It's time for the End of Month View, and for the first time I am going to feature one section of the garden. This is the Dry Corner. It's not very heavily planted yet, and what is there has yet to fill in. But it is taking shape a little. This corner will form the entrance/exit into the rest of the yard.
From the garden side...
and looking in from the yard...
It is meant to be home to some of the most adamantly desert natives I am growing - things that should not have much supplemental water at all. This where the acacia (
Acacia salicina) is planted (I do love the colour of the bark)...
...and some of the succulents, like Senecio "Blue Fingers"...
...and now Euphorbia "Firesticks". Is this the same as "Sticks on Fire"? I don't know. If it is, it can sometimes grow to a considerable height. At present, it's a little, glowing batch of fingertip branches.
There is also a tiny Sedum adolphi, with its plump leaves becoming ever more golden in the sunlight. It was sold as one of those miniscule succulents-as-houseplants that one finds at garden centres. It went out into the big world and nearly met with immediate demise. Betty the dog accidentally ran it down - literally planting her foot in the middle of it - as she greeted me because, of course, I was standing there admiring the new plant. The main stem was undamaged; and I plopped the other remnants back into the soil. It worked well with a bit broken off the Senecio. These look all right so far!
Anigozanthos "Bush Ranger" has been very pleased with this location. It has just been cut back so is only a tuft of flat, dark green leaves at present.
The Tetraneuris is also in this bed. For a while it had me worried: the leaves have such a dry, leathery texture that I kept thinking they were dying back. But no, it is producing a mass of little buds though the leaves still feel dry and crinkly to the touch. Healthy, I think?
At the moment, some of the strongest bloom is coming from Berlandiera lyrata. I am happy to report that the chocolate scent is distinctly smellable now. I can only send the picture... Here you can see the scalloped leaves that form a rosette at the base of the flower stems.
This bed will need a number of other plants to fill it out, but I thought I would begin focusing on it for the End of the Month View with Helen at the
Patient Gardener.
I can't leave today's post, however, without showing the first open bloom of Penstemon parryi. Just opened this morning!
