Master Gardeners of Lubbock

A Garden on the Llano

by Liz Smitten, Certified Master Gardener

Originally printed in Lubbock Memorial Arboretum Newsletter, September, 2005

When we moved to Lubbock over thirty years ago, I was excited about beginning my first real garden. Having lived in Minnesota, California, Wisconsin, and England, I knew exactly what a garden should look like and what I wanted to grow, and happily set about ordering a large variety of totally unsuitable plants, carefully planting and tending them, watching helplessly while they withered and died, and mourning their passing only to order more of the same, with the same results. Slowly the lights came on and I began replacing my dead darlings with plants that I saw thriving in other Lubbock gardens, while still yearning for those plants which required the acid soil, higher annual rainfall, less wind and no hail of my dream climate. Somewhere along the way I began learning about successful gardening on the Llano Estacado, the differences between those plants that are native to the area, those which have adapted, and the exotics unsuited to our growing conditions.
While books, magazines, television, and the internet have expanded my knowledge, I consider myself fortunate to live in Lubbock which has three key garden sites available to the public and where we can see firsthand the enormous variety of plants which thrive in our growing conditions. I call these the hidden treasures of the Llano since so few residents seem to know of their existence, or to avail themselves of these resources.

The Lubbock Memorial Arboretum, located at 41st Street and University Avenue contains extensive plantings of specimen trees, shrubs, grasses, herbs, perennials, wildflowers, and annuals, a garden for the senses, and has recently added a new wheelchair accessible nature trail. It also offers free monthly programs of interest to area gardeners, and special guided tours can be scheduled.

The Lubbock Master Gardener Association Education Garden is west of the Breedlove Dehydration Plant on North MLK and Loop 289. It contains flowers, trees, shrubs, grasses, herbs, and vegetables suitable for our region, and the Master Gardeners offer a number of clinics at the Garden each year targeted towards gardening in West Texas.

The Texas Tech University horticultural garden on the TTU campus east of Indiana Avenue at the Brownfield Highway contains a comprehensive collection of plants adapted to our area; with its adjacent greenhouses, it functions as a student teaching laboratory for both undergraduates and graduate students.
Using these resources, and making my annual trek to the South Plains Fair Flower Show, I have slowly developed my garden on the Llano. It is filled with perennial prairie grasses, crape myrtle, rosemary, artemesia, thyme, perennial salvias, daylilies, flowering crabapple trees, roses, spring and summer bulbs, sedums, perennial lantana, mixed poppies and larkspur, coneflowers, black-eyed Susan, dianthus, coreopsis, scabiosa, and a host of other plants which have adapted to our hot, dry, windy conditions, our alkaline soil, our minimal rainfall, our variable winters, and our high altitude.

Now, with a small measure of wisdom, I realize that while I will never be a native wildflower, after thirty years in Lubbock I can consider myself an adapted perennial rather than a wilting, half-dead exotic. Not only do I have a garden on the Llano, but am content as a gardener from the Llano, surrounded by cherished plants I might never have known if I lived only with my dreams.

For more gardening information in Lubbock, visit the Lubbock Garden Clubs site.