What's Blooming?

Even if you only have time to step inside our front gates, it's worth a stop at the Gardens right now to enjoy these crabapples. They're smothered in fragrant white flowers along both sides of the Promenade! Stunning!

Look for this spice-scented beauty planted underneath the first Spring Snow crab apple on the west side of the Promenade. Planted in 2011, this Korean Spice Viburnum will slowly grow to 6 or 8 feet tall.

One of the hardiest of the ornamental pear varieties. 'Autumn Blaze' produces a multitude of showy white flowers in spring. The foliage is glossy green during the summer and can turn crimson red in the fall.  They won't be hard to spot in between the east fence and the Waves of Grass!

Pawnee Buttes Sand Cherry, a Plant Select species, is a ground-covering form of our native sand cherry. Fragrant, white flowers attract pollinators in April. By summer, it produces a heavy crop of black cherries that are attractive to wildlife. The lustrous, green leaves turn bright red and purple in the fall. Look for it above our southern Shavano Plaza as well as the Native Garden.

Pasque Flowers are known for their fabulous early spring flowers, soft, fuzzy, gray-green foliage, and showy, silky seed heads that persist for many months after the flowers have faded. They are also an invaluable source of early season nectar. Look for them in our Rock and Waterwise Gardens.

The flowers and fruit of this fragrant and attractive shrub make it a valuable wildlife plant. Hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees are attracted to the golden yellow trumpet-shaped flowers. The fruit is an important food source for many bird species as well as small mammals like squirrels and chipmunks. Look for it along the path in the northwest corner of our Waterwise Garden.

Golden Storksbill is a 2011 Plant Select® species. It's silvery mounds of evergreen, ferny foliage are decorative in their own right. Fragrant, soft yellow, geranium-like flowers from early spring until late summer. Long lived , easy, and adaptable -- you'll find it on the west side of the Promenade. Right now it's sprinkled with the falling white petals of the overhead Spring Snow Crabapples!

Creeping potentilla (or cinquefoil) is a low-growing groundcover. It has dark green leaves with runners that root at each node, making it an aggressive spreader. The first individual to flower in our Gardens this spring planted itself in the gravel near the Native Garden. Look for more soon in the nearby beds where they were planted!

Look for this plant in our Crevice Garden. Its leaves are hairy, protecting it from the blazing sun and constant wind of its native habitats -- anywhere from sagebrush deserts to subalpine ridges.

We couldn't resist this beauty in the Valley Garden. Corsican violets, are Mediterranean in origin with large, one-inch, bright purple flowers. A Plant Select species, they are heat tolerant and perennial, and can take considerable drought. Excellent in the rock garden.