Flowers and Vegetables Can Thrive Where God Plants Them

What Do Plants Need to Thrive?

In order to thrive, plants need just the right conditions. As gardeners, we try to provide them. We prepare the ground, add nutrients to the soil, and plant seeds or transplants, and wait for growth. Yet more and more I'm finding God is much better than I at putting plants where they will grow when he choses. Take this gazania plant, for example.

Although I have beds containing gazanias all around my lawn, none of the individual plants are as big and beautiful as this one. God planted it in my lawn. Normally the plants spread  by runners. But this plant had to have sprouted from a seed carried by the wind. This plant has been thriving in the middle of my lawn for over a year now, and two others have appeared in other parts of the lawn since then.

Gazanias are drought resistant and almost nothing kills them. When I still had a gardener, I made him mow around this plant because I thought it was beautiful. It also inspired me because it bloomed and thrived where there were no others of its kind around it. The ground had not been irrigated for over a year and depended completely on rain most of the time. I sometimes help it a bit now if it's especially hot and dry. The soil got no extra nutrients or cultivating, and there were weedy grasses all around this gazania. Yet it continued to bloom and make beautiful flowers. What God plants, he also seems to take care of.

This gazania inspires me so much I made a greeting card out of it. The inside reads "Bloom where God planted you." We don't all get planted in the best surroundings or get the nurturing we need from those who are supposed to care for or mentor us, but that doesn't mean we can't thrive if God put us there.

Flowers in Lawn: Bloom Where You Are Planted Card
by barbsbooks

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The Kale and Lamb's Ears God Planted

God has planted a lot of kale and Lamb's Ears in my yard, but not always in my gardens. The kale plant you see above had a lot of children and grandchildren. Many turned up around the garage as second or third generation plants. They were children of the plants that landed across the driveway. This post tells the story of some of this plant's progeny.

Lamb's Ears are even more prolific than kale, if that's possible. If you have one Lamb's Ears plant, you will soon have a yard full. It multiplies faster than rabbits. You can see one clump of Lamb's Ears at the bottom of the photo above. But I didn't plant it. I only planted one of these -- in the corner by the walkway near the porch. Now the plant is everywhere. It jumped the walkway and took over in the flowerbed by the garage. It landed in this corner below. In fact I planted nothing in this section that isn't in a pot. God planted it all.

In the photo above, from left to right, you see Lamb's Ears, a pink grapefruit yarrow in the pot, lemon balm in a pot and some which escaped from the pot, two tall clary sage that God planted, some small euphorbia transplants I brought over from Templeton (in the tiny pot), some iris leaves from some rhizomes I threw in a shallow cardboard box I covered with dirt and forgot about, and more Lamb's Ears sneaking around between the pots at the right end. Those irises I forgot about and never watered or fed, bloom every year. Below, I have a photo of one  in bloom. It was taken two months earlier than the photo above.

Now Lamb's Ears occupies every flower bed.  It's now even beginning to take up residence in what used to be my lawn. 

Lamb's Ears at Other End of Flower Bed in Photo Above. Irises are to the left and you can see a few tiny red buds of newly transplanted red valerian hiding between the Lamb's Ears and the iris leaves. 

More Unexpected Garden Volunteers

In 2013 I planted one mullein I thought was a clary sage because it was mislabeled. ( Borage, mullein, and clary sage look very much alike when young. See my post with their photos.) It grew in the front flower bed. It was the only one I ever planted. I planted one clary sage in a pot not far from it. I planted borage seeds at the other end of the bed and got a plant or two.

This year I was delighted after the rains to find that I not only had numerous clary sage babies, but I also had more mullein plants. One even sprouted in an empty pot and another in front of it. I had thrown the seeds around when the original plant died a couple of years ago. I guess some things take time. I also had my largest borage plant ever spout and thrive and it now has some babies.  I love the way it reseeds. You can see part of it below, with some of its babies at the very bottom of the photo. The bees love it. If you look carefully, you will see one foraging. That pot in front of the borage contains catmint. Some of it has escaped.

The cards below show off some of the plants God has provided for me. Most cards are blank but may have a title identifying the plant inside. You can customize them any way you want and add your own text.

Borage-and-Calendula, Beautiful Borage CardSeven-Spotted Ladybug on Borage Blank CardGreeting Card: Lemon Balm CardMacro Yellow Mullein Flower Card

I Love Having God Increase my Plants

I have not been able to spend the time I wanted to in my garden this year. The abundance of Lamb's Ears helps smoother the weeds that would otherwise take their place. Although I had hoped to plant some annuals this year, it's just not going to happen. I have too many health issues to solve and my biggest job is to keep the weeds down since my gardener quit. Because God provided so many new plant babies to fill my flower beds,  I'm going to have plenty of color during the spring and summer. 

How do you feel about volunteer plants? I've been sharing my plant babies with neighbors since I have more than I can use. I can always pull the surplus plants when I have time to replace them. I still need to plant some thyme I've rooted and some root divisions from some plants in Templeton I brought to the Paso house. So my work is cut out for me. 

Do you have any garden goals for this year?

What Blooms in My Paso Robles Garden at the End of May: Flowers

May is a colorful month in the garden. I have decided to start keeping a record of what blooms each month so that I can predict what my garden will look like every month of the year. My goal is to have some  garden color through all seasons. I took this photo on May 27, 2014. Not all colors come from flowers.

In the foreground you can see the mums which started to bloom a couple of weeks ago. If you look back a bit and to the right, you will see a pot of tricolor sage that adds a touch of purple to the mix. Next to it is a hyssop plant with its tiny blue flowers to feed the bees. The yellow is calendula, and that blooms almost all year and reseeds itself. As you can see, I like to mix plants up in my garden, so it has a somewhat wild look. Now we will take a closer look at individual flowers.

First are the chrysanthemums. I usually associate them with autumn, but these are also blooming for me in spring. I just read that I can take cuttings from these up until the end of the month. I might try it to see if I can make more plants by fall. I have two regular size mums and two miniature ones of different colors spread throughout this garden now. 

Pansies have been special to me since I was a child. My grandmother used to have them planted around her fruit trees in small circular beds. These were planted last fall, and I don't expect they will last much longer as the days get hotter. I'm glad they are still blooming in late May. 

I also planted some petunias in the fall. Most have faded and died, but this pink one still remains. These are technically perennials, but people usually grow them as annuals.  I may not replace them, since they don't do well without more water than I want to give them since water for landscaping is rationed until the end of summer. This petunia is taking cover under an iris leaf. 

Carnations have always had a special place in my gardens because my mother loved them. I still have some carnation plants that came from root divisions of one of her plants. I first started one in our Newbury Park home in Ventura County, and when we moved, I brought it here. I have two babies from that mother plant in my Paso Robles garden now. They produce very light pink flowers. You can see one of those plants below. Although I have been deadheading them, they appear not to be producing many new flowers now, so I think their season may be coming to an end. They have been covered with flowers for the past two months. Now each plant only has a flower or two left.

Since I have long wanted a more colorful carnation, I could not resist this two-tone dark pink with purple Chomley Farran carnation. (See below.) It is not only deeper in color, but the purple markings make it more striking. It seems I planted it too far back in the bed, though,  and the flower stems are much too long as they reach out toward the sun. 

As you can see, in order to keep the flowers from landing on the ground, I've propped them up on some borage plants -- also in bloom with tiny star-like blue flowers. On the far right you can see a single yellow calendula. 

In this next photo I have also mixed the flowers with herbs. I wanted some drought resistant plants in a side bed in a corner between two sidewalks. It has poor soil and doesn't get much water. I decided to plant a Fruity Teucrium there, with a tansy plant on either side of it. I expected the tansy to contrast with the purple flowers of the Teucrium, since the tansy will bloom yellow when it finally blooms. I know tansy spreads, but I didn't expect it to be so much taller than the Teucrium to the extent that it almost blocks it from the light. I will have to cut it back if the Teucrium is to survive. 

Fruity Teucrium Surrounded by Tansy

Another plant I bought new last year was the butterfly blue scabiosa you see here. It's also known as the pincushion flower. I would like to find more of them, and I may plant more from seed, but I think I want deeper and brighter colors if I add more plants. The small blue flowers you see on the right side are from the hyssop plant that shares a border with the scabiosa. 

This is Lamb's Ear. The mother plant came from my Templeton house, where I kept it in a pot because the gophers liked to eat it when it was in the ground. I have terrible gopher problems there, so I always keep the mother plant of anything new in a pot until I see if the gophers like it. Since Lamb's Ear really spreads to the point of being invasive and needs little care, I like to use it where I want to fill in bare ground to suppress the growth of weeds. I love the fuzzy gray Lamb's Ear leaves, and at this time of year the pale  flower stalks shoot up and fill with tiny lavender flowers. If you look carefully, you will see the bees love them. 

Last in this post I will show you my star jasmine which started blooming in May and which I expect to keep blooming all summer. It's attractive in moderation, but it tends to want to bury my border plants and I have to keep it well-trimmed. It does provide a nice background for contrast with the calendula, sage, pansies, godetias, lilies of the Nile, and poppies which I planted in front of it near the sidewalk.

The Flanders poppies also bloomed at the end of May as you saw in my last post. 

In my next post I will introduce the herbs that are currently blooming. Please stay tuned.