Gardening in our area can present some unique challenges. With inconsistent weather conditions, creating a beautiful, sustainable garden can seem like an impossible task. Sometimes it feels like every beautiful plant either cannot survive the hot Texas summer or the cold chilly winters. Don't get discouraged, though! With the right tools and knowledge, North Central Texas can provide the opportune environment for a beautiful, benificial garden.
Before you can decide which kind of plants would be best for your own garden, there are numerous things to take into consideration. Review the information below before making a decision on what kind of garden will work best for you:
As everyone knows, plants without water don't survive. Some plants, however, need more water than others, and in North Central Texas, these differences can be extreme.
Due to the hot summer climate, many of the plants that thrive in our environment have lower than average watering requirements. In fact, the amount of water your new plants require is an important consideration when planting them. Many drought-resistant plants can suffer from root rot, a conditions where consistently wet soil causes the plant's roots to literally rot away. This, of course, is a fatal condition. Other plants, however, like 'wet feet' or conditions where the soil is mostly soggy; this may occur in poorly drained areas of a lawn or near a pond or other body of water.
Because two different plants may have extremely fluctuating water requirements, it's important to plant like-minded plants together. For example, you wouldn't want to plant ferns (high water requirements) around a Crape Myrtle (low water requirements).
Different plants thrive in different amounts of sunlight. Some plants may require a full day of sun while others respond best to early morning sunlight or almost full shade. Before deciding which plants will work best in your garden, it's important to recognize how much sun your garden will get. Sun loving plants such as Yarrow, Coreopsis and even Bermuda grass suffer when planted beneath trees or other structures that limit the amount of available sunlight. These type of plants may require anywhere from 6 to 8 hours of sun per day.
Equally important to picking the right area for your garden is recognizing when a newly planted tree or bush will cast existing plants into the shade. Have you ever noticed the bold spot on lawns beneath large trees? This is because the grass in these lawns has trouble growing in shaded areas.
Soil Type is also an important consideration. While your own lawn's landscape may differ, most of North Central Texas consists of black clay. Black clay is considered a rich, alkaline, calciferous soil. This isn't a bad thing; more plants grow in alkaline soil than in acidic soil. Some plants, however, have very specific soil requirements. Roses, for example, prefer slightly acidic soil to alkaline soil types.
Luckily, soil's pH levels can be adjusted to suite the requirements of your garden. Additional information on testing and altering your soil pH levels is available here.
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