Features

Diamond Snow has dramatically changed how we look at euphorbias or that not so glamorous common name of spurge. We all fell madly in love with its sibling Diamond Frost and subsequently gave it hundreds of awards in university trials. Diamond Snow however is a game changer.

Helen Churchill Candee (October 5, 1858 – August 23, 1949) was an American author, journalist, interior decorator, feminist, and geographer. Today, she is best known as a passenger on the first and only voyage of the RMS Titanic in 1912 -- and lived to write “Sealed Orders” about her experience in rowing Life Boat 6 with a woman who became known as “The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Candee also is known for her later work as a travel writer and explorer of southeast Asia. Helen was born Helen

Ask any UT freshman. Those first few weeks on the Forty Acres are eye openers, to say the least. There’s also much to be learned, which isn’t listed in any class syllabus and isn’t charged for in the tuition.

The past couple of years there has been a lot of love in the world of petunias, thanks to one very unique variety by the name of Supertunia Lovie Dovie. We have all seen petunias, with stripes, some stars, others halos and blushes, but there is a special one with hearts.

From time to time, I like to include historic personalities in this column, men and women never mentioned in my history classes, grade school through grad school. I have only heard about, read about and researched these folks within the last decade. Yet, in my humble opinion, many were differencemakers in their time. I’ll begin this Women’s Month’s series with one of Washington’s early social arbiters who wielded amazing power in the nation’s capital during her lifetime. Her name: Mary Foote Henderson (1841-1931).

The Esperanza is one of those shrubs that brings about hope and anticipation for the growing season. Actually, that is what Esperanza means in Spanish. As a gardener who got his horticultural roots in Texas, I can tell you the Esperanza is a plant to be treasured and even more so with the debut of Chicklet Orange in 2022.

I wanted to share this story as we end another Black History Month:

Shasta daisy lover will rejoice as the Amazing Daisy collection is more than doubling with the addition of three new varieties for 2022. The Garden Guy can hardly wait to get his hands on Amazing Daisy Marshmallow.

Once upon a time in mid-October, a pair of bald eagles built a nest near White Rock Lake in Dallas. The structure, located in a cottonwood tree, was engineered their new home with an exterior of large twigs. The eagles decorated the interior with softer materials, making it suitable for nesting.

There is not a gardener I meet that doesn’t crave plants that are all about Blooms, Birds and Butterflies. Shoot add Bees to it and you would have a surefire award winner. The Dallas Arboretum has one of the superior plant trials in the country and they gave the award for most Pollinator Friendly Perennial to Rockin’ Playin’ the Blues salvia.

In TV’s, STAR TREK, the series' scientists are seeking “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

The awards just keep coming! When I last wrote about the Supertunia Mini Vista Indigo it was in 2020 and was making its debut. It had already won 24-awards in trials even though it was just arriving to the public. Now the awards are 3-dozen and in fact the Supertunia Mini Vista series now totals over 160. How can this be for a petunia with the word mini in its name?