For a full sun (or almost full sun), windy, south-facing location, you will need to water, water, water, somewhen between June and September. That's a given, especially if your plants get large, so you might need to look into drip irrigation for anything you grow in containers on the deck.

There are many gracious, helpful gardeners on the Texas regional forum as well as on this forum, so some experts are likely to help you out soon!

Don't know how big your containers are, but sounds like they are sizeable?

I am NOT an expert, but maybe redbud trees or dwarf(ish) yaupon holly varieties or dwarf nandinas or moss roses or asian jasmine or mondo grass or gregg salvia or antique roses or crepe myrtles or lantanas or some other plant that has survived the regional or national best plants trials? Alas, the name of these trials escapes me. :-(

The Aggie website might help
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/lawn_garden/

The Dallas arboretum website might help. Since you are only 20 miles east of Dallas, information for the Tyler area might or might not help. Here is the link for the Dallas Arboretum website:

http://www.dallasarboretum.org/

Good luck!

Thank you, merrybookwyrm, those plants all sound beautiful and I'll check them out, as well as the two websites.

The containers are very large, about 2.5' tall by 2' wide, tapering down somewhat to the bottom. We do have a drip system but apparently it doesn't give enough drips so we have been watering the new ones by hand as well. Problem is I don't know how much to give and have heard you can also overwater. From the looks of them that's not the problem. Well, we just had a big rainstorm here tonight so that should help! :-)

I have my fingers crossed the websites help you. Someone posted a question to the Texas forum about what tall, narrow evergreens might survive the heat, but I don't think anyone ever figured out a plant small enough for the space described. I think the poster was yearning after the smallish junipers that go next to front doors in magazines... in cooler climates.

If memory serves, ligustrum and cherry laurel can be made into topiary, too. Older cultivars of ligustrum can be invasive via seeds, so some people hate it. By the gulf coast, it gets mildewy. On clay in the Dallas area, it seems to be very hardy. It might get too big for your deck, even in pots, though. Ditto with cherry laurel.

Your containers should be large enough, definitely. The Container gardening forum has people who know about drip irrigation in containers. Conventional watering in containers is supposed to be done until water runs out the bottom of the containers, and then you let the dirt dry out according to the needs of the plant. I'm not sure how that translates into drip irrigation watering. You can't forget the fertilizer though (like I just did -again-).

Hopefully you got the following message directly to your email address, but I'm not sure I've figured how to do that correctly, so here is a resend:

The board won't let me post again so soon. Thought of this after the first post.

I should have included chinese garlic chives, sweet potatoes, native honeysuckle, iris, day lilies, cannas, rosemary, jujube, and sweet bay. Laurus nobilis, not California Bay. The Herb forum and the Container Gardening forum might be helpful, too. You -don't- want japanese honeysuckle.

The yaupons, sweet bay, and rosemary could lend themselves to topiary, similar to your poor, lamented spiral junipers and the ball gardenias. In our area, don't gardenias need morning sun, afternoon shade or light shade all day? They are an acid soil loving plant, so I've never grown them.

We have a south facing, full sun back yard, with poorly draining clay full of nutgrass and bermuda .grass. I've been gardening these last years in big yard buckets that hold about 20 gallons of potting soil. Just wait until the nutgrass is gone, then I may make some raised beds! The yard is fenced, so is not as windy as your deck. The containers successfully hold sweet bay, fig, rosemary, jujube, day lilies, chinese chives, yaupon, iris, and cannas in full sun throughout the year. A fig might get beat to smithereens in your location, might not. The containers successfully hold onions, french sorrel, violets, salad burnet, swiss chard, potatoes, sweet potatoes in full to mostly full sun throughout the year or throughout their growing season. I did haul the tubs of plants into the living room during the nasty cold snaps this past winter, otherwise I don't think I've ever done anything special about them during the winter.

Hope this helps.

Merry, I did not get your email but I think I know why -- we recently changed email address and I forgot to change it on GW. Must do that right now. I was wondering why your replies on the site weren't coming to my email.

Thank you so much for the plethora of info, I think I have plenty from you! So far no reply from the arboretum but I just emailed last night.

It did not occur to me to plant something useful like sweet potatoes etc. in those pots. Surely we will be needing that as grocery bills climb. Can't exactly eat a spiral topiary, LOL!

Another question is, do you know what the most reliable nursery is in the area? We do go into Dallas so it can be there. I am ashamed to admit that I bought the gardenia balls at Home Depot! They were just sitting there looking adorable so we got them.

Best wishes,
BDL

Hey, Home Depot has nice things. They get me frequently! So does Lowe's. lol.

Many of their things are appropriate for the area, but may or may not be in stock at the best time of year. Sometimes they have things that are more challenging to grow in the area. If you have some areas with afternoon shade, your gardenias should be fine in containers with water and acid-loving plant fertilizer. If your soil is alkaline, you would have to amend the soil to plant the gardenias in the ground, but again, they would probably be fine with water and fertilizer for acid-loving plants. (Don't quote me on this, it is many years since I worked in a plant nursery.) If your soil is acidic, then you would probably be okay with water and fertilizer. I'm guessing gardenias like well-drained soil... If you don't have trees, maybe put up a decorative screen on the west-southwest of the gardenias to block the afternoon sun?

I have regular grocery store sweet potatoes in containers, yes, but people have been having great fun with the ornamental cultivars with lime green or purple leaves. They plant them as ground cover or let them trail down from containers. As long as they have enough water, they grow like Topsy.

Any nurseries east or north of the metroplex, I don't know at all, and I haven't been in Dallas itself to plant shop in some years-- I've not set foot in the nurseries I'm going to list. The nurseries I think of as -nice- in Dallas are Nicholson-Hardie, North Haven Gardens, and the Dallas location of Redenta's Garden. There are probably others. Calloway's can be pretty good, I expect the Plant Shed would be too. I used to adore Petal Pushers, but it closed. :-(

You're going to get tired of reading! Signing off now...

You should be able to grow your full sun plants just fine as long as you are using the right kind of potting mix and you are watering enough. Just by the little bits and pieces of info I can pick up from your posts, I'd be willing to bet money that your plants are dieing of dessication due to lack of sufficient water. Unless, of course, the wind is excessive. We live in an area called "the Breezy Knoll" for good reason, but my containerized plants do just fine.

Drip systems often allow for large areas of the soil volume to become bone dry...and little sips of water here and there do the same thing. Plants, especially those grown in that kind of location, should be drenched each and every time they need to be watered.

The key to that is using a soil that drains rapidly so that 'overwatering' will never become an issue.

SO! What kind of potting mix are you using?

merry, I'm so glad to have good references on the nurseries. I know from CA that it makes all the difference, for someone like me anyway (total plant idiot). I can see I need to be more savvy -- acidic soil, what kind of fertilizer, etc., honestly it makes my head spin.

rhizo, in line with my head spinning, lol, DH just bought a couple bags of dirt and planted them in it. I have no idea what kind it was. Obviously we either need to hire a gardener who knows these things, or learn them ourselves. Or have them potted at the nursery. I suspected this about the drip things. They are, well, drips.

So, please tell me if you all approve my plan: Go to one of the good nurseries, get one of the recommended plants, have them plant it in suitable soil, get the right fertilizer, apply, and water them profusely (yes the wind is horrible) which means water till it comes out the bottom, as merry said. Does that sound good? Only question remaining is, how do I tell when they need watering again? Should I get one of those meters you stick into the soil?

I really appreciate all your good advice.

bigdog

bigdog,
Your plan sounds good. Hope you get something you really like.

How to tell when the plants need watering again? Hm. It really does depend on the plant, but we used to tell people to stick a finger into the soil of a plant in a container and if the soil is dry in the top 2 to 3 inches, it is time to water the plant again. This works pretty good for indoor plants! Letting the top few inches of soil dry out between waterings helps prevent overwatering. This advice should be good for outdoor plants, but watch out for the following:

For many plants, when a plant has enough water, its leaves can be kind of shiny. When it is dry, the leaves begin to look dull. The leaves can also droop. Soak immediately. Putting the whole pot into a tub of water so the container gets waterlogged like wet clay soil for several hours is not too much, especially in our hot weather. These signs may mean the plant is already too dry to revive, or it may not mean that for the plant in question. Obvious examples are fig, swiss chard, french sorrel, and tomatoes. Less obvious examples are rosemary, sweet laurel, and daylilies.

If your dh bought soil for the gardenias at the plant store, then it should be okay for them as long as you use azalia/gardenia/rhododendron fertilizer.

This past week with the higher temps and higher winds, the containers that have been growing for a long time like the fig and the swiss chard needed water everyday in spite of it being only April. This week not so much so far.

Big dog,

If your deck is large enough and stong enough, maybe you could build some containers to handle whatever tree, shrub, gardens you desire? You could do something with timber, cinder blocks, bricks, or ornamental stone. Then plumb up whatever irrigation system you want.