Garden Notes

Garden Notes for the Informed Gardener

Monthly articles (below) written especially for East Texas gardeners. 

  More available at Tip of the Week - Newspaper Columns (Keith Hansen’s & Dee Bishop’s)

Informative brochures – Crape Myrtles - Butterfly Gardens - Waterwise Landscape - Irrigation Methods - Build Compost Bins - Miracle Mulch  

By Dee Bishop

    I have always loved tiny things especially tiny plants.  I love looking at their magnificent little forms up close.  I have caught myself collecting tiny plants wherever I go just because they are tiny, yet perfect.  Sedums caught my eye for the first time when I was about 6 years old because they were so tiny.   I saw them growing beside a sidewalk and asked Mama if I could ask the gardener who lived there for a start.  We did and a new friendship was born and I walked away with a fist full of tiny sedum plants.   

    I love planting sedums in containers where I can enjoy them all around the garden without worrying about them becoming over-powered by larger plants.   One of my favorite planters is an old cowboy boot with holes all around where I planted various little sedums.  How sweet they looked pouring out of the old boot.   I have made several hypertufa containers where I have planted gardens of sedums. I have planted small sedums in old rusty funnels, colanders, and in strawberry jars.  I saw some planted in lava rock in New Mexico and the next time I went out there I took a pick and a sledge hammer to get a hunk of that rock.  I got permission to get a piece from a rancher who had it protruding up in his pasture.  He said I could have it all.  I bet he laughed all the way home, because I hacked and picked for thirty minutes and couldn’t budge it.  I did finally find a piece piled up on the side of the road.  I came home and worked for hours drilling holes in it.  It is lovely, but oh goodness, next time I will buy one ready to use.

   I love arranging sedums by color and form just as you would arrange flowers.  Some grow fast and gobble up all the space they can grab, others take their time and clump.  Some grow tall others barely an inch tall. They come in a rich array of color: gray, green, yellow, gold, blue-gray, almost white and all colors between.    

    Sedums ask only to be left alone.  They like fairly poor soil. They do not like mulch unless it’s rock.  All they ask is perfect drainage.  Some like ‘Autumn Joy’ will even forgive occasional wetness.  They need several hours of sun, but will take half day of shade and do great.  Clip them back once they stop blooming.    In winter I put the containers up under the eaves of my house or under cover so they won’t get winter rains.  I use about half pearlite and half potting soil.  If they are more persnickety, I use some gravel mixed in.  I mulch with gravel.    I have found the pretty little Cape Blanco sedum from California to be the hardest to grow.  It likes dry, dry, dry.

    Try some sedums in your yard or planters.  I think you will enjoy them as much as I do.         

Read articles written by Dee Bishop in the past months.  

          Dee Bishop has been a Smith County Master Gardener since 1998. She has a lifelong passion for plants and gardening and began writing about her experiences long before she became a Master Gardener.