Really beautiful and water wise in addition. I can't help seeing all those green lawns your neighbors have. What a waste of a precious resource.

As always, very nice! I always love your dysodia and flame flower used in the low spots. I just checked OKC www.wunderground station and you have had a perfect summer rain-wise these last 2 months and a half. some rain, but not too much. 2" in June, 3" in July, and even a bit in august . even the tiny bits will refresh these waterwise gardens like yours. Things are turning brown here, everywhere . We have had zip since the ids of June. just triple digits and 50% humidity. It is miserable for plants (and people). They don't get a break.. There should be law against heat&humidity and no rain. I have watered to no avail. The plants were spoiled rotten and then the faucet got turned off but the humidity did not go away. We have gone from rot and 3" hail to brown and crinkly. It looks like your weather has cut back with moderation coaxing the roots down. I am listening to sirens for grass fires just now. We had one 10 acre one last weekend 1/2 mile away. An idiot was burning in a cedar break. I guess another weekend warrior is out in his yard. I had both my new winter fats die from to much water. Now my penstemons are browning up from humid heat and no water.

I have a question for you TR. When you order plants in the mail from places like SRG Summer sale in August, do they arrive undamaged by the heat? I made out an oder of Salvias from Flowers by the sea and then chickened out because I was frightened if receiving cooked plants. They do not give you the choice of ordering and then receiving them in September.

Perfect summer? Are you serious? We had killer floods all through May and June with record amounts that nearly ruined my garden which then dried out and cracked. Humidity is ridiculous & deadly with heat alerts daily. July rain caused more problems than help considering the already suffering roots rotting, overgrown plants and unheard of humidity for this hot time of year. I cut back lots of stuff and had to dig out a couple long established plants.

This has been one of the worst summers I can ever remember in my life and my garden has suffered, I had lots of loss. I guess Mesonet must have missed the remnants of Bill flooding the already saturated mess in June with another foot of rain. What we got in August was gone in a moment, just enough to keep the humidity at dangerous levels, the ground is still dry.

I don't know what shape your shipped plants will be when they get there. We are dropping down to the lower 90's next week when mine ships but its only Big Bluestem which will be cut back anyway so I'm not worried. The HCG plants I ordered won't ship until mid Sept.

I'm sure glad we don't have the sort of weather you two have been having in Oklahoma and Texas! (Mind you, that doesn't stop me from complaining about our weather too....!) I always like the pictures of your hell-strip area tr2 - but walking past those cactuses would sure make me worried (I'm such a wimp!) How fast do they get big/spread out sideways? Do you need to prune them to keep them from encroaching on the sidewalk?

Well, there is a pad I need to lop off thats looking like an ankle biter on the spiny one. The other one in the longer part of the strip is 100% spineless. You can pet him like a puppy and he won't bite or leave any glochids in your skin. He's a 'Friendly Cactus'. No one has any business walking in the area where the spiny one is and it keeps people from parking in the street there if they have a passenger that needs to get out on the passenger side so we now always have access to our driveway with a certain amount of right of way. In the old days, people often parked there which made it hard to back the car out when a party was going on. Not anymore.

Your garden is gorgeous.

I was talking about the part AFTER the floods. It appears that it turned off slowly up there in your neck, not like the gang switch here... We are dry as a bone down here. All the roots rotted in the rain and then had no roots to find water when things dried up. I am seeing 10 - 17% humidity in OKC these days. Here 50%. We will get gulf humidity with out rain. Here, the Trees and streams are looking good still, but the cactus is not. Grasses and perennials are burnt crispy.

I was looking at this weather station.

My summer looked very similar except for how the last month and a half . Here is that station for comparison.

We are at 102 for the foreseeable future. No breaks . Normal for Texas. I am a bit scared of ordering from California. HCG is good about holding plants back till the fall. This place won't.

So very lovely, tex. You're a star in my book.

A wonderful garden appropriate to the climate. Such a great contrast to the ridiculous lawns in the background.

TR2,

I'm curious what zone you are in. I'm trying to establish a water-wise pollinator garden here in Grand Rapids, MI, but my soil is unusually sandy. So, when our dry spells hit, even natives that should be expected to survive tend to wilt or fry. I've added lots of shredded leaves, but most of them are oak leaves. Do you have any particularly cold-hardy and drought tolerant plants you could recommend? I'm trying to get as much to bloom throughout as much of the season as possible. If you are not aware of the hardiness of your plants, please don't go to any trouble to look them up. I have lots of resources, and this is a never-ending process. I hope my neighbors don't mind the unfinished nature of my yard too much.

Anyway, if any favorites pop into your mind, I'd love to try them in my garden. I don't think I can aspire to recreate your yard, though I would love to, but it would be fun to have a piece of it.

Martha

Point very well taken, laceyvail, but in all fairness some contribution to the ridiculous green lawns in the background are due to the ridiculous amounts of rainfall we've seen this summer.

We had had an unusual amount of rain in May and June but still, those sprinklers run all the time. Up the street 90% have in-ground sprinkler systems set on timers for fescue which needs a minimum of being watered twice a week. I live a block away in the cheap seats so most use portable sprinklers on my block.

docmom, We would never have been able to do this if we hadn't brought in tons of sand which was delivered as huge piles from dump trucks. Before it was heavy clay soil that cracked in summer and was difficult to work with. The plants do much better in the sand-amended areas than in the heavier clay that was here before, some areas are almost pure sand sitting on top of some less than great clay. The prairie grass roots zip through it down to the sublayer where they keep going downward.

One of my favorites is Desert Marigold (Baileya) which loves sand but it resents too much moisture. It comes up in winter & spring as a small blue plant and they bloom all season long with creamy yellow flowers against very powder blue foliage. They do best in sand and have naturalized in my yard except this year is a down year for #'s due to the 21 inches we got during that short flood period. Some made it through the deluge so I have plenty of seed for next year. The zone is irrelevant for those, what they need is good draining sand. The flame flowers (Talinum) are good too for naturalizing wide areas for pink, once you have them you will always have them. The yellow flowers are annual helenium aka bitterweed and those are about 5 to 7" tall bouquets. I think of these kinds of plants as reliable filler.

Another favorite is any kind of artemisia or wild sage. I have several fringed sage plants and have been adding more up front. Its a low ground cover type. I purchased 2 Sand Sage (A. filifolia) plants from HCG this spring, I love the fine lacy look of it and had one some year back which I took out, now I regret it. I ordered a Curlycue Artemisia from HCG thats coming this fall along with a Pawnee Buttes Sand Cherry that is extremely cold hardy, low growing and turns red in fall, both would do well in dry sand + cold hardy.

Russian Sage is a good non native for very dry sand, the only thing that will kill it is too much water. Annual gaillardia is another that does well on no water, likes sand and comes back each year from seed. I've ordered several types of seed from Plants of the Southwest. The Sphaeralcea types do very well in sand and bloom all summer. Most seeds from PoSW are plants that are cold hardy and will do well in sand.

If I see something along the roadside here locally that looks pretty, I often collect seeds, I try to make sure its not too aggressive by reading up first. If it does well there it will do good on my property. Many native plants become huge, gangly or ugly in good garden soil but I have lean soil so most stay nice. I've had a few however that lost their integrity so I take them out.

Kelly Grummons at Cold Hardy Cactus online is a great resource for decorative types of cactus and succulents. In the beginning I was into cactus which love the sand and really like them for adding structure. He is with Timberline Gardens in Denver but I read it was closing.

wantanamara, My apology. When someone living long distance in another state informs me how perfect our summer has been (when it hasn't been) and how we got just the right amount of rain (we have been dry for some weeks now) I do a major eyeball roll. OKC is a big place. It doesn't rain everywhere in the city no matter what your sources say.

TR, I stand corrected on my wrong assumption that your neighbors' lawns got that green look from the rain. Living in a world where timed sprinklers run constantly is a foreign concept to me. As one also living in Oklahoma (very near to OKC) I learned a long time ago to choose plants that can take a lot of drought, especially considering my soil is very sandy. Haven't progressed near as far as you have with that idea, but I've been admiring your photos for some time now. You've done a beautiful job.

Yea kez, its foreign to me too. Used to be most people let the bermuda go dormant in summer and it always had dandelions and clover in it. Not anymore. Thats why bermuda was such a popular turf grass in Oklahoma, it went dormant in summer with no ill effects. You'd think people would welcome the break in mowing during late July and August when its too hot to think of doing anything in the yard. Its scary to watch all those sprinklers everywhere and wonder how much water is that?

My best guess would be Deschampsia 'Goldtau'. Its impossible to tell in that photo. If you want a grass thats wispy and looks lit up in sunlight, that one would do it.

Deschampsia 'Goldtau'

Tex,

Thank you for that great information. I'll start making my birthday list for next spring. I'm also going to get some horse manure to add to my leaf mold compost.

Docmom, I know that I am WAY south of you but I have this book That list plants for a sand garden for Texas . I know some of these are for West Texas and the high plains . They may do well for you I know TR uses some of them in her Garden.; Spectacle Pod, Sleepy daisy, lazy daisy, Tahoka daisy, Standing cypress, amsonia longiglora, pink plains penstemon, sand sagebrush, greeneyes, apache plume, liatris punctuate, Spiderwort,4 nerve daisy, phlox pilosa, Tephrosia, Sand verbena, purple ground cherry, wild buckwheat. A google search lists Cleome, Gazania, Yarrow, cosmos, rugosa rose, california poppy, Gaillardia, Penstemon are good for sand.

Thanks, Tex :) Now, to find one....

docmom, I got cow manure compost from the stockyards one year, you could get a whole pickup load for $10. The stuff was still hot below the top surface and I was getting burned on my legs shoveling it out of the truck and spreading it around. There were flies in it too. Anyway, the area took some time to settle down and it killed some plants. Another time I got the chopped up tree trimmings from a big local tree trimming outfit who works for OG&E here in the city. They'd dump the stuff in your driveway in a very big pile, everything they could fit in their big truck and it was free. It smelled something awful like rotten spinach and it took me 5 days to finally get it wheel barrow-ed onto the soil. Anyway, I know what its like to try to get significant amounts of organic into large areas.

Now I let the lean soil work in my favor, its much easier that way. Grasses have been a great way for me to go and I'm learning (finally) that groupings work best but that is still a work in progress. The lean soil and dry summer keeps the form of the grass at its best, too rich and they flop miserably and don't look right. The same thing is true for some of the local natives I've moved in here.

Trial and error. Its so easy to end up with what looks like a big mess and I'm still working on a couple of those right now. A regular garden/lawn situation is much easier to accomplish. My sister had horror stories from her efforts to try to do a no lawn prairie in rich Kansas soil. It was a disaster. She then got humiliated with a fine and a little write-up in her local newspaper because a neighbor had made a formal complaint.

I learned to group the grasses by looking at how Oklahoma City is planting natives around the government buildings surrounding the capitol, you see the same thing online. Grasses cover a lot of space quick, you soon wish you had more space, the native grasses love lean sand. I'm also learning simple is better. If I plant too many different varieties out of temptation to have every plant that draws my eye, I end up with a mess.

You can grow some things I wish I could, but its too hot here. One that comes to mind is Bearberry, A. uva ursi. I love that plant. I'm hoping the Pawnee Buttes Sand Cherry I ordered makes a nice low ground cover sort of like that. Another I wish I could grow is that Deschampsia 'Goldtau' I mentioned in the post above. Its not native but I'm not a purist either. It positively glows in the sun.

Can't find it, dammit.

Santa Rosa Gardens has Deschampsia cespitosa.

Bluestem & Northcreek Nurseries both carry Deschampsia 'Goldtau'.

http://www.bluestem.ca/deschampsia-goldtau.htm

http://www.northcreeknurseries.com/plantName/Deschampsia-cespitosa-Goldtau

Just found another source:

http://www.lazyssfarm.com/Plants/Perennials/Grasses/Grasses.htm#PERJ026915

Thanks Tex! I'm a little mail order gun-shy, though!

1. Catkin, speaking from personal experience, both Santa Rosa and Lazy'ss are excellent nurseries. I bought a huge order from Santa Rosa last year. One of the plants (A mandevilla) turned out to be the wrong cultivar. They immediately replaced it with no fuss. Several years ago, I bought Geranium 'Patricia" from Lazy'ss, which has turned out to be the backbone of that section of the garden.

Me too, I love dealing with Santa Rosa, just got a shipment last week with a 35% discount on plants already on sale. Their late spring and fall sales are fun, everyone goes crazy when those start up. I've heard nothing but good about Lazy's but haven't ordered from them, High Country Gardens is also excellent, I have a fall shipment scheduled for mid September, can hardly wait. I can't begin to count the #'s of plants, varieties I wouldn't be able to get otherwise. The plants, packing and friendliness are very good with the two I have experience with. I like getting plants in the mail too, it always feels like I'm getting a present, I get so excited when I see that box come and unwrap what I bought.

Pray tell, what plants did you get from SR?

I got 3 more of the Big Bluestem 'Red October' because I'm so happy with the one I bought last fall, its stiff with upright leaves. Its already showing color and has deep musky purple stems and turkey feet forming. I figure to really see the color I need more than one plant in the spot. SRG had them marked down but they are back to full price now, I barely got the order in on time. I'm re-doing an area with these planted along with several very tall Little Bluestem I started from seeds I collected here. The bluestem is as tall as the turkey foot this year but I'm expecting the turkey foot to get to its full size when the plants are more mature.

There are several new cultivars of Big Bluestem coming out, some nice blue ones but its the dark green that give the red/maroon fall coloring. I like the idea of it contrasting with the light blue Little Bluestem.

I also bought Euphorbia 'Ascot Rainbow' to bring the total order up to enough to get the 35% off discount.

Andropogon gerardii 'Red October'

Close by the Bluestem is an area I'm taking out a large lantana and replacing with these three I have ordered from High Country Gardens. I also ordered a Pawnee Buttes Sand Cherry and a Curly Cue Artemisia. The whole place has gone grass landscape with massed areas I'm working on for definition. Its taking me a while to get this grass landscaping thing down but I'm getting there.

Indian Grass 'Thin Man'

I had a bunch of Heavy metal small seedlings but they did not live through my Vacation. I was looking at theirs but I think I will wait. That indian grass "thin man" looks really nice. Also how did you get 35% off the sale price?

35% was for Santa Rosa. I got an email.

OHHH, you got it because you have been good customer. Interesting.

I enjoyed looking at your garden. I have not been able to achieve what I want having reduced my water schedule, but I am working on it. Phlox and dalias have suffered the most, but other plants seem to be ok.

You have done a very good job with your yard.

Sammy