Here is the 55th issue of our weekly gardening newsletter for Houston, the Gulf Coast and beyond. This a project of The Lazy Gardener, Brenda Beust Smith, John Ferguson and Mark Bowen (both John and Mark are with Nature's Way Resources). We also have a great supporting cast of contributing writers and technical specialists who will chime in and tweak away regularly. We would love to keep receiving your input on this newsletter . . . . comments . . . . suggestions . . . . questions. . . .Email your thoughts to: lazygardenerandfriends@gmail.com. Thanks so much for your interest.

Two great ladies are being celebrated: Mercer Arboretum & Botanic Gardens, left, turns 40! And the International Oleander Society spotlights the new Jane Long Oleander at its big Oleander Festival Luncheon 

MERCER CELEBRATES . . . NEW OLEANDER . . . FABULOUS WATER GARDENS . . . AND WILDFLOWERS IN LAWNS

Fun times coming up for gardeners!

* Friday, May 2 - The new Jane Long Oleander, commemorating the Mother of Texas, will be in the spotlight at the Oleander Festival's kickoff Luncheon at Moody Gardens in Galveston. As you can see from the picture above, this unique bloom mostly produces six petals, rather than the usual five-petal oleander bloom. 

This is significant because Jane Long spent six incredible months on Bolivar Peninsula, laying the groundwork for her amazing role in the establishment of the Republic of Texas. Want to know more about "Our Mother"? Email me at lazygardener@sbcglobal.net with your request for the Jane Long packet.

Back to this new historically-named oleander, hybridizer Bob Newding will be guest speaker with " . . . rest of the story." Make luncheon reservations with Mary Branum at 281-433-2945 or mbranum1@hotmail.com. The luncheon is a fundraiser for Galveston's Oleander Garden Park, 2624 Sealy, which will host a "Stroll in the Park" May 18.  Details: www.oleander.org.

The Jane Long Oleander will be available for sale by the International Oleander Society at the 2014 Oleander Festival, May 3-4 at Moody Gardens Visitor Center, 1 Hope Blvd., Galveston. It will also be sold by the Jane Long Society, a committee of the Bolivar Peninsula Cultural Foundation, at the Jane Long Festival, Oct. 11, on Bolivar Peninsula.

*  Meanwhile, north of Houston, flowers will be bouncing and trees swaying when Mercer Arboretum & Botanic Gardens celebrates its 40th Anniversary.  I am so awed by this. Three decades ago, my son, who is autistic, was on a therapy program out of Philadelphia that ordered us to walk up and down hills.  

Hills . . . in Houston?

All we have, we tried to tell them, are freeway overpasses!  But they insisted, so we investigated and discovered the now-out-of-bounds high banks of Cypress Creek. Imagine my surprise and delight, as we walked up and down the steep bank, when suddenly the strange, overgrown forest was filled with the most incredible camellias I'd ever seen.

They were Thelma Mercer's camellias and no one was more thrilled than I when her treasures became one of the focal points of a new botanical garden in my part of town. (Now you know how really old I am!)  It was a park back then, just not yet a  "treasured" one. 

Mercer's "Fabulous at Forty" Garden Party and Auction will be Sat., May 3. Guest speaker Greg Grant has probably impacted your garden more than you will ever know with all his floral introductions, most of which are treasures rescued from old gardens across the South and, thanks to Greg, introduced into the nursery trade. Reservations are required at 281-443-8731.

Even if you can't make the party, be sure to go out to Mercer, our living plant library, some time soon. It is SO GORGEOUS right now as the picture above proves. 

It's a great year for wildflowers such as bluebonnets, left, and evening primroses.

 

This has been a great year for wildflowers and it's exciting to see so many homeowners in urban subdivision neighborhoods allowing bluebonnets to bloom in front yards. 

Hope they made it through that last cold spell.  But even if they didn't, know that your yard is probably encouraging other homeowners to try this themselves. Thanks for that!

In the Greater Houston area, wildflowers (that you want) will only work in yards that are extremely well drained.  If yours isn't, consider creating an isolated raised areas or planting them in pots that sit in the garden. Bluebonnets cannot stand prolonged periods in very wet heavy soil, as our gumbo clay tends to be during our spring and fall monsoons.

Don't plant seed now. Do this in the late fall. But you can put in plants which can be found in nurseries. They'll hopefully drop enough seed.  Depends on how severely they were forced into bloom.

If you're lucky enough to have had bluebonnets, primroses, etc., bloom naturally in your lawn this spring, don't mow too soon. A general rule says that when half the stand has gone to seed, it's okay to mow. Enough seed has been dropped to ensure next year's display. 

 

Couple of tips on how to enjoy lawn wildflowers without infuriating the neighbors: 

* Mow gradually around the outer edges of the bloom spread, slowly decreasing the size, giving plants toward the center a little more time. This helps create a greater concentration of color, and makes the display look more planned - an important consideration in most suburban neighborhoods.
* Insert a hardscape such as a birdbath, large rocks, a fun sculpture, in with the flowers.  

* Next spring don't mistake spouting bluebonnets for clover and mow down the newly-emerging plants!

Unfortunately for a friend, allowing wildflowers to decorate her front lawn in spring prompted letters from her neighborhood association. Her solution was to insert a fun sign in the patch, urging viewers to be patient while her wildflowers were setting her seed.  The Houston Arboretum & Nature Center does this on Woodway.  Great idea!

 

 

If you've tried and failed to get bluebonnets and other spring wildflowers to bloom in your yard, chances are it's too low. Wildflowers generally grow in extremely well-drained areas, so they do well on lawns raised way above ground level. Otherwise, too much of the seed will rot in our spring monsoons.

 

One way to draw the eye away from fading wildflowers is to have lots of color or eye-interest exploding in other areas. Beautiful and beneficial water gardens do this and serve multiple other purposes in our landscapes. 

 

Our Society Spotlight today is on water gardens.  Mark your calendar for the big Houston Pond Society and Lone Star Koi Club Water Garden and Pond Tour Fri.-Sat., May 3-4, 10am-6pm. Self-guided tour. Tickets $10 available at 30± water gardens and (starting April 26) at Nelson Water Gardens in Katy (http://nelsonwatergardens.com/).  

One great starting point for the Pond Tour is at the home pictured at right above, 218 Leyden Court in Katy.  Full details available at:the Houston Pond Society, http://houstonpondsociety.org,  the Lone Star Koi Club, http://lonestarkoi.com,  or 713-822-5515.  

 

 

 

Clockwise from bottom left: US blueberry grower Henry Sunda, Nanjing Botanical Garden Professor Yin Yunlong, and US horticulturist David Creech and his wife Janet, survey a Taxodium nursery near Jinjiang, Fujian province, which has more than 2 million plants. Provided to China Daily.

'Happy Tree' lures Texan to China 

by MIKE PETERS (CHINA DAILY)

Editor's note: Many of our readers will remember Mike Peters from his many years as a top notch Houston/Southern U.S. garden writer. Mike writes for the China Daily these days. We love hearing from him periodically and thought everyone would get a kick out of reading a reprint of one of his articles from a little while back that features Texan David Creech among others. Enjoy.

David Creech is a self-proclaimed "plant nut" from Texas who keeps coming back to China for two reasons.

The horticulture professor and arboretum director wants to help stop the spread of cancer around the world. He'd also like to help spread blueberry farms around China.

More than a decade ago, cancer research labs and pharmaceutical companies in the US couldn't get their hands on enough Camptotheca acuminata, also known as Happy Tree of China thanks to the literal translation of its name, xi shu. The tree is the source of Camptothecin, a cancer-fighting drug.

Creech knew there were more plants - and likely more genetic variety - in the tree's native regions, that is, primarily Southeast China and the Tibet autonomous region.

"My first trip to China was in 1997 when I accompanied Shiyou Li, the director of the National Center for Pharmaceutical Crops at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. Li had received a large grant for Camptotheca acuminata," Creech says. "We traveled all over China for about six weeks working with Chinese officials to accumulate germplasm from a wide cross-section of provenances and to study the ethnobotanical aspects of the tree.

It was the start of a long relationship.

"During that first visit," he says, "I met many Chinese scientists and made friends with like-minded horticulturists. Those first encounters led to later invitations to visit China on a variety of projects. "Since that time, I've been to China about a dozen times," he says, and he's always surprised at what he sees.

"I have been totally amazed at the urban vegetation strategy in China. There's no doubt China is a world leader in re-vegetation and highway plantings. Any visitor to China - particularly those who visit the megacities - cannot help but notice that China is planting millions of trees. All the superhighways, highways, roads, railroads, canals and riversides are planted with trees".

Besides providing an aesthetic treasure, he says, "these trees do much to provide a carbon sink, alleviate pollution and reduce erosion".

"I also come back to China because I'm enthralled with Taxodium improvement," Creech says, referring to a plant genus in the cypress family. "While baldcypress is a native US tree, we have done very little to improve the species. Chinese researchers have bred promising parents, selected superior clones, and propagated them asexually into numbers that we in the US find difficult to comprehend.

"A couple of years ago I visited a Taxodium nursery near Jinjiang (Fujian province) that has over 2 million plants," he says. "That's probably more than is produced in all the United States."

Creech's counterpart, Yin Yunlong, a professor at the Nanjing Botanical Garden (NBG), has introduced him to the extensive breeding and selection efforts that his garden has pioneered in China and the extension of this US tree into highway plantings, parks, and coastal windbreaks. Some of that is documented on the website of Creech's university arboretum, http://arboretum.sfasu.edu..

Creech is also eager to see China embrace another US favorite: blueberries. "I'm excited that the growing blueberry industry will prosper and provide China with a new and exciting highly nutritious crop," he says. "With significant central and provincial support, many plantings are in the young stages of development. Whether or not they prosper will depend on Chinese scientists, farmers and businessmen. I'm here to help."

Creech is working with professors He Shanan and Yu Hong, also of the NBG, on blueberry research. "It's a new and exciting crop for China," he says. "Blueberries have gained favor with the upwardly mobile Chinese looking for a tasty and highly antioxidant fruit. Thousands of acres are being planted and some have met with great success. The market is under-exploited, and there appears to be great excitement and government support to extend plantings across those areas where this fruit crop has been adapted."

Mike Peters 

China Daily

michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn

http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/us