Monday, April 4, 2016

Wooly Stemodia for the Retention Wall

It's not clear to me how the Retention Wall will look once both the upper and lower West Lawn areas are finished and all the plants are in place.  But it might be nice to soften it by some plants.  Maybe something that runs along the top of the wall, and cascades down it.

So I planted a Wooly Stemodia ($6.99 from Barton Springs Nursery) at the top of the Retention Wall.






It is perennial, semi-evergreen, low moisture.  The main issue will be that is likes full to partial sun.  In this spot, it should get sun in the morning, but in the afternoon it will be shaded by the big Oak tree, and the Jungle and Bamboo Grove.  We'll see how it does here.


Follow-up note:  Apparently it wants full sun.  Over a couple of weeks, it withered and died.


Monkey Grass for the River of Rocks

The River of Rocks is in place and had some time to settle.  We have the main upper West Lawn area filled with dirt and planted, so we should not have reason to be running the wheelbarrow over the River of Rocks much (well, except for excavating the last bed).

So we are transplanting the Monkey Grass that we kept over around the greenhouse into the spaces between the rocks in the River of Rocks.  We start with just dirt.


And after a couple of days of scraping the dirt out between the rocks, putting the Monkey grass down in and putting the dirt back, we have Monkey grass between the rocks.


We've continued this on around the house, but not on the section next to the last bed that needs excavating.


We will finish this last section after we excavate the last bed.