Author and designer Lucinda Hutson‘s gabled purple cottage and garden in the Rosedale neighborhood of Austin is as colorful as a basket of Easter eggs…

…but even better because it contains scented petals, billowy texture, and something blooming at every turn, like this ‘Julia Child’ rose.

When Lucinda invited me over last week to see her garden in spring bloom, I knew I’d be in for a colorful treat. She’s always painting the walls of her house or garage or fences some vibrant color, like mango, yellow-gold, or hot pink, and this visit was no exception. A new cobalt-blue fence along the former driveway sets the tone for an under-the-sea garden of succulents, complete with a mermaid. In back of her house, a vibrant purple paint was still wet on the siding.

Matching pots of pink pelargoniums and silver dusty miller welcome you at the front stoop.

To the right, under the shade of a ginkgo tree, Lucinda screened her neighbor’s driveway with a board fence, inset with vine-covered lattice panels and adorned with birdhouses.

She’s experimenting with creeping Jenny and ajuga groundcovers here in the shade. They got awfully thirsty last summer, she said, but they look great now. The little pink house on the left is a kitchen-scraps composter.

Chard and herbs grow alongside ornamentals like Jerusalem sage in the sunny front garden.

The light illuminates chard like stained glass.

Another buttery blossom from the ‘Julia Child’ rose

Looking left of the house, you see a walled garden where the driveway used to be. A lattice arbor over the gate echoes the tall gable of the house.

Just inside the gate is the mermaid garden and a little patio with seating for two.

A tiny pond built against the wall houses a mosaic fish and is decorated with a mermaid basin.

Looking down the driveway-turned-garden you see a purple garage (converted to storage), with an exuberant vegetable garden in front.

Red poppy

Lucinda is liberated from the notion that the side and back walls of the house and garage must match the purple front, and they wear festive shades of golden yellow…

…salmon (on the right)…

…and aquamarine, helping to set the mood for distinct garden rooms as you round each corner. This is La Lucinda Cantina, a serving table under a cedar pergola behind the garage.

There’s also a rustic outdoor shower.

A peek inside

Tita the cat gets a little love.

I’ve had the good fortune to visit Lucinda’s home and garden several times, and she’s always the most gracious hostess, serving up punch and sugared Mexican pastries.

Beautiful objects adorn every surface of her charming home.

Carrying the platter into the garden, she plucks roses and other blossoms and tucks them among the pastries for an even prettier display.

Almost too pretty to eat

Lucinda’s pineapple-mint punch, with pansies floating for decoration. Yum!

Thank you, Lucinda, for a delightful visit! Lucinda has another book coming out soon called Viva Tequila!; look for it in a few months.

If you can’t get enough of Lucinda’s Tex-Mex cottage-garden style, visit my other posts about her garden:
Lucinda Hutson’s enchanting garden, April 2008
El Jardin Encantador: Lucinda Hutson’s garden, October 2009
Enchanted evening in Lucinda Hutson’s cantina garden, April 2011

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

The Garden Conservancy’s 2012 Open Days program opened on March 24 in Houston, a 3-hour drive east of Austin. Diana of Sharing Nature’s Garden and I made a day trip of it and started our tour at the Cortlandt Street Garden. Here’s the official description:

Located in the historic Houston Heights neighborhood, this lovely small scale urban garden demonstrates how much can be done even within tight constraints. After constructing a house for his mother behind his historic bungalow, landscape architect Mark McKinnon worked with limited light and space to create a delightful courtyard garden that affords pleasant views from every vantage as well as a striking pond and overflow basin that is both a focal point of the garden and an ingenious means of storm water management.

Streetside, a shade garden with Texas dwarf palmetto (Sabal minor) welcomes you to the house. Liriope cloaks the ground, eliminating the need to try to grow lawn grass in the shade.

At the front door, a matching pair of boxwood topiaries shine in steel containers raised on plinths. A contemporary twist on a classic look.

You enter the side garden through this unique steel gate. Are those plow discs?

River birches, with their flaky, white trunks, and a trellis fence smothered in star jasmine create vertical lift in this narrow side passage. But what really draws your eye up is an open-air tower structure in the back yard. What the heck is it? I still don’t know because the stairway inside was closed to visitors.

But just inside is a cool outdoor shower. I don’t usually fancy outdoor showers because they seem dank and spidery. But I like this one because it’s off the ground yet still outdoors—perfect for a quick cleanup after gardening.

On a table in the open-air raised passage between the main house and guest house are potted herbs and a sanseveria.

A tiny strip of plantable space between the decked passageway and the side fence contains a minimalist bamboo screen, neatly held back with horizontal pieces of bamboo.

Stepping into a small central lawn (here comes Diana!), you get a wide view of the decked passageway. Horizontal screening slats give it the feel of a protected porch.

Looking toward the rear of the property you see the guest house, fronted by a rectangular, concrete-edged pond with a sunken overflow basin in front for biofiltration. I was intrigued by the biofiltration aspect of the water feature (water also circulates through the water plants’ roots to be cleaned, the owner told me), but I wondered whether more couldn’t be done aesthetically with the overflow basin. It contains bare dirt, a few weeds, and flat stones, which does nothing to enhance the pretty pond.

At one end of the pond, a stacked-stone plinth supports an industrial-looking spigot, a nice feature.

Another stacked-stone plinth with decorative tiles rises from the pond to support a dripping planter. This is part of the biofiltration system, but you’d never know it. It looks purely decorative and must be refreshing to view and hear on a hot summer day.

The rear garden is minimalist: a tiny lawn, native buttonbush (not leafed out yet), river ferns, bald cypress, palm, a shade tree (oak perhaps?), and water plants.

View of the rear of the main house and the tower from the porch of the guest house

Watchtower

Another stacked-stone plinth topped with a potted agave marks the entry to the other side-passage to the front yard.

Two horizontal screens set about 6 feet apart create instant privacy from the street and add mystery to the path: what lies ahead?

In the shady garden, fading bulb foliage was neatly knotted, allowing it to keep feeding the bulb’s growth but preventing it from sprawling over other plants.

A look back down the path

Out front, red amaryllis and orange bulbine mingle for a tropical-looking burst of color.

Up next: A tour of the J. Green Garden.

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