Austin Garden: 🌿 yellow bells 🌿 happy earth weekend 🌿 free compost tea

NURSERY NOTES: Happy Earth Weekend. Join Austin Davenport on Sunday (April 21) at 1:30 p.m. for "A Beginner's Guide to Hydroponics." Participants will learn "how to turn a cup of water into a thriving ecosystem." Austin Creative Reuse: $25 A.C.R. 🌿 The Natural Gardener offers free compost tea to all customers on Monday. 🌿 Learn how to grow mushrooms from Cody Masters at the Austin Nature & Science Center tomorrow (April 20) at 10 a.m. Free. Nature Day 🌿 Huston-Tillotson has shifted its Earth Day extrava-ganza to April 27. H-T, 🌿

THOMAS WOLTZ, WILD BY DESIGN: a profile of this unique landscape architect for whom beauty springs from the ecological health of the land. “This idea of decorating the outdoors is not what we do,” he explains. Garden & Gun ❦

O WHAT A BEAUTIFUL EVENING: Garrison Keillor ponders joy, the joyful names of tomatoes and corn, and how growing up a Lutheran in a small town in Minnesota made him quicker to seek it out. "If tomatoes can be jubilant and sweet corn bodacious, then so can we be." Substack ❦

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GARDENING IN BERLIN: Millennials abandon the German capital's infamous nightclubs scene, in favor of tending their young plants in ever-exapanding allotment enterprises, reports Sarah Rodrigues. i-news ❦

JAPANESE FENCING: learn how to create a simple bamboo fence (Yotsume gaki) from Ben Schrepf of the Japanese Friendship Garden of Phoenix. You Tube ❦

THE AUSTIN GARDEN relies entirely on support from its readers. Please consider making a donation to support this bi-monthly publication. Whether an annual or monthly donation, all are welcomed. (At the moment only 5% of readers support this publication) Many thanks in advance! PayPal link ❦

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CENTRAL TEXAS GARDENER: on tour, a visit to James Truchard's beautiful, Hill Country-style hilltop garden. In the studio, a chat with landscape designer Ted Maas. CTG ❦

Yellow Bells are Ringing

by Chris Winslow

One heroic plant that has stood tall, and blossomed forth despite the adverse weather conditions of recent years, is ‘yellow bells.’

This tough beauty has many names. Officially they call it Tecoma stans. It's also known as esperanza (Spanish for ‘hope’), yellow trumpet, and ginger thomas.

Yellow bells have glossy-green, lance-like leaves, and very large, showy trumpet-shaped flowers that bloom continuously throughout summer and fall. In warmer areas, they can reach a height of 8 to 10 feet. They are native to South and Central America and our south-western states.

This is an herbaceous perennial. It freezes back when the first winter cold snap arrives… to return triumphantly the following year as the ground warms in early spring.

Not only is this popular with gardeners. If you put some in your garden, you will have butterflies, hummingbirds and bees aplenty.

Some recent introductions have increased the bloom time for this perennial, and have made the plant more compact. Some new varieties to look for:

Gold star esperanza blooms earlier than the rest of the species and grows in a more compact form. While the standards grow to 8 feet or more, gold-star is a little shorter, at 4 to 5 feet.

Orange jubilee is an orange form of yellow bells with smaller,

more toothed leaves. Hummingbirds are more attracted to the orange color of this cultivar.

Sunrise is another beautiful variety. Like gold star, this yellow-flowering variety is a little shorter, and has a copper-bronze color on the throat of each flower.

Whatever Tecoma stans you choose, you will find them dependable perennials that put on a great show throughout spring, summer, and fall.

They are tops on my list of drought tolerant performers at the moment, and everyone should have at least one. Happy gardening everyone! ❦

(A side-note: in Pakistan, people use a paste from the plant's leaves on patients who have been bitten by a cobra. "Its bio-chemicals bind with the cobra venom enzymes, thus inhibiting the venom." )