April is for Gardeners

Monthly Updates

Apr 1

A field of Texas Bluebonnets (*Lupinus texensis*) near Dallas last weekend

Hello, friends!
I hope this email finds you well! I just returned home from a quick Spring Break trip to Texas to visit my family. As we neared Dallas, I was so excited to see patches of the Texas state flower along the highway — the Texas Bluebonnet.

As a child growing up, all-things-Texas were in the school curricula, and I vividly remember making a tissue paper Bluebonnet in first grade. Tearing the tiny pieces of tissue paper… wrapping them around the eraser end of my pencil… dipping them in Elmer’s glue… and a thousand repetitions later you had a Bluebonnet. Did anyone else do that?

Anyway, we stopped and took photos, because — well, how can you not? And what a photograph or a video can’t convey is the smell. Glorious!

Bluebonnet Seeds

Click here to buy some Bluebonnet Seeds for your garden!

Bluebonnets are part of the pea family — like Sweet Peas — and they smell a lot like Sweet Peas, too. It’s intoxicating on the breeze with a whole field of them. According to the Extension Office at Texas A&M, the State of Texas started seeding highways and roadsides with Bluebonnet seeds back in the 1930s, and, of course, we have Lady Bird Johnson to thank for the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 which required the sowing of wildflower seeds along highways across the country. Those wildflowers are even more important now as we face declining populations of insects and birds. And the Bluebonnets I saw this weekend were host to butterflies and bees — even on a rather windy day.

There are actually five different varieties of Bluebonnets, and they ALL are officially the Texas State Flower — as are any other species subsequently discovered! Talk about planning ahead!

Speaking of planning, it’s time to get to work in the garden, and I have two things to help you get to work: Garden Notes, my gardening journal, and your April Gardening Checklist.

Here’s your April Gardening Checklist!