A New Year's Weekend of Gardening

I've been helping my best friend, Natalie,  of  League City, TX, clean out her garden and dig plants that will soon move to a new garden in Galveston. We cleaned up a large flower bed in the front yard and then put new timbers around it since the pine tree that was part of the edging was completely rotted.  This was a pine tree that fell down about a decade ago and has been hard at work ever since, forming the front edging of the bed.  We also did major cleanup in the back yard.

Front bed after cleanup

We  pruned shrubs and cut back last years growth on the perennials. So we had lots of material to chip up.  I used her mulcher and got three big contractor bags full to go to Galveston to compost there before being used in the new garden. 

Natalie had visited me this past Thanksgiving and taken home some pots to to use to move plants to the new garden. I begged her to take more pots, but she insisted that she had more than enough. But, in three days of digging, we ran out of pots and are using buckets, earthboxes and even bins to hold the plants she'll be moving.

 Some of the Galveston-bound plants

More Galveston-bound plants

  

 This Camellia lives in a pot and is ready to move

I am going home with at least ten pots of Natalie's plants including a Martha Gonzalez rose bush, turk's cap, snowbells, ugly shrimp plant (which in Houston blooms at least eleven months out of the year and is a major humming bird attractant) and cigar plant. This is my second load of plants f rom her garden.  I also spent a few days with another friend and bought him a silverbell tree and a Louisiana azelea for Christmas and bought myself a possum-haw tree. It will be interesting to figure out how all this will fit in my little Honda Fit.

Some of my new plants

  And I'll be starting  plants from my garden that will grow well in Galveston. Exchanging plants with my gardening friends is one of my favorite garden-related activities. I love starting new plants from seeds or cuttings to share with friends. This is one of the many ways gardening enriches my life.