A repeat of the Corps of Discovery documentary on PBS and a re-read of the beautifully illustrated book, Uncommon to This Country, Botanical Discoveries of Lewis and Clark, lead me to spruce up my garden with a selection of both native and non-native bulbs.

Within an easy day drive from Amarillo is one of America's top five botanic gardens, the Denver Botanic Gardens. When visiting this city on the edge of plains and mountains, plan to spend a half day or more immersed in top class horticultural design and style, visiting a world of plants from the tropics to tundra.

Claude Monet is known not only for his artistry on the canvas, but with the soil. His garden at Giverny is one of the best loved and visited. Much of his gardening renown is due to his great love of flowers, his harmonious use of colors, a departure from past garden styles, the exuberance of the gardens through the seasons and his impression of the gardens in his paintings.

A few Garden Notes for 2013 merit brief updates as more information became available. I'll start with the last post and work my way back.

On May 21, at 8:00 a.m. GMT, the greatest and grandest flower show will open to the public, the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show, lovingly referred to as Chelsea. The Chelsea experience is available with just a tap of your finger with the iPhone app or RHS website.

Yesterday, I posted information on my top local native wildflowers for the garden. Today, We'll top it off with shrubs, grasses and cacti to lend variety in shape, width and texture. Naturally, if you were planting and installing a garden, the trees and shrubs would go in first, before the herbaceous perennials and grasses. I'm only listing a few of the many local native and Southwest native plants available.

This week, May 4 - May 12th is National Wildflower Awareness Week. Celebrate the abundance, take time to see, identify and learn about a few of the thousands of native wildflowers throughout Texas and the United States.

Today, April 22, is Earth Day. April 22 had been designated Earth Day on April 22, 1970, thought to be the beginning of the modern environmental movement. It was eight years since the publishing of Silent Spring, the landmark book by Rachel Carson in 1962, which brought national and international awareness to the disruption of ecosystems by pesticide and herbicide use. Before that time, the interconnectivity of life was rarely considered, and little understood.

I'm still catching up on horticultural news of 2012. This post includes a few important hort-bits, easy to miss if one isn't out searching for it: a new release of the Plant Hardiness Map, official listing of the world's flora, a change in the procedure of naming new species, a link to a noteworthy essay on naming and finally, the top new plant species, including one named after a cartoon character.

Spring is the time of year many gardeners amend their soils to improve organic content and soil structure. Although composted animal manures and composted plant material is considered to be the best soil amendment for general improvement of soil tilth, the use of a group of synthetic chemicals referred to as persistent herbicides gives rise to caution when procuring organic amendments. In particular, adding herbicide-exposed composted manure and other products to vegetable and ornamental beds can be devastating.

We are already an hour into Spring, arrived at just after sunrise at 8:02 am this Wednesday, March 20, 2013. After realizing we've reached the long awaited vernal equinox, I ran outside, braving the chilly air and cut a small bouquet of hyacinth, a violet cultivar of the Dutch hyacinth, Hyacinthus orientalis. Once the hyacinths bloom, I feel the gloom of winter has been dispelled.

We are into another year and as in every year, we never quite know what we'll face. Plenty of sun and wind for sure, perhaps timely and average rainfall amounts. Possibly snow, hail, sudden temperature shifts, hopefully not anything worse. These are normal weather occurrences gardeners deal with nearly each and every year. If you haven't been as successful as you'd like when tackling the average conditions, your garden probably suffered under the more extreme heat and drought we've been under. I can't foretell the future, but most climatologists agree the trend is towards warmer average temperatures and less rainfall in our region for the next century.