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Texas Gardening

The dry creek bed - One year later

9 years ago

If you search the gallery for dry creek bed, you can see two sets of pics from last year.

Even though this is the worst time of year, the creek still looks pretty darn good (if I do say so myself :-). I've been doing some remodeling this summer so not a lot of posting here, but decided to take some pics and share.

For perspective (I'm going to have to move the lonely little Mexican buckeye in the front yard this fall, I moved some other stuff and now he's lonely)

East end (left side when looking at the porch). There are also two small bamboo muhlies at the end of the creek but they are hidden behind the switch grasses. Lindheimer's muhly and Senna corymbosa to the left.

Berm is seeded in habiturf which is taking off well. Right now we do water it about once a week (our one legal day to water). That's why it's green and the surrounding little blue stem is not.

{{gwi:1331066}}

The west end (right side of the house) from the driveway. That's a Salvia darcyi, a Salvia chamaedryoides, Souvenir de la Malmaison who is between blooms at the moment and some volunteer one seed croton around the pot. In the pot is a Buck rose Wild Ginger, also not blooming at the moment. Across the creek are some seep muhlies and the rose Valentine (thanks Roselee for suggesting her, she's been great!).

The same area from a little closer to the house. Lanceleaf coreopsis in the foreground and Nacogdoches still blooming like a champ.

Mid-creek. Valentine surrounded by the seep muhlies, flame acanthus and fall aster in the background.

In case you don't feel like looking up the old threads

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Comments (9)

southofsa
9 years ago
I love progress/update pics! It really helps me understand how beds evolve and mature. I do remember the original post mostly because I think it was triple digits here when you did it and I was really impressed with the what you did to make it happen - hard labor to go with the vision.

It looks really good! Great choices. Thanks for posting.

Lisa
PKponder TX Z7B
9 years ago
Wow, it's come a long way in only a year! Looks great!
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A dry creek bed is easy to build as long as there is a place for the water to go. We routed the downspouts from our front gutters and the overflow from our water feature to drain here. This also catches all of the run off from our meadow. At the bottom of the slope in my garden above the dry creek, we have a rain garden of plants that like full sun and wet feet in winter, yet won't die in our summer. We already had a ditch, so there was very little digging. We used one pallet of river rock that was around $275 last fall. We used permeable landscape fabric underneath to control the weeds. We don't use fabric in flower beds, BTW! It took 3 of us half a day to do this, but that was with our archaeologist son looking through the stone for arrowheads (which he found). My husband and I didn't mind the slow pace! This was created in September 2006, so the plant material is new. Sidebar: The wire edging is a temporary detterent to deer to keep them from trampling the new plants. It's working so far since everything is deer resistant
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I took a squint at the first post pics and saw you did a great job on the dry creek bed. One suggestion I have is that you put in, near your front porch, a small bermuda grass patch about 12 ft in diam. with a tin cup so you can practice with those golf clubs you had leaning against your front door on the porch! Ha! Ha! I may have an article or two on my website that you might find helpful with landscaping ideas. Let me know if you find something. http://www.examiner.com/gardening-in-fort-worth/joel.howald
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I did something similar on my side yard because our houses drain to the street out front. We put down 2 layers of landscape fabric after getting the slope right, then decomposed granite with bull rock on the edges. Most of the granite has washed away over the last few years & we will be putting down more bull rock to replace it. It flows very well in torrential rain, but I do have to spray the area with vinegar quarterly to keep weed seeds from sprouting in there. We did not try to plant that area, but if we had more space we might have put some large potted plants thru there. I'll get a pic later today so you can see it.
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figure out how to leave half without disturbing the other half ..... and just move the others ... first pic.. rows of 3 .. first row.. take the middle one .. second row.. the two outside ones.. leaving the middle ... 3rd row.. middle out again ... etc .. then go take out more grass.. who needs it anyway ... i probably would spend a bit building the bed.. and move them in a month.. when the beds ready .. or some such .. i suspect a bunch of us ... told you so .. ken
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carrie751
9 years ago
Looking good there, Lucas.... now you can enjoy the fruits of all that hard labor
roselee z8b S.W. Texas
9 years ago
I love updates on makeovers. Your vision has come together beautifully! It seems the plants you've wisely chosen have filled in particularly fast.

Now it would be nice if we had some rain and could see some water running through it, right? Have your camera ready. It's bound to happen sooner or later ... :-)
plantmaven
9 years ago
It looks great. Well done.

k
lucas_tx_gw
Original Author
9 years ago
Oh I guess you mean like this? (notice Santa's runway there in the front yard, this was not recent ;-)

You can also see in this why we need the berm. Since this was taken, we've also routed the downspouts underground into the creek, so we don't get all the water on the house side.

So in short, it does work as designed.
TxMarti
9 years ago
It looks good, and best of all, it works! Do you have trouble keeping your salvia greggii alive with once a week watering? I have found that they aren't as drought tolerant as I thought they would be.
lucas_tx_gw
Original Author
9 years ago
I don't have good luck with greggii either. That red one in the pics is darcyi, which is doing great with water just once a week when watering the new grass.

I actually bought one from Flowers by the Sea to have in a pot and they are fairly brittle. That one on the berm is actually a piece I broke off and rooted and it's done that well from starting as a cutting this spring. I've never grown it before but it seems to do great in DFW. I amended that berm with some compost before I planted but that's it, aside from that it's nice black gumbo clay.

Really hoping it overwinters but even if it doesn't I'll get another next spring.
cynthianovak
9 years ago
Love it! thank you for posting this year's update

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