Garden tour season in central Texas kicked off last Saturday with the annual Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour, which this year featured five Austin gardens in which native plants play a predominant role. I toured with three other bloggers — Cat from The Whimsical Gardener, Shirley from San Antonio’s Rock-Oak-Deer, and David from Albuquerque’s The Desert Edge — and if you check out their blogs you may get additional perspectives on the gardens I’ll be posting about this week.

We began the tour with the Kathy Cove Garden, a remodeled property in south Austin’s Barton Hills neighborhood. Perched on the edge of a canyon overlooking the Barton Creek greenbelt, the home and garden enjoy spectacular views of both the greenbelt and downtown Austin. The front garden, as you see, is still a work-in-progress, with rock work by Environmental Survey Consulting in place and just a few plants situated.

A vibrant clump of standing cypress (Ipomopsis rubra) captured attention out front.

Moving around to the back garden, you pass this monumental sculpture, which looked vaguely Mayan to me.

Picking your way down a rugged limestone stair, you pass a teak hot tub nestled alongside limestone boulders and the entrance to a mid-level deck that stretches along the back of the house. Continuing to the bottom of the stone steps leads you to…

…a beautiful swimming pool surrounded by a pieced-limestone pool deck. Check out that view of the greenbelt.

You’d never know this home is 10 minutes from Zilker Park and downtown Austin.

The tightly fitted rock work is a trademark look by Environmental Survey Consulting that we saw echoed in two other gardens on this tour.

Under the deck, a surprising water feature — a stacked-limestone wall trickling with water (refreshed by A/C condensate) and colonized by maidenhair fern — adds visual cooling and creates a green view in place of the usual shadowy under-deck eyesore.

It reminded me of the natural cliffside waterfalls that can be found along Austin’s greenbelts.

A wider view shows the under-deck water-wall at left, with the cobalt pool extending the length of the terrace.

The garden is very naturalistic overall, in keeping with the rugged hillside setting. Red yucca and salvia were in bloom, attracting hummingbirds that zipped around us.

The homeowner has a large sculpture collection, which includes this bird (a raven?) perched atop a boulder, a glass orb in its beak.

Religious sculpture also finds a home here. I can’t help wondering — is the cactus collection at Christ’s feet a reference to his crown of thorns?

A Lady of Guadalupe with a spark-plug aura illustrates a similarly playful/ironic take on this traditional Catholic icon.

A pieced-stone path leads along the back of the house, hugging the top of the canyon. Amid the naturalistic plantings, a series of turquoise pots — each a miniature container pond — adds necessary rhythm to the scene.

A charming pond in miniature

Rugged paths lead down into the canyon, but I didn’t follow them. Instead I climbed up to the deck, past naturalistic garden beds. Red-blooming Texas betony spilled over limestone terracing.

Pausing to look back down the stone steps, I enjoyed a view of downtown Austin and a cardinal that shot across my field of view at just that moment.

The deck wraps the back of the house and provides several intimate seating areas to enjoy the treetop view.

I admired this simple trough with multi-colored succulents. The succulents are still in their nursery pots, rather than planted into the trough, making for a quick and attractive display.

More succulent troughs create a linear centerpiece on a dining table nearby.

They almost look good enough to eat!

Looking down at the path traversing the back of the house, you can see that the garden is still very new. Many of the plants have not had time to fill in yet.

When they do, this will be an even more spectacular space.

Next up: The contemporary Westridge Drive Garden, with a unique rebar awning and yucca and manfreda in full bloom.

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

We wrapped up our spring break vacation last weekend with a visit to the pineywoods of East Texas and the cute little lake house that belongs to my sister and her partner. This is the view from their yard.

Located on the Kickapoo Creek side of Lake Livingston, about an hour’s drive north of Houston, their weekend getaway is a light-filled cottage with a wraparound porch, a cushy hammock suspended between a tall pine and a pecan, a fishing dock, a couple of kayaks, and a pontoon boat for puttering around the lake. The weather was perfect—sunny and in the upper 70s, and at night it was just chilly enough to enjoy roasting marshmallows and making s’mores around the firepit.

Their pontoon boat was a new purchase since we’d last visited, so we were excited for the chance to go out on the water. Lake Livingston is a fairly shallow, man-made reservoir, with an average depth of 23 feet. With a number of “islands” of flooded-out trees, swampy thickets, and tall pines, the lake is a great place to bird-watch. My sister photographed bald eagles fishing at dockside recently, and huge flocks of pelicans migrated through a few weeks ago.

Alligators live here too, as in all southeast and northeast Texas lakes. My daughter went kayaking with C. after lunch, staying close to the bank as they paddled around the cove. She soon spotted a big gator in the water, and they turned around and paddled right out of that area. But I imagine there are plenty you don’t see, stealthy as they are. During one of their early visits, they told us, an alligator stalked their dog as it played near the water, tracking the pet’s movements with only its eyes visible above the surface. They scared it off and soon had a bulkhead constructed along the shore, which they hope will keep alligators from coming into their yard (which is fenced on both sides all the way down to the bulkhead).

Unless they’re fed, though, alligators aren’t naturally aggressive toward humans. People who live with them don’t ever seem to worry too much about them. People swim and ski in the lake, including my sister and C. I don’t believe I’ll ever swim with the gators, however.

I hoped for a gator sighting from the boat, and a photo op, but they eluded me this time. Still, we saw lots of beautiful great egrets (pictured) and great blue herons hunting along the shore.

They’re fairly tall birds, and when they take off their wingspan seems enormous.

We also spotted cormorants flocking in trees on marshy islands…

…along with great blue herons, who were carrying sticks to build their nests.

This one perched atop a pine tree seems to be preparing for the crane kick.

The great egrets were busily nesting too and sporting their breeding plumage—wispy, ornamental feathers along the back and green on their faces.

Such a gorgeous bird!

We had a lovely, relaxing time at Lake Livingston. Thanks for your hospitality, sis and C.!

Upcoming: Lawn Gone! talk and book-signing, this Saturday
Hey, Texas Hill Country peeps! Please join me this Saturday at 10 am at Backbone Valley Nursery in Marble Falls for my talk, “Lawn Alternatives for Central Texas” and a Lawn Gone! book-signing. I don’t know about you, but since it’s bluebonnet season, I’m going to take a little wildflower-peeping drive while I’m out there.

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

Day-tripping in San Antonio last weekend, my family and I made time for a stroll through the Japanese Tea Garden, located near the zoo in Brackenridge Park. Constructed in an old limestone quarry, the gardens are framed and accessed by fascinating and unusual stonework, including a pagoda-like pavilion with stacked-stone columns that rise like hoodoos from the pond below; an undulating, “dragon-back” bridge; and paths edged with toothy walls that lead up and down the garden’s cliffside terrain.

The garden is free to the public, and on this cool, early-spring Saturday it was not very crowded, although at least one wedding party was wrapping up an intimate ceremony. Entering the faux-bois gate, you may be confused by the sign that reads Chinese Tea Garden until you read the historical plaque nearby, which explains that during World War II, the Japanese-American family who’d run the tea house for nearly 20 years was evicted due to anti-Japanese public sentiment, and “Japanese” was removed from the garden’s name. At the time of the gate’s construction, the garden was known as the Chinese Tea Garden. In 1984 its original name was restored, but the gate remains as a reminder of the war-fueled paranoia of that time.

A colorful mix of native and tropical plants greets you as you enter, like this red hibiscus and purple-blooming Texas mountain laurel.

I like this wiggly line of dwarf yaupon hollies bordered by colorful marigolds.

Entering the garden you are immediately drawn to a large stone pavilion reminiscent of a Japanese pagoda. Stacked-stone pillars lead the eye up to a dazzling array of stone arches, huge timbers, and the dome-like roof, which is thatched on the exterior with palm leaves.

The pavilion overlooks several large ponds that cover much of the base of the old quarry, and a series of rock stairs lead to the lower gardens. Instead, however, we took the path that winds along the cliff at the top of the garden before descending on the far side.

Halfway around you’re treated to a spectacular view of a ribbon-like waterfall, which drops 60 feet from the top of the quarry to the ponds at the bottom. Lush vegetation on the cliff walls gives the impression of a tropical vista.

An undulating bridge spans a large, shallow pond from the base of the cliff to the lower gardens. It was too early for water lilies, but I imagine in summer their pads and flowers spread across the pond’s surface.

Bridge detail, and my patient family posing for a photo.

Along the trail, the scarred leaves of a cliff-hugging Agave lophantha reveal the impulse of park visitors to leave a record of their passing.

From the initials and date carved into the rock below, you can see it’s not a recent phenomenon.

Bamboo leans over the pond, its leaves yellowing as part of its spring leaf renewal.

Enormous koi swim lazily in the ponds at the bottom of the garden, approaching tamely in hopes of a feeding.

Palms add tropical texture to the garden.

In one section of the garden, an annual display of edibles is paired with spring-blooming Jerusalem sage.

The pavilion as seen from the lower garden—a romantic hideaway for at least one couple.

I remember visiting the Japanese Tea Garden as a senior in college way back in 1989. I was reminded to revisit thanks to Shirley’s post about the tea garden at Rock-Oak-Deer and, before that, Ivette’s reminiscences about the garden at The Germinatrix. Once you read their posts, you’ll be ready to explore the garden too.

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