My third stop on Saturday’s Garden Conservancy tour took me to the elegant, hilltop garden overlooking downtown Austin. Surrounding a New Orleans-style Pemberton Heights home and shaded by majestic live oaks, the garden felt lush, green, and classically serene. Pictured above, a cut-stone path edged in dwarf mondo grass leads from the entry courtyard to the rear garden.

In the brick-paved front courtyard, evergreen shrubs define the spaces, and potted annuals and succulents add color and focal points.

The house was built around 1950, and the current owner grew up in the home and inherited it from her mother.

Persian shield adds rich annual color to an urn set in a boxwood parterre.

The shallow back yard is perched on a steep hillside and terraced into various seating areas. The highest, just off the back door, enjoys a view of downtown.

On a lower terrace at ground level, a simple potted aloe rests on a glass table surrounded by cushioned iron furniture.

Another succulent-filled urn graces the lower terrace. This is a peaceful, comfortably elegant garden, well suited to the style of the house.

Tune in tomorrow for a tour of Deborah Hornickel’s bungalow garden. To see images from the eclectic East Side Patch, my second stop on the tour, click here.

All material © 2006-2010 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

There was plenty of Patch magic to go around during the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour last Saturday. Designer Philip Leveridge, who blogs about his garden at East Side Patch, his wife Leah, and their two young children seem to derive much enjoyment from their enticing, lawn-free garden (proving you don’t need a lawn just because you have kids).

The Patch is a gardener’s garden and inspiring to anyone who gardens on a budget. Philip has done all the work himself, including making his own paths and patios from decomposed granite and recycled bricks. He grows a lot of his plants from seed and uses volunteers to fill in blank spaces. He has an artist’s eye and boundless creativity, and his love of plants really shows. Pictured above are various salvias in full autumn bloom.

Philip uses a lot of purple and bronze, which complement the colors of his house.

This unusual metal gate at the back of his extra-deep lot gives the illusion of even more garden to explore beyond.

Looking back through it, the striping of the gate’s frame seems to echo the stripes of the variegated ginger and American agave on the right.

A large stock-tank pond and two red motel chairs offer a place for quiet contemplation at the back of the garden.

A palm anchors one side of a rock garden planted with cactus and succulents.

Just off the back porch, a spiraling circle of old bricks makes a dynamic patio, with a circular bed set in the middle.

Horsetail is contained in a galvanized washtub by the porch.

Philip had framed some pictures from his blog and was offering them for sale along the side of his house. I saw this little girl at nearly every garden that day. All dressed up in a sparkly blue dress, she seemed to be enjoying the exploration of each garden.

In the front yard you’ll find no lawn either. The foundation bed is planted with Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha), in full purple bloom at this time of year.

Eight-foot-tall amaranthus jostles for room amid light-catching bamboo muhly, prickly pear, yellow bells, and palms.

The pink and purple amaranthus seedheads were fascinating to most visitors.

Philip, aka ESP

What an amazing garden he has created. Thanks, Philip and Leah, for sharing it with us.

For previous posts I’ve written about the Patch, click here:
More magic at East Side Patch garden
East Austin garden blogger party

Tune in tomorrow for the next stop on the garden tour, the New Orleans-style Pemberton Heights Courtyard. And to see the first stop on the tour, the Utility Research Garden, click here.

All material © 2006-2010 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

‘Sharkskin’ agave and ‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave at the Utility Research Garden

The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Austin tour was held yesterday, with 6 private gardens open to the public. My first stop was the ambiguously named Utility Research Garden, which I imagined to be an experimental garden at a public utility. Instead I discovered an eclectic, playful, somewhat shaggy contemporary garden surrounded by a compound of east-side bungalows, a large greenhouse, and one Airstream trailer.

A resident artist was positioning a few pieces around the garden when I arrived. This is one of them.

The owner is a wholesale grower of bamboo, palms, and agave. I saw lots of bamboo for sale, as well as dyckias, but no agaves on this day.

A gorgeous dyckia in a rusty container

Pines are pretty rare in Austin’s alkaline soil, but this garden has several beautiful specimens. This one seems to be propped up or decorated with long bamboo poles.

But this long-needled variety is my absolute favorite. No one could keep from touching it as they walked by.

A table constructed out of a gigantic saw blade stands nearby. Check out the stock-tank pond in the background. A number of man-made berms also add height and interest throughout the flat garden.

Gorgeous and deadly sharp ‘Sharkskin’ agave

Spider lilies bloom in a raised bed edged with Cor-Ten steel.

White-gravel paths cut through the bermed garden.

A birdhouse adds a little Texas charm to one of the compound’s bungalows.

A greenhouse dominates the main garden.

A new grass path leads the way to another building. A screen of bamboo lines one side of the path; newly planted agaves line the other.

The Airstream

A shady container holds a fern, and palm, and a few shiny, metal agave leaves.

I believe this is a blue nolina, a beautiful specimen.

Near the street, concrete walls shield a cycad-filled courtyard.

The property’s street number is displayed creatively on the front porch of one of the bungalows.

Circular cut-outs in the walls frame neighboring houses or passing cars.

Balancing act

Tune in tomorrow for images from East Side Patch, the second garden I toured during Open Days Austin.

All material © 2006-2010 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.