It's that time of year when rueful gardeners look at their front yards and wished they'd remembered which plants die in the cold of winter and which one are evergreen. Not that you don't plant things that winter kills...but I like my landscape a lot better if the dead plants (the ones that look like kelp right now,according to an apt description from a gardening friend) spend the winter in a less obvious spot than abutting the front sidewalk.



Dead plants in the front yard were not a problem for me until lately. The front bed at a previous house was shaded by a giant oak on one side and a giant pecan on the other. Lariope, which outlined the bed in a scalloped pattern, grew tall enough to hide almost any plant that died back in the winter.

But I had such a hard time getting any plant I liked to grow in the partial sun of that bed that it remained bare, off and on, until the last year we lived there. That's when my sister thinned her cast iron plants and we loaded big muddy buckets of them in my car for transplanting.

When we moved in the summer, the cast iron was thriving although growing slowly. I assume it is still, although I have not checked lately.

When the weather turned sunny and warm over the weekend, I went to work with the bypass loppers, whacking everything back—the Mexican petunias (which some people don't like because they are invasive), the lantana, the Texas Star hibiscus, the Mexican firespike, the Lady in Red sage, the Mexican mint marigold—even the Russian sage. Earlier I had cut back the Maximilian sunflower because it had gotten quite lazy, lying prone as if inviting the dogs to munch on its leaves. Although I won't move my tall, purple-blooming Mexican petunias to another part of the yard, I will try to plant some evergreens nearby next year.

In fairness, I have to note the plants that do not look like kelp, despite the sub-20 temperatures of last week: Jerusalem sage, which is a new plant for me this year, remains a happy green. So I will forgive it for not blooming as much this spring as its relatives planted elsewhere. Maybe next year?

Others that still bear green foliage: Mexican oregano, rosemary, winecup, columbine, cherry sage, El Dorado sage, ice plant (although it looks a bit anemic), and even the day lilies I transplanted to the front yard. I'm not sure which of these will make it to late March, however. As always, gardening is an experiment.