August News from the Garden

Letter from the Executive Director

Greetings! The John Fairey Garden board has long discussed the organization's desire to create a satellite garden in Houston so Houstonians could have easy access to some of the plants and get at least a taste of the plant palette of the Garden. (We’d love to do that in Austin, Dallas, or San Antonio as well). There are a couple of reasons for wanting a satellite garden in the city – the convenience for landscape architects and designers to see what an appropriate alternative plant palette might look like, and the hope that once someone got an inkling of the treasures the Garden held, they would be enticed to come out to see for themselves what an irreplaceable resource The John Fairey Garden is. We’ve not accomplished a full blown satellite garden yet, but thanks to our friend, Steve Gibson, we have our first 4 beds of John Fairey Garden Nursery plants installed at North Post Oak Station, 1000 N. Post Oak, one of Steve's developments just off of I-10. (One of the beds is shown in the image at the top of the page). Craig Jackson, our Nursery Manager, recounts in his notes below the challenging process of selecting the proper plants, but I want to take the opportunity to thank Steve, his assistant, Maranda Jones, landscape architect and friend of the garden, Keiji Asakura, co-founder and principal at Asakura Robinson, who consulted and coordinated the planting with the Craig, and, finally, Craig, himself, for extending the scope of the Nursery Manager job description. Committing to doing something different always takes more time, energy and often, money, and so we are especially grateful to Steve for his willingness to participate in this budding experiment. The plants just went in this week, in the midst of the dog days of summer, but so far they look great, and they serve as a reminder of how much of a pleasing difference even a little plant diversity can bring to a landscape design. Here’s hoping for more opportunities to spread beauty from The John Fairey Garden. Sincerely, Randy

Featured Plant for August

Chinese Indigo (Indigofera kirilowii)

Chinese Indigo (Indigofera kirilowii) is native to northern China, Korea and southern Japan. For the first few years this slow clumper may attain a height of only three inches, but as it matures it may attain a height of three to four feet. Lavender flowers with pink highlights abound in racemes somewhat like wisteria in a long bloom season from mid-spring to mid-summer. Chinese indigo will provide many years of enjoyment to you and your pollinators, having an expected life of about thirty years. It is available in our nursery in gallon pots. - Craig Jackson, Nursery Manager

Notes from the Nursery Manager Dear Fellow Gardeners, A few months ago, developer and Garden supporter, Steve Gibson, approached me with an exciting idea: he wanted to create a microcosm of The John Fairey Garden at North Post Oak Station, one of his commercial properties in Houston. I was very excited. The offer came with a stipulation, however, that this display (about 275 plants in four rectangular beds) had to be very floriferous. Now, The John Fairey Garden is not a floriferous display. John eschewed overwhelming displays of wild colors for the more subtle shades of green, brown and blue, and he preferred naturalistic settings over formal, rectangular ones. So reconciling these two seemingly antithetical styles posed a significant challenge. Thankfully, the nursery's selection of plants has expanded dramatically over the last three years with a wide selection of wild collected, rare, uncommon and distinctive plants, many of them very floriferous! Without compunction, I began assembling these plants into designs that broke up the rectangular beds into smaller naturalistic spaces using evergreen shrubs, and in these spaces went all of the floriferous, mostly herbaceous, new wonders. If that sounds familiar to you, it is because it is exactly the same design strategy used by John Fairey to break up the woodland gardens into spaces in which flowering plants abound. The John Fairey Garden is, and has always been, first and foremost a garden to trial interesting plants and designs, and I’m grateful to Steve for allowing us to continue those trials.  To give you an idea of plant selection, I used Indigofera kirilowii, farfugium, pittosporum, cymbidium, ruscus, roldana, daphniphyllum, clinopodium, chamaedorea, yucca, agave, heimia, mahonia, dwarf thuja, myrcianthes, camelia and ferns in the evergreen space. Selected for under and around these were lobelia, gloxinia, ruellia, justicia, bletilla, billbergia, penstemon, salvia, bauhinia, anemone, dyschoriste and many more. As this project comes into completion, I think about the many similar plants still available in the nursery which await the caring hands of a thoughtful gardener. Happy Gardening, Craig Jackson Nursery Manager

John Fairey Garden bed at North Post Oak Station

John Fairey Garden bed at North Post Oak Station

Volunteer Spotlight

Meet Debra Caldwell, a dedicated volunteer at the garden. Debra, who lives in Katy, is currently volunteering both physically and virtually. When she comes to the garden, she's been repotting and documenting a wonderful donated aloe collection. From the comfort and safety of her own home, she's been leading the task of updating and revising our docent training materials. (By the way, we're going to be putting out a call for new docent trainees later this month, so be on the lookout.) Thank you for all your help, Debra! If you're interested in volunteering but concerns about susceptibility due to Covid-19 are keeping you from it, we do have opportunities for volunteers to work virtually. If you're interested, please email ruth@jfgarden.org, or call the office at 979.826.3232 and we'll try to find something that suits your interest.

Closeups from the Garden