I took a fire-wise landscaping class at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center last week, and I arrived early enough for a leisurely stroll around the gardens. The sunshine and blooming Mexican plums promised spring, but a chill in the air spoke of winter. By the time I went inside, my hands were numb. Even so, I loved being able to photograph the gardens in the light of early morning. Ordinarily you can’t get in until 9 am, well after the “magic hour” for taking photos.

In the parking lot my eye was caught by a Mexican plum (Prunus mexicana) in full bloom. Its spicy-scented white blossoms were backlit so beautifully.

As were these seedheads, the light tracing each stem with glowing incandescence.

Turning toward the wooded path that leads through the parking lot, I admired this vignette of Anacacho orchid tree, yucca, and nolina, all suffused in the golden light of morning.

I always take a photo of this pairing of American agave and Mexican feathergrass. Simple yet stunning.

A weatherbeaten Texas persimmon (Diospyros texana) stands sentinel along the main walk.

Inside, the shadows lay long on the entry plaza, but the Wildflower Center’s landmark spiral tower, visible to the right, was spotlit by the rising sun.

A possumhaw holly (Ilex decidua) in full winter berry accents the base of the tower.

The architecture of the place always fascinates me. Check out the planter pocket built into the tower wall.

Another view, with wire-suspended beams acting as a pergola.

On the back side of the tower, a terraced, rocky garden of agave, opuntia, sotol, and Mexican feathergrass creates a scene of xeric beauty.

Lindheimer muhly grasses (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri), their fall blooms still held aloft, screen the cafe’s patio seating. In front, wildflowers and perennials are starting to green up at their feet.

Looking toward the Hill Country stream garden, bare trees accent a green understory of yucca and nolina.

Glancing back toward the tower again

Heading into the sunny demonstration garden, I strolled under the long grape arbor, as I always do. But on this cold morning there was no need of shade.

Looking left, I admired a magnificent Harvard agave (Agave harvardiana), framed by the limestone-and-cedar shade structure in the background.

Its Mickey Mouse ears warmed by the sun, a spineless prickly pear is all texture and shape.

A patch of Habiturf lawn is on display. Habiturf is the Wildflower Center’s own ecological lawn mix of short, slow-growing native grasses, which can be sown by seed to create a lawn that needs little water and only occasional mowing. (Click the link for more info, including the very specific installation instructions.)

I was invited to take off my shoes and walk on it barefoot, but the morning was too chilly for that.

At this time of year, you really notice the architecture of the gardens, not just the plants—like this rustic cedar gate.

Looking across the still-shadowed demonstration garden

The new Texas Arboretum—”where visitors can learn about the diversity of Texas trees”—has opened since I last visited, but I ventured only as far as the entry since I was running short on time. I’ll have to come back later in the spring. This is another Texas persimmon.

For rugged screening and fencing, you can’t go wrong with a coyote fence. So very central Texas. I like how this one is cut at different levels, becoming more welcoming, at picket-fence height, on the side you approach from.

Each cedar post (juniper, to be precise) is encircled with sturdy wire that’s attached to two cables running horizontally along the fence. Those metal pipes along part of the fence must be for extra stability.

In the kids’ Little House garden, a vine “tepee” is given a twist. Instead of bamboo poles, an upturned cedar trunk and branches provides the structure.

As I was about to enter the auditorium for my class, a staff member asked if I’d seen their visitor, and pointed up at a planter niche built high on the wall near the entry pond. I immediately knew he was referring to a great horned owl because I’d seen one raising chicks in that same spot two years ago. Sure enough, there was Mama owl, snuggled into her usual spot under a Wheeler sotol.

The employee said they thought it was the same owl, and that this is her third year to nest in that spot.

If you didn’t know she was there, you might never notice. See her up there? If you go see her in person, walk softly and carry binoculars for a better view.

All material © 2006-2013 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

You’ve all been very good this year, and Santa says there’s time for one more garden tour before Christmas, so here you go. I visited this garden in late October, at the invitation of owner/designer Tait Moring, who had it all spruced up for a busload of folks from the Garden Club of America. Lucky (pushy) me—I arrived early, before the bus rolled in, and was treated to an unhurried personal tour. What a relaxed host! Some of you may remember that I posted about Tait’s garden in the spring of 2011, when it was on the Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour. He’s made some changes since then, of course, and it was also a treat to see the garden in a different season.

Pictured above is the front entry of Tait’s home, which is located in Westlake right off busy Bee Caves Road. Tucked behind a tall screen of cedar posts and greenery, you’d never know the home (and design office) is hidden away just off the road, a surprisingly spacious property that overlooks a forested canyon. The modest, painted-brick ranch has a clean-lined, concrete front porch set off by a raised pond and fountain cloaked in fig ivy.

On the front porch, a collection of pots attracted my attention. The largest was appealingly top-dressed with colorful glass beads.

These smaller pots, made by local artist Rick Van Dyke, resemble dinosaur eggs. I’ve seen Van Dyke pots for sale recently at The Great Outdoors. (Adding to Christmas wish list…)

A wider view of the front of the house. Tait has a generous decomposed-granite parking area for guests and clients. The rock wall at left of the house has a gate that leads to the private back garden.

A trio of giant hesperaloe in tall, bronze pots balances an asymmetrical window, and a fourth pot concludes the line just past the window. A meadowy mix of two species of ornamental grasses softens the base of a low wall.

I really love this and am tempted to steal the idea.

The rock wall includes a triangular niche.

Found objects and rocky treasures are tucked among the mortared stones, becoming part of the wall too.

Step through the gate and you enter the back garden, which includes a lawn leading to a new swimming pool. Previously a ramada-shaded patio stood at the end of the lawn, but Tait decided a swimming pool was needed to get through Austin’s long, hot summers. (I totally agree, whether you swim in your own back-yard pool, Barton Springs, or one of the many city pools; cool water up to the neck is essential.) Tait told me he got a little grief during one of his garden tours about having a lawn, but he likes it for the entertaining space and says it’s pretty low maintenance. To my mind, these are perfect reasons to keep some lawn: you’ve reduced it to what you use, you keep it for a definite purpose, and you’ve planted a lawn grass that doesn’t need coddling. His lawn is a soothing, cooling counterpoint to the rest of the property, which is either planted heavily with natives and adapted plants or, along the canyon’s edge, left wild and natural.

A fall-blooming daisy tumbles around a birdbath in one of the planted borders.

Looking back, I stopped to admire the curved cedar post that arches over the gate. Such interesting touches add so much delight to the exploration of Tait’s garden. On this side the wall shelters a small seating area.

Tait told me an interesting story about his stone columns (he has several; for a front view of the carved detailing, scroll up a few pictures). He and his crew were digging around in an old quarry on a Hill Country ranch where they were doing some work when one of his crew spotted the carved stone lying amid the rubble. They pulled it out and found this treasure—well, several of them. Who knows how long they’d been lying abandoned in the quarry, and he wishes he knew something about their history. But now they adorn his garden, standing like door posts on either side of the lawn, topped with terracotta bowls of agave and silver ponyfoot. The pink vine climbing the column is mandevilla, a tropical vine that needs winter protection.

From the middle of the lawn, looking back, you see the side of Tait’s house, with a row of native Lindheimer muhly grasses softening the foundation.

A closer look

And a wider view

Tucked into the shady border alongside the lawn, amid Salvia coccinea, holly fern, river fern, and ivy, a fountain bubbles up out of a drilled stone.

The rectangular pool is backed by an irregular stone wall topped with staggered-height cedar-pole fencing and softened with lush, tropical-looking plants, giving the space a Mexican or South American vibe.

A tiki-style stone-head planter atop another carved column from the quarry adds to the sense of tropical mystery, as do bromeliads atop the wall.

Some of the tropical-looking plants along the wall are actually quite hardy and drought tolerant, like feathery bamboo muhly (Muhlenbergia dumosa) and giant hesperaloe (Hesperaloe funifera).

Just past the pool (you can see the house in the distance), cedar-mulched paths lead through the trees along the canyon’s edge, and down into the canyon too, as far as Tait’s had time to work on them. This small clearing provided a place for a colorful hammock strung between two cedar (juniper) trees.

Seven-foot-tall mounds of native daisies were in flower along the path, especially where the tree canopy was thinner. It was amazing to walk through these golden berms.

This trail led past one of the special features of Tait’s property: a beautiful, old Texas madrone (Arbutus xalapensis), more commonly found in the Hill Country to the west. Its smooth, white trunks seemed to glow under the leafy canopy. Texas madrone is picky about where it grows in ways not fully understood. Tait said that although he’s cleared out a bunch of cedar (juniper) trees in this area, he left the ones around the madrone. He’d heard of a rancher who cleared out the cedars around a colony of madrones only to watch the madrones die as a result. Perhaps there’s a symbiotic relationship underground, in the roots and the living soil?

I had to reach out and stroke the madrone’s smooth bark.

Just past the madrone, at the canyon’s edge, the trees open to this—a stunning Hill Country view. With rock found on his property, Tait built a stone circle with a fire pit in the middle, which overlooks the canyon. Because of the ongoing drought and burn ban, he hasn’t used it once, he said. But he built it, he explained, as an expression of hope that one day the drought would end and the rains would return. Fire or not, the stone circle is a lovely place to sit and take in the view.

I spotted a pretty cluster of frostweed (Verbesina virginica) on the walk back to the house.

More trails lead from the gardens down into the canyon.

A stone retaining wall marks the boundary between garden and wildscape. A berrying yaupon holly straddles the wall.

Moving around to the other side of Tait’s garden, an ornately wrought, nature-themed gate set between stout cedar posts leads to…

…a vegetable garden that stair-steps along the canyon’s edge. Beautiful stonework defines raised beds…

…and stairs back up to the house. Behind the cedar-pole screen at the top of the stairs is a rustic outdoor shower.

At the back of the house, a patchwork path made up of paving samples leads past the outdoor shower to a back deck.

The small deck overlooks the canyon and looks back to the lawn garden too.

Another Rick Van Dyke pot, planted with pencil plant (Euphorbia tirucalli), sits on a table.

A wider gate, matching the one that leads to the vegetable garden, separates one end of the driveway from a work area in back.

Snake detail

A fountain made of an industrial-looking steel pipe and a stock tank helps to drown out traffic noise along the street-side of the garden.

And a focal-point pot in the center of a small, circular lawn backed by bamboo and cedar trees offers an interesting vignette right before you leave.

I’m grateful to Tait for this tour of his beautiful and fascinating garden. What a treat! For more images of Tait’s garden click for my spring 2011 visit.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Last month I had the pleasure of meeting Mark Word, a highly regarded residential and commercial designer here in Austin. Thanks to his work designing unique and memorable gardens for Liz Lambert’s boutique hotels, including uber-hip Hotel San Jose and the more luxurious Hotel Saint Cecilia, Mark’s pared down but still lushly planted style has inspired rapturous reviews from fans and gained him wider recognition than if he were designing only for high-end clients. He does plenty of that too, of course (you can see images of several of these gardens in Stephen Orr’s Tomorrow’s Garden), but for some reason they don’t tend to pop up on Austin’s numerous garden tours.

When Mark told me about a new commercial landscape he’d just finished in Georgetown, Texas—El Monumento, a farm-to-table style restaurant overlooking the San Gabriel River—I knew I would make the 30-minute drive north to see it.

Opened by the owner of popular Georgetown diner Monument Cafe, the new place specializes in home-style Mexican food. The contemporary building and garden look like something you’d see in trendy Austin, not quiet, family- and retiree-friendly Georgetown.

The experience of visiting the restaurant starts in the parking lot, before you even reach the door, thanks to sweeps of groundcovers and ornamental grasses between rows of cars. I was captivated as soon as I drove into the parking lot on a busy lunch hour last month.

The excitement starts at the public sidewalk along the street, where this concrete retaining wall is made artful with paint and colored strips of some material bolted to the wall. A steel fence planted with vines will soon become a green wall, which is almost a shame since the metalwork of the fence is interesting in itself. A globe mallow (Sphaeralcea) greets you at the stairs.

A wider view shows a massing of Mexican feathergrass (Nassella tenuissima) and giant mullein (Verbascum thapsus)—no boring lawn grass or the usual evergreen shrubs here—anchored by a large olive tree.

Tousled and oh-so-touchable

I spotted this grasshopper resting in a mullein’s felted leaves.

Yucca gloriosa (I think) punctuates ground-covering wooly stemodia (Stemodia lanata). Simple and beautiful.

A closer look

In the middle of the parking lot, a stand of miscanthus grass evokes a prairie. The grasses were lovely, their tasseled blossoms sparkling in the midday sunlight.

A closer look: flowering grasses and a blue, blue sky

The parking lot is largely paved with water-permeable decomposed granite, with terracotta-colored, herringbone-patterned brick walking paths set amid the planting islands.

A few potted agaves punctuate the walkway.

Exploring around the side of the building, I caught a glimpse of the back deck, with an edible garden planted below, including a tropical-sized root beer plant (Hoja santa).

A colorful staircase descends to a lower garden…

…and is itself a work of art. Why don’t we paint stairs more often? This is so cheerful and fun.

The wall and sidewalk along this side were given the same color-strip treatment as on the wall I showed earlier. I wonder if this would work to jazz up a boring wood privacy fence?

Beneath the deck I found more painted walls and a low-care, shade-tolerant planting of Manfreda maculosa, foxtail fern (Asparagus densiflorus ‘Meyers’), and purple heart (Tradescantia pallida).

I really like this, and imagine how nice it will be when the purple heart has filled in around the purple-spotted manfredas.

Another look

In back of the restaurant, a hillside of flowering perennials and ornamental grasses was alive with butterflies. The restaurant’s rear terrace overlooks this garden and the San Gabriel River.

Moving back to the front of the building, you see more of Mark’s signature use of massed grasses—including defined swaths of drought-tolerant turf grass used as just another plant species, not necessarily as a carpet for walking on. (In his residential gardens, such swaths of turf grass are often set off in raised beds for emphasis.)

Pennisetum—I’m not sure what kind

Spineless prickly pear (Opuntia) edges the front walk with Zen-like simplicity.

Step through that southwestern wall, from bright sunlight into the cool shade of the doorway, and you enter a tropical courtyard, with red-leaved banana trees pushing against the shade-providing arbor.

Looking right, you see an inviting courtyard with plenty of seating in both sun and shade. The vine-draped arbor in the background runs on three sides of this courtyard.

Immediately to your right as you enter the courtyard, a long, trough-style fountain runs the length of the wall that you just stepped through.

Rusty, grid-like metal fencing, a steel pipe fountain, and concrete basin trough—all very Austin

The shady arbor along the back of the courtyard has additional seating and is overlooked by interior windows, giving inside diners a nice view of the courtyard garden.

In back, a deck bridges one side of the building, leading to a rear terrace paved in the herringbone brick. Deep eaves, fans, and generous container plants all promise a feeling of coolness on hot days.

A steel raised bed along the back of the building holds coleus and leopard plant (I think).

Dishes of lavender top short stone columns.

Banana trees along the sunny outer edge (at right) continue the tropical vibe. This whole space overlooks the hillside perennial and grass garden shown earlier.

Persian shield (Strobilanthes dyerianus) and coleus

Avoiding the interior of the restaurant, which was full of noontime diners, I strolled back around the deck, admiring this view of the parking lot garden through the grid of a steel gate.

Along busy Austin Avenue, tall steel arbors hung with heavy-duty netting support young muscadine grapevines.

Other edibles grow in the raised beds laid out here, surrounded by generous paving of decomposed granite.

The grape arbors are cleverly constructed to arch over the public sidewalk, creating, one day, a shady tunnel for passersby.

A bamboo trellis supports some other newly planted climber.

One last look at the entry garden from the Austin Avenue side. The decomposed-granite path and parallel lines of retama trees (Parkinsonia aculeata) and ‘Blonde Ambition’ grama grass lead to the door in the wall.

Airy, green-trunked—and spiny!—retama in flower is a lovely sight.

And bees love those yellow blossoms.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of this commercial project by designer Mark Word. I would love to be able to show some of his residential work one day. Until then, I plan to visit this new garden again in a year or so to see how it’s matured—and maybe I’ll even try out the dining experience in the meantime.

Speaking of food, I bet many of my American readers are prepping today for the big Thanksgiving feast on Thursday. I’ll be doing the same. Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.