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Sundas Secret Garden
September 2007 - Beauty of Nature
If you truly love Nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
- Vincent Van Gogh
Love and appreciation of nature goes back to my childhood enjoying many hours of interacting with nature.We lived near a wooded area and fireflies were common to see after dark. The entire woods would light up with what seemed to be thousands of fireflies that looked like small Christmas lights twinkling near the ground. As a child, I had never seen anything as beautiful. Some people call them "lightning bugs." Even now, I treasure the wonder of them each time I see them in the evening around dusk in the garden.
The very nature of the garden is such that it encourages observation, invites contemplation. At its best, the garden is a celebration of human community, of place, and of the interrelationship of all living things, a doorway to other worlds. Gardens are one of the most reliable ways for achieving a true harmony with nature. I have benches and swings set at various places for observing the garden from different perspectives. Quietly observing the colorful flowers in the perfumed air gives me time to see the hummingbirds, butterflies, insects, various birds that I would have missed while hurrying in and out of the garden. It is time well spent, enjoying the beauty of nature.
Late summer is almost a season in its own right and is a good time to remove weak, unproductive growth and old seed heads to stimulate new growth for fall beauty. Late summer to early autumn is a good time for planting and landscaping. Fall
in Texas is a great time to landscape and garden. The fall season is actually a better time than spring for planting and root
establishment. For the avid flower gardener, beauty is as essential as breathing, and it seems the more we plant, the more we
desire the freshness of adding a few more blooms to the beds.With our mild winters, we can add more flowers to bloom during
the cooler months. Good choices of colorful annuals for fall to winter are geraniums, begonias, petunias, snapdragons,
pinks, and pansies. So much garden activity emphasizes spring bloom that we sometimes forget to also prepare for our fallblooming
plants. There are also several beautiful bulb and perennial selections that are well suited to our area, but planting
must be done in the spring.
 Fall planting follows the extreme heat of summer and precedes a cooler winter season. It is a time of rejuvenation. Shrubs, trees and most landscape plants planted in the fall use this timing to their advantage. Plant roots grow anytime the soil temperature is about 40 degrees F or slightly higher, and this occurs nearly all winter long in most of the state.
Therefore, during the winter months, the root systems of the fall-planted specimens thrive and become well-established.When spring arrives, this well-developed root system makes it possible for the plant to take advantage of the full surge of spring growth. Fall planting enables us to enjoy nature’s beauty year-round.
I have found, through years of practice, that people garden in order to make something grow; to interact with nature; to share, to find sanctuary, to heal, to honor the earth, to leave a mark. Through gardening, we feel whole as we make our personal work of art upon our land. - Julie Moir Messervy, The Inward Garden
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