Jesse Jenkins

With Passover starting Friday & Easter this Sunday, many will be gathering with family & friends to cook, eat, play games, and visit. Wonderful times for relaxing outside!

We’ve filled our store with beautiful blooming annuals, perennials, hanging baskets, and tubs of flowers for last minute “dress up” your garden for the holiday! Come see us this Friday & Saturday for the best of the best in gardening supplies to get your home, yard, and patio ready to greet your guests. We all wish you a very happy holiday!

… and we’ll be closed this Sunday for our time with family. Thank you!!

– Sally & James & Your Gill Landscape Nursery Team

The saying goes “the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second-best time is now.”

Well we say it is always time to plant a tree! You only need to decide what trees best fit your landscape, plan to keep them watered, and keep the weed eater far from their trunks.

Do you want the stately look of a large shade tree or would you like to plant one smaller, like our 5 gallon Live Oaks, and watch it grow? How bout a Magnolia with their giant fragrant flowers or the natural look of a Shoal Creek Vitex with their twisted trunks & spires of purple blooms.

Trees add beauty and value to your home; mature trees can increase property value as much as 20%, and their shade reduces energy usage. Some trees like the Possumhaw and Yaupon Holly provide beauty & food for birds and wildlife (read more about them in this week’s blog from Sally Gill!).

So, whatever the season, celebrate the benefit of trees. Plant & care for them so you and future generations will enjoy them!

Happy Tree Planting!

-Debbie

James and I have a small courtyard off our kitchen and master bath, thanks to an architect friend’s brilliant idea some 20 years ago. Once construction was complete, James laid out the courtyard with Mexican pavers and planting beds accented with containers of fern and blooming plants. Directly out from our kitchen window, he planted a Possumhaw (Ilex decidua) which can be seen from both the kitchen and master bath. It has been the perfect tree!

Possumhaw is multi-trunked and considered an ornamental tree, in that it stays under 25′ (its actual finished height is around 15′). The birds love this tree! It produces red berries in the fall that the mockingbirds devour, and all kinds of migrating birds stop off in our courtyard to get water from our re-circulating birdbath and rest in our tree. It does lose about 3/4 of its leaves in the winter, but because the leaves are small, it isn’t a chore to clean up. They can be expected to live 25-50 years and very hardy against cold and heat. I have never had to spray this tree for insects!

I found some small outdoor iron birds, made in Portland, Oregon, at the Botanical Gardens in Portland. I love the way they adorn our tree…and… after a little research, I found the artist & manufacturer and was able to bring them to Gill’s!

A relative of Possumhaw is the Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria). We have one on the side of our house along Santa Fe Street. The Texas hill country is covered with Yaupon Holly; naturally, they grow under oak trees. They also grow to about 15′, have red berries, small leaves and yes, the birds love them! And again, no bugs that I’ve found bother this tree either.

I am quick to recommend both these trees. Planted in front of windows but far enough out to not catch the eave of your home, they bring nature indoors and can create nice filtered light for your interior, and for the icing on the cake, you get to watch the birds!

-Sally Gill

Years ago, my mother-in-law, Ruth Bayne Gill, aka “Bayne”, bought a parcel of land on Mill Creek, between Vanderpool and Medina, Texas. It’s a beautiful piece of Texas Hill Country, with creek bottom habitat including Bald Cypress and other water loving plants and a nice size hill rising toward the rear of the property covered with juniper, Texas mountain laurel, red oak, and blue oak. The hill is tall enough to hike up and look out over the valley to the opposing ridges and hills and is itself capped with huge and magnificent boulders painted with colorful yellow, white, and rust orange lichens and green Hill Country ferns. Bayne spent a lot of time visiting her land, dreaming how she would put a small Texas “Dog Run” cabin on it. In the meantime, she thinned the cedar just a little and explored her acreage from bottom to top.

*(Clockwise from top left) The Hill, Mill Creek, Boulders at The Top of The Hill, Lichen and Fern on a Rock*

Bayne’s love for nature was infectious. In the summer of 2000, our oldest son, Stuart, took a job with the Texas Nature Conservancy in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, clearing fire breaks. Towards the end of the summer, James and I, along with our younger son Trevor, and Bayne, drove out to the Davis Mountains for a visit. On our visit, we hiked and hiked and hiked. As usual, Bayne marveled at the plants, the bugs, the sky… anything and everything Mother Nature. She could name all the birds, insects, and other animals, the plants, and understood the complexity of their interactions. We often paused so she could collect a few seeds of notable plants.

Bayne passed away in the spring of 2013, surrounded by her family, in her country cottage in the woods outside of Goliad, Texas.

Fast forward to March of 2019. James and I drove up to Mill Creek to camp for the night. Visiting the Mill Creek land she passed to her children always makes us feel closer to Bayne. We can almost hear her voice ringing with joy while telling us some delightful natural history tidbit or Native lore.

Early the next morning, James got up to hike across the creek and up the hill. I stayed back, enjoying the quiet morning air. Later in the morning, I started hiking around the property, checking on some bigtooth maple trees (of Lost Maples fame) that James’ older brother William had planted some years back. As I was walking, I spied a small glass jar with a rusted lid on the ground near a clump of old cedar trees. I picked it up; there was paper inside. I’ve always dreamed of finding a message in a bottle. Doesn’t everybody? I knew immediately it was Bayne’s handwriting. And some seed. I very carefully opened the bottle. The paper was yellowed and cracking, but I was able to read, “Alligator Juniper – Aug 2000.” She had collected that seed with us on our Davis Mountains family trip almost 20 years ago!

I felt like I had won the lottery a thousand times over. Actually, I already had. Bayne was the best mother-in-law I could dream of; I loved her dearly. I knew at that moment, her spirit was with me and always will be.

Growing up, I was always happiest outdoors. Joining the Gill family took me to a whole new level of love for the miracles of nature. James and I, along with our amazing Gill team, are thankful and humbled by your support in allowing us to share our love of plants and the outdoors with you.

Thank you for being a part of Gill’s and Happy Mother’s Day to you!

-Sally

As we get into summertime, there are quite a few blooming plants that have yet to show their color. When I first moved into my apartment, I always wondered what the beautiful purple tree was that backed up to my patio. Soon after starting at Gill’s, I learned that it was a Shoal Creek Vitex.

Vitex are one of my favorite small blooming trees for the summer because of their purple spires and their ability to attract all kinds of birds, bees, and butterflies. Last summer while my Vitex was in full bloom, I counted 13 hummingbirds buzzing my tree in one morning! I enjoy sitting on my patio in the mornings and late evenings when it’s quiet and listening to the wildlife surrounded by the dense Vitex foliage.

-Wyatt

This Saturday, May 25th, bring the kids and we will give them a small blooming plant for them to give to a friend or relative in need of a little kindness – in honor of Mister Rogers’ Day of Kindness.

Last summer, James and I went to the Alamo Drafthouse to see “Won’t You Be My Neighbor”, PBS’s documentary about Fred Rogers. Wow, it’s a tearjerker -in a good way! Academy award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville “takes us beyond the zip-up cardigan and the land of make-believe, and into the heart of a creative genius who inspired generations of children with compassion and limitless imagination” (Rotten Tomatoes).

The May 12th issue of our Corpus Christi Caller Times had a story on Mister Rogers that got us thinking. Fred Rogers used the number 143 to say, “I love you”, as each digit reflects the number of letters in each word of the phrase. May 23rd is the 143rd day of the year, and there’s a movement in his home state of Pennsylvania to honor Mister Rogers with a day of kindness; Gill’s is getting on board!

This Saturday, bring the kids and we will give them a small blooming plant for them to give to a friend or relative in need of a little kindness – in honor of Mister Rogers’ Day of Kindness.

While you’re here, we’d love your child to write a short note about who is getting their plant and why. We’ll share the responses in an upcoming garden blog!

-Sally Gill

I’m usually hard at work in the accounting office here at Gill’s, but I’m the first one outside to greet a new truck of plants to pick things to try in my garden at home. Seeing how much our customers love planting Tropical Butterfly Weed (Milkweed) in their gardens, I decided to purchase a couple of plants for myself. The very same day I brought the plants home, I noticed a Monarch flying around and landing on the plants. Then, about 4 or 5 days later, I started seeing tiny caterpillars!

After the caterpillars hatch from their eggs, they begin to feed on the leaves of the plant and let me tell you they are hungry little caterpillars. I watched them chew through entire leaves in just a few seconds!

Once they’ve eaten enough leaves, they go through 5 caterpillar (instar) stages, in which they molt their skin, increasing in size with each stage. In their final stage, they find a safe place to hang upside down in a J shape, then shed for the last time forming a light green chrysalis (pupa) that will protect the caterpillars as they transform into beautiful butterflies. I made sure to get a close-up photo of each stage, and more photos once the butterflies emerged.

Butterfly Weed is the only host plant for the Monarch butterfly, but there are many other plants that attract other types of butterflies such as Salvia, Coreopsis, Penta, Zinnias, and Buddleia (aka Butterfly Bush). Make sure you have plenty of these in your garden so your butterflies will have plenty of nectar to feed on!

-Stacy

This Father’s Day weekend, several members of the Gill’s team take time to share a fond memory of gardening, landscaping, or just being out in nature with their dads. Happy Father’s Day!

“One of my favorite early memories of my dad was of him out mowing the lawn while I played in the sandbox. I loved how good the grass looked and smelled. I also loved how he took such beautiful care of our mesquite trees, out in front of our home he designed and built for our family.“

– Sally Gill

“I remember baling and hauling hay with my dad at his ranch off Highway 59 near Freer, TX. The worst part was the heat – throwing bales onto the truck , then re-stacking them in the barn by hand. The best part was driving the truck!”

– Kevin Lichtenberger

“My father plowed and seeded 45 acres with corn; we had corn for the entire year – corn as far as the eye could see. “

– Tony Lichtenberger

“Some of my best memories are working with my dad in in his garden. He had one of the greenest thumbs I’ve ever seen. He loved growing fruit trees and all manner of plants. To this day we can still enjoy the fruits of his labor. Love you, Dad.”

– Phillip Elbert

My dad always cut the grass, trimmed, and edged perfectly making it look straight and nice. The way he trimmed the bushes always made it look well-organized in the yard.

– Brandon Sanchez

“I grew up in my Dad’s footsteps. He loved to fish so I did too, and every camp out I was right there to help, but mow the yard? That’s where he said absolutely…NO! He always told me I might cut my foot off. As accident prone as I was, he had a point…LOL. The first time I mowed my own yard, I could still here his words of warning, but you better believe I was extra careful and still am…even to this day! Thank you, Dad…Love You So Much!”

– Debbie Pinkerton

“My dad always loved gardening. We have always had fresh vegetables from the yard. Nothing like tomatoes off the vine Christmas morning!”

– Philip Krepel

My dad was a very practical person. Thus, his time in the garden often focused on edibles. As a result, we all enjoyed fresh orange juice, homemade lime sherbet, fresh pomegranates, canned plum and fig jelly, fresh mulberries, and occasionally, fresh shelled pecans. Dad and mom were the perfect match because she had all the right recipes to go with his garden endeavors!

– Grace Buchanan

One good memory about my dad is how he taught me to chop firewood from one of the hardest trees: Ebony.

– Jimmy Chavira

Jesse Jenkins

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