Parking Gardens; Plants That That Fry & Flood

I was talking to this guy the other day, a great landscaper, who tries to be earth friendly, and he says he just doesn’t do jobs without an irrigation system.  “There’s just no way you can plant it and guarantee it will live.”

Well, I can.  Here’s a link to a garden where we had to cut out chunks of asphalt in order to make beds.   The beds filled with roof runoff weekly; then it was about 113F in August, baking the dirt.  But we’d planted with the perfect plants and have watched it (watched it, nothing else)  thrive for its first year.  And here’s an updated photo of some of the perennials.

A parking lot garden, that alternately bakes and floods. Less than a year after planting.

Another garden surrounded by concrete is getting these plants today:

First,  a cool little ground cover bulb which we’ve just started selling called Leopard Lily or African Hosta.

African Hosta is actually a bulb related to scilla. Here it flowers in May. It’s a great container plant or perfect at the edge of larger shrubs. Click this picture for more info and to order bulbs.

And here’s a list of other plants going in today;

Windmill Palm

Mexican Bamboo (Muhlenbergia dumosa)

Cuphea micropetala (Candy Corn Plant)

Clytostoma callistigiodes  (Purple Trumpet Vine)

Baptisia x ‘Carolina Moonlight’ (Yellow False Indigo)

I love the challenge and sharing the knowledge of finding the right plants for the right place and taking a few extra moments to get those plants settled in properly.   And I love when a hardscrabble corner made so bad planning and too much concrete becomes a garden– a garden that doesn’t waste any water.

(My saturation and planting methods are described in Deep Rooted Wisdom; Stories and Skills from Generations of Gardeners.)