VOLUME 20, ISSUE 11 • March 14, 2024

Neil Sperry editor. Gretchen Drew design and circulation.

I'm loving that extra hour in the evenings. How 'bout you? It's the best time of the gardening year.

In this issue…
• Going back to an old favorite shrub
• Garden reversions - plants that change
• Our assignments for the weekend
• Diane Sitton copes with the corners
• I answer your questions

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all your gardening questions?

That's actually 672 copies of the same book (see right) in our dining room. You only need one.

NEIL SPERRY'S LONE STAR GARDENING
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• Covers every aspect of outdoor landscaping, lawn care, and gardening for every county in Texas.
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Photo: March is the month to celebrate being a Texan, and bluebonnets will help you remember why.

Gardening This Weekend

It's looking more and more like spring, so unless you're in the Panhandle you have good odds for success with planting most flowers and vegetables now. I have your mid-March guidelines waiting for you. Click to see.

Photo: Choose tomatoes that produce small- to mid-sized fruit.

Making the most of corners

Corners can be awkward or they can be accents. Our friend Diane Sitton, who gets into some of the most beautiful gardens, shows us examples of corners that shine.

Photo: Add a bench and garden art to a backyard corner and you've created a retreat.

Dwarf Chinese holly - one of my old "go-to's"

When things get tough and you have to replace a bunch of weak-spirited plants that have taken their last curtain calls, you look for something that's stood alongside you through the worse of times. Meet my friends, dwarf Chinese hollies. I'll tell you about them.

Photo: Just arrived and waiting their turns.

Little Garden Tip: Reversed Mutations

Many of our most popular plants are merely mutations from some other selection. And sometimes those mutations aren't stable. The plants revert back to old times. Let me show you a couple of examples and tell you what you might do.

Photo: Can you spot the mutation?

Q&A
Ask Neil

Feeding tropicals after the winter. Removing old mulch before putting out new. Will root-sprouting yaupons give rise to berry producing offspring?
All that and more. Check it out!

And, in closing…

I hope you've enjoyed e-gardens this week. If so, please let our advertisers know, either in person or with a quick note.

Also, please share our little publication with your gardening friends. You're my main way of growing the numbers, and I appreciate you!

From all the reports I'm hearing from across the state, bluebonnets and other wildflowers are fabulous this year. Get out and enjoy them. Share photos with your friends out of state. They think all we have is tumbleweeds. (Not that I have anything against tumbleweeds.)

Have a great gardening week, and I'll be back in your e-mailbox same time next Thursday evening at 6. Please remember to get me out.

Until then,

Happy gardening!

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