brimming with blooms

Carefree flowers paint this garden all summer long.

Bill and Mary Louise Jobe know the sweet smell of success. It arrives every day on the breeze that carries the perfume of old-fashioned petunias and flowering tobacco. An amazing display of blooms, accented by graceful ornamental grasses, spans their garden in the Piney Woods of Nacogdoches, Texas. Shades of pink, purple, and white dominate, with the darkest purples seen in 'Laura Bush' petunias and globe amaranths. Huge white spikes of intensely fragrant, petunia-like flowering tobacco (Nicotiana sylvestris) and masses of pink cleomes provide contrast. Purple-and-white striped flowers clinging to stalks of French hollyhocks add to the potpourri of blossoms.

"We have two kinds of cleomes. 'Sparkler Blush' is a dwarf type [18 to 24 inches tall] planted adjacent to the front porch. Its blooms are a pinkish color and contrast nicely with the 'Laura Bush' petunias," Bill says. The standard-height cleomes in the island bed surrounding the birdbath are simply an old-fashioned mix of pink and white flowers. "I got two summer flushes from those by cutting them back about halfway when the blooms had faded," Bill says. "They continued to flower, even in the fall."

Good Advice

With encouragement from local horticulturists Brena Duren and Greg Grant, the Jobes departed from the foundation landscape and added two Texas-size island beds in the front yard. Their shapes echo the sweeping curves of the front walk and free-form planting beds near the house. Bill says, "With the house set back more than 100 feet from the road, we wanted more to look at than just a lawn."

Their spacious property affords plenty of opportunities to create interest during the long growing season. Ornamental grasses add texture and move gracefully with the breezes. Crinums such as 'Ellen Bosanquet' provide color and fragrance from spring till frost. Masses of 'The Fairy' rose and a large butterfly rose (Rosa chinensis 'Mutabilis') add form and color to the sweeping beds that extend along the front porch.

Bright and Hot

Summer color can be a bit challenging in East Texas, but the Jobes came up with some winning combinations. "When hot weather arrives and the flowering tobacco passes its prime, we cut it nearly to the ground," Bill says. By then, perennial salvias such as 'Henry Duelberg,' 'Anthony Parker,' and 'Indigo Spires' have grown large enough to fill in the gaps. The warmand cool-weather reseeding annuals provide color and structure for nine months of the year without a tremendous amount of effort. "Some of these were new to our garden this year," he says, "but others such as the petunias, cleomes, and Texas sage [Salvia coccinea] have been here for several seasons. I am always finding their seedlings popping up."

In midsummer, perennial and annual salvias become the center of attention, accented by 'Adagio' and 'Variegatus' Japanese silver grass (Miscanthus sinensis) and ribbon grass (Phalaris arundinacea picta). For more contrast, purple sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum) and purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum') complete the picture.

Philippine lilies thrive in the border and rise above most everything else to a height of 6 or 7 feet, with large clusters of showy white trumpets during July and August. The seedpods dry naturally by October, and Mary Louise enjoys working them into dried arrangements.

Raised to New Heights

Lilies aren't the only flowers standing tall. Annual vines such as sky flower (Thunbergia grandiflora) and hyacinth bean (Dolichos lablab) climb tepees made from limbs and twigs cut from nearby woods.

Purple-leaved celosia, which gets about 6 feet tall, works well in the back of the border. It reseeds and comes up prolifically but is easy to control by thinning with a hoe in spring.

A large container at the front entrance further demonstrates the Jobes' innovative yet practical approach to gardening. It holds a specimen of purple-foliaged castor bean with a lush ground cover of variegated St. Augustine grass spilling over the edge-a fitting signature to a beautiful yet practical Southern garden.

Copyright Southern Progress Corporation Jun 2004
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