Last week-end we headed to San Antonio to watch a little Notre Dame football. Sunday morning was a beautiful day to stroll around the Alamo. It had been many years since we'd last been on the grounds and have they ever been working! Streetside of the walls are beds of palms and other tropicals. This one contains Sago Palms (really a Cycad, not a palm), Queen Palms, Mediterranean Fan Palm, and Windmill Palm. With the exception of the Queen, these are all pretty cold-hardy species. The Queen, though, is fast-growing and relatively inexpensive - so replacing them after a hard winter is not so difficult. 
This young Pindo Palm, Butia capitata, is flanked by a Yucca and a Texas Mountain Laurel, Sophora secundaflora. There are Texas Mountain Laurels all over the grounds - bet they are gorgeous in March and April! 
In front of one planting bed, they have used Asiatic Jasmine as a border. I have never seen it used this way - but looks really nice - They must just trim it regularly. Some of the beds are full of desert plants and mulched with river rock. 
The grounds are shaded by large Live Oaks, Pecans and the tallest Anacua tree I have ever seen. Some of the shadelovers growing beneath these canopies are split leaf philodendron and cast iron plant.
6 comments:
Those old live oaks are so picturesque with their branches weighed down to the ground.
I visited the Alamo 12 or so years ago...and I don't remember the grounds looking this good!
Love the pictures of the flowers and trees around the Alamo...we will be going there in the spring.
Come see about my giveaway.
Barbara
Those live oaks are simply amazing... they speak of so much history and a life well lived.
Thanks so much for following Rick Brown over to my blog. You must know him from being in the industry with him. He is a great guy to promote my Florida-friendly endeavors. I have always appreciated your comments and know how hard it is to garden and blog... so I understand your blog absence. I am not so great at getting around to all the blogs but I have you in my google reader so I always read even when I don't comment.:-)
I wanted to wish you a very Merry Christmas. I hope you get some good grandchildren time in. They do make the world go round!
Meems
Thank you for sharing, I love living in the South, just for the fact that my flowers are blooming all year long.
Hi Mary Beth!
I found your blog through Jan (Always Growing) blog. Then I read that you're in the Valley (Harlingen)! I spent junior high through high school in Donna and went to college at PanAm in Edinburg! I moved up to D.C./No.Va area in 1985 and have been here ever since. I did go back to visit friends in Donna in 1989, but haven't made it back since. My parents and one sister/her family live in San Antonio, so I make it back there several times a year. Seems virtually everything grows down there longer (except maybe things that don't like the intense summer heat, that is!). I worked for a year in Brownsville for a pro photographer, so I passed through Harlingen many, many times.
Happy gardening!
Cindy http://www.cindydyer.wordpress.com
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