By Jackie Sledge
Big Country Master Gardener
We talked about adding raised beds to the landscape, and hopefully you have considered doing that. My husband says I can’t start small with a new project, and I guess he’s right since I just added 3 new in-ground beds, enlarged an existing in-ground bed, and added 6 new raised beds! What was I thinking?
Now that you know the latest challenge I’m facing, I want to quickly add that I have a plan and lots of plants for the new areas. The new in-ground beds have stone edges, and I have 2 short, raised beds constructed from wood and 2 taller metal beds plus 2 raised/elevated metal beds with wheels so they can be easily relocated. I have heavy clay soil, and I decided to try some raised beds so I can start them with good soil and not have to spend as much time and money with amendments before planting them.
Let me share the plans for my new beds.
So far, I have planted the following anchor plants in the in-ground beds:
- In-ground bed #1 – 5 Texas Sages, 2 dwarf Rose of Sharons, and 3 Stoplight Yuccas.
- In-ground bed #2 – 5 Shoal Creek Vitex trees with a Sweet Bubba Desert Willow on both ends of the bed.
- In-ground bed #3 – 3 Gold Star Esperanzas and 9 Radiance Abelias.
I am planting a lot of perennials in these beds, being sure to consider their mature size, and then I will plant annuals to fill in until the perennials grow larger. I already had 4 large in-ground beds (30 feet!) filled with a variety of salvias, Turk’s caps, daylilies, lantanas, and other perennials, and I add new plants in them every season.
Now for the raised beds…. I have a 90-foot-long porch, and I already had 4 small raised beds and lots of pots of plants on it. I usually plant seasonal annuals in the raised beds so I can change them out and have plants to enjoy all year. I plant both annuals and perennials in pots, and I overwinter pots of perennials in the house, the garage, or a storage building to be returned to the porch the next spring.
The new raised beds are also filled with a variety of plants – vegetables, herbs, annuals, and perennials. I am experimenting with several new raised beds in the yard and have planted a variety of plants and bulbs in some of them. I’m just trying to determine what grows best in all gardens in the landscape.
My grandmother’s house had iris beds on the sides of her house; my mother had iris beds on the sides of her house; and, of course, that meant I needed to have iris beds on the side of my house. When we moved from the house we had lived in for many years, I sadly left my beloved irises since it took about a year to finally get moved into another permanent home. I have added irises to my landscape the last few years, and this year has been the year of really adding irises to both in-ground beds and a couple of the new raised beds. I can’t wait to see the irises, daylilies, spider lilies, and schoolhouse lilies when they have had more time to get established and spread to fill the “bulb and rhizome” areas!
Have I finished completing the landscape? Absolutely not! I don’t think gardeners ever believe their landscapes are finished because there’s always a new plant or another color or a different type of bloom that will be perfect in that little patch of ground that needs to be filled with a plant. The Big Country Master Gardener Fall Plant Sale is coming up in October, and I know there will be some plants that I “need” in my gardens, and I will have a great opportunity to purchase plants to fill those spaces at that time. The online sale will start on October 8th and end at noon on October 10th, and the in-person sale will be held from 8:00 a.m. through 12:00 noon on October 11th. Be sure to add these dates to your calendar and watch the BCMGA website and Facebook page for more information about the sale. Remember – fall is the best time to plant so the plants have time to get good root systems before the summer heat stresses them next year.
Oh yes, let me add one more tip to landscape success. Mulch, mulch, and mulch. Adding mulch to beds gives them a finished look as well as providing temperature control and moisture retention for our plants in the hot, dry, windy West Texas climate. I am definitely taking that advice seriously since I have 150 bags of mulch stacked on my driveway to add to both my new and existing flower beds. Wish me luck with that project.
The Big Country Master Gardener Association presents free education programs every month. There is a program at 6:00 p.m. on the 1st Tuesday of the month at the Abilene Public Library South Branch in the Mall of Abilene, and the same program is presented again at 10:00 a.m. on the 2nd Friday of the month at the Abilene Public Library main branch in downtown Abilene. We also have a Master Gardener Saturday Seminar from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon on the last Saturday of the month from February through August in the Taylor County Extension Office Conference Room. The theme for the monthly BCMGA Library and Saturday Seminar presentations in 2025 is “The Year of the Garden.”
We are here to help you. If you have any questions, call the Taylor County Extension Office at 325-672-6048 or email us at bcmgardeners@yahoo.com. We hope you will also visit our Facebook page, our website at bcmgtx.org, and the BCMGA YouTube channel for all Big Country Master Gardener information, events, and training.
Until next week, happy gardening!