Category Archives: Private Gardens

A Garden for Wildlife in Texas

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When the newspaper cartoonist and trailblazing conservationist Ding (Jay Norwood) Darling (1876-1962) established the National Wildlife Federation in 1936, he had conservation as his goal.  “Land, water and vegetation are just that dependent on one another. Without these three primary elements in natural balance, we can have neither fish nor game, wild flowers nor trees, labor nor capital, nor sustaining habitat for humans.”  Ruthie Burrus’s Austin garden meets those critera, and an NWF sign proclaims her intention for all visitors to see.

But it’s not really necessary to read the words on the sign, for you can discern Ruthie’s intent based on the masses of pollinator-friendly plants flanking the long driveway at its start near the road…..

…. and the painted lady butterfly nectaring on the mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea)…..

…. and the honey bee foraging on the blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella)…..

…. and the cottage garden-style matrix of self-seeding, mostly native wildflowers and grasses.

For structure, Ruthie has used the “it plant” that we saw in almost every Austin garden, the beautiful whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia).

Not every plant is native – brilliant, bee-friendly corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) have been incorporated, and self-seed regularly.

But the Texas natives do attract their share of pollinators, including this beautiful pipevine swallowtail butterfly nectaring on Hesperaloe parviflora, or red yucca.

There was lovely pink evening primrose (Oenothera  speciosa)….

And Engelmann’s daisy (Engelmannia peristenia)…

And lemon beebalm  (Monarda citriodora…

And rock rose (Pavonia lasiopetala).

The curving driveway’s retaining wall is draped with bee-friendly rosemary.
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When we reached the top of the driveway, we were treated to a tamer garden surrounding the Burrus’s lovely limestone home.

Ruthie Burrus was waiting for us there, ready to tour us around.

But even here, the plant palette was chosen to attract pollinators, like the honey bee on Salvia guaranitica ‘Amistad’, below.

In the shade, surrounded by ferns, was a water trough fountain with a slow-trickling stream of water cascading to the plantings below, then recirculated.

This was Texas hill country, and the view st the back of the house over the pool to downtown Austin was spectacular.

I loved the outdoor living room, protected from Texas gullywashers by a roof, and featuring a fireplace for cool evenings.

Beautiful succulent designs filled pots and troughs outdoors.

Many homeowners are including woodburning pizza ovens in their landscapes these days, and Ruthie’s was beautifully landscaped with Phlomis and agaves.

Nearby was a sweet building that Ruthie calls her garden haus.

A large cistern — one of two on the property — gathers rainwater channelled to it via a system of drains. A pump then facilitates irrigation of the garden.

We were just leaving when I heard excited voices at the front of the house. Looking up, I saw a huge tarantula on the cool limestone wall.  At the risk of anthrpomorphizing a little, it seemed to be saying, “I’m a Texas native insect too, and there’s room for all of us here!”

 

Chic and Sleek in Austin

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We visited all kinds of gardens in Texas during our May Bloggers’ Fling, but one stood out for its sophisticated, yet restrained, palette of plants; its geometric division of a relatively small property, making it seem much larger; its bold use of colour; and its functionality, featuring well-designed spaces for outdoor living while offering a sense of leafy enclosure and sanctuary.  That garden, in Austin’s Brentwood neighbourhood, belonged to the eponymous designer behind B. Jane Gardens. The sun was hot and the light was harsh for photography by the time we arrived, but I took note of the drought-tolerant plants in her front garden, including myriad succulents and desert species.

I loved seeing silver ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea) – a plant I’m familiar with in Toronto as a pricey trailer in containers of succulents – deployed as a groundcover with asparagus fern (Asparagus densiflorus ‘Sprengeri’) around whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia), a wonderful species and so popular here, we would see it in virtually every garden on tour. The bowl fountain in the background splashed gently, adding to the street appeal.

A small sign in the front garden acted as business card.

The limestone walk led to generously-proportioned steps leading to the gray house with a pretty orange front door…..

….. and a comfy turquoise glider with orange accents to match the door. I’m a big fan of turquoise-and-orange, and this garden would be a great illustration of that combo.

Heading around the house, the back garden’s prominent feature was a rectangular swimming pool overlooked by a dining alcove, outdoor kitchen….

…. and grill area, with wood stacked nearby for the fire pit in a far corner of the garden.

A grouping of planters arrayed against the walls of one of the poolside home offices added a splash of green (and basil for cooking). One very cool detail is the line of accent tile beneath the pool coping in shades of orange, peach, blue, turquoise and gray, picking up the house colour and hues used elsewhere in the garden.  Speaking of hues…. those floating beachballs in the perfect colours!  What a fun accessory!

Sometimes (especially on a busy tour like the Bloggers’ Fling, and particularly if I’m waiting for people to clear a scene), I focus on the small details and forget the big ones – like a wide angle shot of the back garden. So you’ll have to imagine that the lawn this blogger is crouching on formed a large rectangle beside the pool that is a welcome play area for the family’s two dogs.

And all along the lawn at the property line was this pretty raised planter, perfect for sitting, filled with Knockout roses and a privacy wall of bamboo

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…. under a flowering ghost plant (Graptopetalum paraguayense).

At the far end of the swimming pool was a raised deck with chaise lounges, and accent tables in orange.  I love the inner wall here, not something many gardeners consider, but it can be effective for hiding mechanics (of swimming pools, for example) and creating a dramatic background for a feature.

Here’s the side view, showing the raised planter around the lawn and the very edge of the fire pit.

Is it any wonder that B. Jane’s garden is in the Summer 2018 issue of Garden Design magazine?  (Click here to subscribe to beautiful Garden Design, one of the generous sponsors of our Bloggers Flings.)

Moving around the house to exit the garden after a much-too-short visit, we came to the spa off the master bedroom. What a great privacy screen that bamboo makes.

One of the two family dogs dropped by to bid farewell…..

…. as I took in the succulent design on the table…..

…. and a cool collection of cacti. Note the way all the colours are chosen for that brilliant palette.

The Texas heat was rising as I passed the lovely outdoor shower with the tropical ipe wood floor, and I imagined how welcome this would be after a few hours of gardening.    But for now, it was time to bid farewell to this chic little Austin garden and head back to the bus.

Birds, Bling and Beguiling Brown

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Colleen Jamison has two gardens in the Highland Park area of Austin, Texas. There’s the one she tends around her home, which is lovely and full of intimate spaces and sweet decorative touches. Then there’s the one she shares with the street. Literally, with the street! In fact, it’s part of the street. During our May tour of Austin gardens during the Garden Bloggers Fling, we were treated to a stroll through this remarkable, leafy community space, which Colleen began designing years ago to disguise her view of a neighbour’s parked trucks through a neglected median strip which had become a messy, wild place where deer browsed. This is what it looked like on a (too) sunny morning in early May, as the emerging Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) tickled the legs of a variety of beautiful garden benches.

An allée of crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia) created shade at one end; they would be full of blossoms later in the season. At the other end was a retama allée (Parkinsonia aculeata). A crushed stone path wends its way down the centre, and small solar lights create ambiance after dark. It is one of the most generous gestures I’ve seen, and quite remarkable in a world where neighbours tend to get out of their cars, unlock their front doors, then close them on the outside world.  When I asked Colleen if she’d had any trouble with city bylaws, she replied: “The city has had a ton of chances to complain, but not one peep from them.  In fact, they seem to appreciate it!”

Imagine taking your breakfast coffee and the newspaper and sitting here as the wind blows through the leaves.  Colleen tells me that there hasn’t been any theft through the years, but someone, likely kids, spray-painted the cushions once.

The garden is accessible to both sides of the street.  Says Colleen: “The neighbors do use it a lot!  Parents walking their kids to school, runners, and folks walking around the neighborhood mostly.”

(Alas, the sun was shining brightly when I was there and created difficult shadows for photography. Pam Penick has done a very informative blog on Colleen’s street median garden, photographed in much kinder light, which I certainly can’t improve on. Have a read.”

Let’s start at the front of the house, where a pretty verandah is the perfect place to sit. And what I loved was the colour scheme, which is quite uniform for the upholstered pieces throughout the garden. Since I’m a big fan of red, I was entranced with how beautifully it plays with the rich brown woodwork everywhere.  And I always say that a painted front door is one of the easiest ways to add sex appeal to a house facade and enhance a front garden colour scheme.

It was on their verandah that I photographed Colleen Jamison, a retired executive and now garden designer, and her husband Bruce Baldwin, whose creative carpentry is on display throughout the garden.

The understated browns and reds even play a role in the scheme of this lovely window box.

Bruce turned a former door into the gate into the back garden….

….. and transformed garden tools into the gate handles.

There was a busy bird-feeding station in the side yard and I loved that this blue jay posed beside Colleen’s garden sign. “Everybirdy, maybe, but ME in particular!”

I liked how Bruce designed these shadow boxes for the fence, which Colleen planted up with white pots and crockery.

And here was the first of a few frogs in the garden, in an eternal yoga pose…..

…. while this one seemed ‘stumped’ about something.

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The lizard was just happy to be there, gazing at Colleen’s bling.

The back garden patio and vine-wreathed pergola continued the lovely red-and-brown scheme of the front porch – even the candles are red!

And I’ve seen lots of bottle trees, but this kind of ‘bottle tree’ makes a lot more sense to me…. Bottoms up!

There was a splashing stone water feature surrounded by Salvia greggii – and what a fun idea, to mount a pretty plate in the foliage.

The back of the house was planted with roses and vines and featured….

….. a protected alcove with a comfy chaise lounge, all in red-and-brown. And yes, that’s red bougainvillea in the pot.

But it’s not red-and-brown everywhere. I love a purple pop in the garden, and this little painted metal bench fits the bill perfectly. (In fact this photo made me realize that I want a small metal bench like this in my own urban prairie garden, for those times when I get tired standing on the flagstone path to weed and water.)

And Colleen had blue on her mind with this lovely gathering of deck containers.

A wooden box planter with an ingenious steel rod trellis featured tomatoes. And bling, of course.

Speaking of bling, I’m going to finish this blog with a look at a few of Colleen’s pretty little suncatcher flourishes.  Because a garden is more than its plants and its hardscape and its four-season stucture, it’s also a place to let your personality shine through, whether in sophisticated pearls…..

….. or faux aquamarine…..

….. or all the jewel colours of the rainbow.

Texas Rhapsody in Blue

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After getting to know Pam Penick during previous Garden Bloggers’ Flings, it was fun to visit her Austin, Texas garden in early May when bloggers from that lovely city who had hosted the very first fling in 2008 celebrated by hosting another 10 years later. Pam, a long-time blogger and author whose work can be seen in Garden Design magazine and other publications, was the one who had the idea for that first fling and organized it along with three other bloggers, including Diana Kirby (whose lovely garden was essentially rained out the previous day).  We got out in a pretty neighbourhood and walked under the multi-stemmed Texas live oaks (Quercus fusiformis) in her front garden.

Let’s move a little closer to the house, past the raised bed….

….. that holds a lovely ‘Green Goblet agave and beautiful blue, ceramic spheres.  Blue, as you’ll see when you finish this blog and scan the photos, is a favourite colour of Pam’s, and she does it well.

There is no front lawn here, just gravel mulch and fabulous, minimalist containers of succulents and generously-proportioned, poured concrete slabs leading to the front door.  It’s not surprising that Pam wrote two books that are illustrated so well in her garden. The first on conserving water is titled The Water Saving Garden:  How to Grow a Gorgeous Garden with a Lot Less Water (2016). The other is Lawn Gone: Low-Maintenance, Sustainable, Attractive Alternatives for Your Yard (2013).

I liked this little garage wall planter with its Buddha reposing amidst cacti and succulents.

Sticks on fire (Euphorbia tirucallii) from South Africa makes a great container subject.

Pam is on hand to answer questions about her garden and plant choices, about which she has said: “I enjoy growing plants native to central Texas, supplemented by well-adapted and drought-tolerant non-natives, many from northern Mexico.  Mixing it up with architectural agaves and colorful salvias, feathery ornamental grasses and golden yuccas, I’m striving for a garden with four-season interest and cat-like tendencies—meaning it doesn’t need my attention every single day. I like to play and relax in the garden, not just tend to it.”

A long border softens space between the Penicks’ house and the neighbour’s driveway.

At the end of the border is a dramatic arrangement of dark-leaved dyckias with an heartful metal heart.

This is a beautiful combination, whale’s tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia) and  Salvia greggii…..

…. and behind it, a perfect little vignette in a galvanized trough.

Pam’s love of blue is certainly on display in this sitting area just outside the house door….

…. including a little blue bird in a blue dish with succulents.

Like the walls of any indoor dining room, Pam’s house wall gets the outdoor dining decorative treatment, too.

I do a lot of photography of colour in plant design, but people often forget that a spray can or a gallon of stain can be their best friend when wanting to inject colour in the garden, as with this fun perforated table and its blue and green accessories.

The property descends in the back quite steeply towards a greenbelt, so the deck has container-laden stairs leading up from ground level.

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I’m willing to bet these vintage metal lawn chairs didn’t start out this colour, but met Pam’s clear love of all things blue!

Another Agave ovatifolia, with the small yellow flowers of hesperaloe and the reflections of the sky in a green gazing globe. The deer are so fond of “antlering” the hesperaloes and agaves that Pam surrounds them with black wire fencing from autumn until early spring.

There aren’t many colours here, just the cool blues of the pots and the myriad greens of the variegated yucca, Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) and other plants.

At the bottom level of the garden is a swimming pool (sorry about the harsh light but we definitely preferred the sun to the previous day’s rain torrents)….

….. with a fun focal point.

A poolside Adirondack chair sports just the right colour of cushion.

Pam has a great fondness for galvanized stock tanks and troughs that she buys at farm supply stores. They add sophisticated lines and a unity of colour that looks great with all her greens and blues. I loved this simple row of pail planters.

And this is the mother of all stock tanks! With lovely aquatic plants.

If I was building a water feature to replace the labour-intensive, in-ground lily pond I already have, I’d create a simple fountain like the one below. Just enough water splash to create a little music in the garden.

No southern garden is complete without a bottle tree, and Pam’s unsurprisingly is blue!

And of course, of Pam’s collection of ornamental sages, blue Salvia guaranitica strikes just the right colour note.

It was time to head on to the next garden and I returned to the front via the sloping, gravel path on the other side of Pam’s house.

What could have been a blank, uninteresting garage wall along this path had been turned into something quite special with the addition of four trellised mirrors that reflected back sunlight and the greens of foliage.

Even here, there was a spot to sit and enjoy a moment of quiet. The light also reflected from the mirrored globes in the basket…..

….. and above my head, I caught sight of myself in yet another mirror, standing under those Texas live oaks, pointing my camera up at a final image in Pam Penick’s lovely Austin garden garden.

A Texas Garden with English Roots

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When I was consumed with garden fever back in the early 1980s (and finally had my “we’re staying here” house), there was a book whose pages became dog-eared from the hundreds of times I flipped back and forth gazing at glossy photos of English cottage gardens.  I dreamed that someday I’d have a garden crammed with flowers in artful combinations, yet seemingly tossed together with wild abandon. That vision informed the meadows I’d eventually have, both in Toronto and at our cottage north of the city. It was only appropriate therefore, that one of my very favourite gardens during my recent Garden Bloggers’ Fling in Austin, Texas was owned by a pair of British ex-pats and featured garden rooms full of Texas natives and self-seeding flowers that managed to give a nod simultaneously to the local vernacular and romantic English cottage garden style.

Jenny and David Stocker have gardened here at the edge of hill country in southwest Austin for 17 years since they moved into their new home, which was custom-designed by the late architect Dick Clark who’s considered to be the father of Austin contemporary style.   He also designed the garden walls, which have been painted soft mocha tones that match the house. I wish I’d paid more attention to the house itself, since his intent was to align the various windows and views with the outdoor rooms.  Let’s start under the trees outside at the street, with its lovely emphasis on drought-tolerant succulents.  In this area, landscape architect Curt Arnette of Sitio Design arranged for the placement of the large ledgestones, but everything else here and throughout the gardens – including the dry streambed, below, that becomes a very wet stream during heavy Texas rains – was done by the Stockers.

But before I go any further, I want you to see what a blank slate looks like, and imagine the work that went into creating the garden I’m about to show you – given what the starting point looked like in the Stockers’ photos below.

Alright, let’s head into the garden. I loved these generous platform steps that will take us into the first garden room, the front courtyard. They also nicely accomplish a level change, and feature just a few of Jenny’s many containers.

In the front courtyard, we see the source of the dry streambed (what Jenny calls “the wet weather creek”) that empties outside.  Many kinds of agaves are used, including the beautiful whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia) below.

The millstone-like water feature at left, below, was a chance find – the abandoned base of a basketball stand – in a back alley near the Stockers’ son’s house in Dallas. It took two people to load it onto their truck, it looks stunning here.

The courtyard features a rich profusion of plants that seem to thrive in the thin soil including many succulents and self-seeding flowers.  Notice the gravel mulch and liberal use of stones (many were here before the garden was made).

The Stockers love eating and relaxing outdoors, so the garden features several places where they can do that, like the niche below.

Artichoke agave (A. parryi var. truncata) is one of my favourite succulents.

The garden walls are perfect for ornaments.

Containers – always pebble-mulched – are a mixture of succulents and English favourites like foxglove.

Can you imagine how lovely it would be to spend time under that perfumed brugmansia, perfectly placed for inhaling?

All the garden rooms feature their own collections of artful accessories. “You can’t just have plantings,” Jenny said to one interviewer.

I loved the face peering out of the hedge.

Though the rain that had fallen in torrents a few hours earlier at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center had now subsided, plants were still wet. This is lovely Agave desmettiana ‘Variegata’.

If there’s a theme in the garden, besides amazing plants, it’s rock. As Jenny has said: “I love to work with rocks, of which we have plenty, and they form the backbone of the garden. My husband, David, is my rock man and has hunted out some amazing rocks and done some great rockwork. I was on site every day during construction, saving rocks suitable for making the drystone walls.”

So let’s go see the stone wall Jenny made in the next garden room, the English Garden.  There it is in the background, Jenny’s dry-stacked wall made from flat rock gathered as the house was being constructed.  This garden’s motif is circular, from the concentric edgings of brick encircling the birdbath garden…

…. to the circular flagstone-and-brick dining patio…..

…. to the circular paving stones and the spheres that sit in the gravel.

As in any good English cottage garden, there are lots of self-seeding flowers here, like biennial foxglove…..

….. and Texas natives such as blackfoot daisy (Melampodium leucanthum).

I’m sure that Jenny’s garden attracts a lot of birds. That’s Virginia creeper on the wall behind the sweet birdhouse.

The ornamented wall near the next room sets up a galactic theme……

…. which is expanded on in the saying above the arch.  Live by the sun, love by the moon. Indeed!  Notice the change in paver materials between garden rooms – all very subtle, but designed to enhance.

Let’s go down the stairs to yet another level, past another pretty collection of potted plants and an inviting teak bench…..

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….. into the appropriately named sunken garden, aka the pool garden. This, for me, is the full embodiment of those glossy photos I loved in those books long ago. A true cottage garden filled with a mélange of romantic blossoms that will shift and alter their companions throughout the season. The iconic Texas bluebonnets are long-gone in this photo, but that’s how things start out here in April, which you can see in this photo by Jenny’s friend and our Austin Garden Bloggers Fling co-host Pam Penick’s post from April 2015.

Sometimes, in appreciating a grand design, I forget to notice the small details. Here’s the lovely native Texan golden columbine (Aquilegia chrysantha).

It was one of the cast of May characters in Jenny’s garden, along with annual love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena), blue mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea), magenta-pink sage (Salvia sp.) As Jenny notes, “I rely heavily on self-seeding plants and am more than willing to let them grow where they plant themselves, as well as passalongs from garden friends. It’s not a low-maintenance garden.”

Most of the breadseed poppies (Papaver somniferum) had already formed their seedpods….

…. but corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) were still announcing their brilliant presence. I loved the flowing urn feature here, which creates a bit of music with its splash.

What an inviting scene. Many gardens we saw in Texas were accompanied by a swimming pool, because as lovely as spring weather can be, summers are punishingly hot.  And since there are no trees inside the garden walls and the rocks do reflect the sunshine, Jenny says the garden becomes very hot in midsummer. The walls here, by the way, are not just decorative, but meant to keep out varmints, including deer.

Here’s another look at the flowery poolside meadow. This area was originally laid with old granite flagstones, so the Stockers laid Arizona sandstone on top leaving 1-inch spaces for self-seeding plants.

You can see in the background against the wall one of the large, porous limestone boulders native to the property.

There are native cacti in the gardens, including the spineless prickly-pear (Opuntia cacanapa ‘Ellisiana’).

I found Jenny in the sunken garden, chatting with fellow bloggers (her own interesting blog is called Rock Rose) and looking mightily relieved that the morning’s rain had stopped in time for our visit.

I waited for my blogging pals to take their leave of this beautiful dining area near the swimming pool – one of six seating areas Jenny and David use, depending on the time of year and day – so I could make my photo. There’s a good reason for being the last one on the bus!

At the edge of the dining area was another grouping of containers, this one featuring the agave relative Manfreda undulata ‘Chocolate Chips’.

Manfreda flowers are so interesting, especially post-Texas-rain.

The herb garden is tucked into an alcove created by the house walls, and looks beautifully wild..

Nearby, behind the wall of the swimming pool garden, sits the potager: a series of raised beds containing…..

… leafy vegetables like curly kale……

….and squash vines starting out under protective wiring….

….and tomato cages.

A long raised bed nearby contains flowers for pollinators. In early May, it abounds with larkspur (Consolida ajacis) and Verbena bonariensis.

Perfumed star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) blankets one wall of a garden shed in this area. How nice it must be to harvest veggies with that scent wafting by!

A galvanized water tank is a great idea for a water garden: small, manageable maintenance, yet a nice spot for a bird to bathe or have a sip of water.

Nearby were little vignettes, like this…..

….. and this. For me in Toronto, Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) is a textural annual, but here it’s perennial and adds a grace note to the garden.

As always on a garden tour, the bus was waiting to take us to our next stop, so off we went in our rain-soaked shoes down the pathway beside the spineless prickly-pears. But for me, the garden of Jenny and David Stocker had been a chance to satisfy a long-held desire to enjoy time in a cottage garden filled with masses of flowers arrayed with artful abandon.