and...