One hundred million years ago, Austin looked a lot different. A shallow sea lapped across central Texas, and later, as the sea retreated, cycads, magnolias, ferns, reeds and other ancient plants colonized the humid marshes. A dinosaur like this one walked here, leaving behind footprints that fossilized and lay hidden in limestone until their discovery in a quarry in 1992.

Does your mind, like mine, reel at the vastness of the idea of millions of years, and the realization that landforms which seem so permanent to us are in fact quite changeable? What’s a thousand years to the earth? A mere blink of an eye.

Musing on these and other cycad-delic thoughts (sorry, couldn’t resist), I visited Austin’s unique Hartman Prehistoric Garden yesterday, located in Zilker Botanical Garden. Entering the garden is like stepping back in time. Hartman’s plants represent those that existed in the Cretaceous period during the time of the dinosaurs: “spore producing plants (ferns, horsetails and liverworts), the gymnosperms (cycads, conifers and ginkgos) and the first angiosperms (magnolias and palms).”

Water runs through the garden in canal-like streams and pools in ponds. A large waterfall cascades over the edge of a limestone outcropping.

Many varieties of magnolia are planted here, including this lovely banana magnolia (Michelia fuscata).

The flowers are much smaller than those of the massive Southern magnolia so often planted in Austin (even though we’re west of its native range, and it gets dry and chlorotic here).

I didn’t notice a banana fragrance, though online sources say it has one.

Thickets of palms and palmettos give the garden a tropical look, although everything is hardy to our zone 8b.

What’s this? A prehistoric reptile? No, just a red-eared slider basking at the edge of the pond.

The numerous cycads are recovering from last winter’s severe freeze, with fresh, green fronds emerging from the tops of the pruned-back trunks…

…as you can see here.

This pretty sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) stood clothed in new spring leaves. Perhaps this semi-evergreen lost its leaves during the cold spell? At any rate, a sweet fragrance wafted from a few flowers held high on upper branches.

Texas dwarf palmetto (Sabal minor) (I think) makes a striking understory plant for bald cypress (Taxodium distichum).

If you haven’t yet visited the Hartman garden, now is a great time, before the heat and humidity of summer return and make you feel you really have stepped back in time into a prehistoric swamp.

To read about my fall 2007 visit to Hartman Prehistoric Garden, click here.

All material © 2006-2011 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Just in from a morning stroll through my garden, and what delights I witnessed. A tiny, blurry-winged hummingbird making the rounds from Mexican oregano to flame-leaf acanthus to Turk’s cap to Agastache. Honeybees spelunking for pollen. A leggy, spotted fawn tucked into a stand of bamboo muhly in the unfenced front garden, who bolted skittishly because I unknowingly stood too long near his hiding place.

Had I a typical expanse of flat, featureless lawn (like this example on Watersaver Lane at San Antonio Botanical Garden), relieved only by a few shade trees and a line of evergreen foundation shrubs, devoid of insect- and bird-attracting flowers and seeds, empty of plants that provide shelter, nurseries, and food for wildlife, I would not see many such visitors. Why would they visit a virtual desert, particularly if it were sprayed regularly with pesticides? And if they wouldn’t, why would we want to?

So how does one go about inviting wildlife into the garden from a design perspective?

1. Plant a variety of plants that change with the seasons, offering flowers for nectar or pollen, foliage for food or nests, and seeds for late-season food supplies. Using a very limited palette of plants may provide that clean, contemporary look you see in certain design magazines, but it won’t be as attractive to wildlife.

2. Add a mid-level of plants that fill the niche between lawn and shade trees. These plants provide shelter and food for wildlife. Think small trees; small to medium-sized shrubs, particularly those with fall or winter berries; ornamental grasses; and flowering perennials.

3. Don’t be in a hurry to “clean up” the garden in winter. Seedheads left standing provide food for birds, and even shriveled foliage and leaf litter offer protection for beneficial insects, lizards, etc.

4. Be tolerant when a plant gets “attacked” by caterpillars. Without caterpillars we wouldn’t have butterflies—or sphinx moths in this case.

5. Add water to your garden. Birds and insects get thirsty and need a safe place to drink. Provide a bird bath or small pond, and they will come.

6. Add nesting boxes to your garden. They not only offer birds a safe place to raise chicks but provide hours of enjoyment for you as you watch them get fed and learn to fly.

Visit all the participants in this month’s Garden Designers Roundtable for more posts about Gardening with Nature:

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT
Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN
Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA
Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX
Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In the Garden : Los Altos, CA
Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT

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

Over spring break we drove 3,200 miles (5,149 km) round-trip to Florida, with stops in Orlando, Miami, Everglades National Park, the Keys (all the way to Key West), and finally Naples to see the brand-new botanical garden there. Planted last August and opened to the public in November, Naples Botanical Garden is in its infancy, but it will grow up fast under the Florida sun.

The approach from the parking lot sets the stage with bold color. A lime-green wall with hot-pink bougainvillea contrasts with the salmon-colored entry planted with palms and orange, red, and green rainbow bromeliads.

The gardens showcase subtropical plants that grow around the world between the 26th latitude north, where Naples is located, and the 26th latitude south.

The centerpiece is the Brazilian Garden…

…where a negative-edge waterfall and pond are overlooked by a large mosaic tile mural by renowned Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx.

Miami landscape architect Raymond Jungles, who studied under Marx, donated the mural and designed the contemporary Brazilian Garden.

Swaths of one kind of plant…

…blocks of color (Portea shown here)

…contrasts in form: it’s a mod, mod world.

So many of the plants were entirely foreign to me, Seussian in shape, and their deeply colored, broad, glossy leaves were strikingly different from the silvery green, small, and often fuzzy leaves I’m used to seeing on xeric sun-lovers here in Austin. This is Neoregelia petra.

This one, in the foreground, looks more familiar. In fact, I mistook it for a yucca at first, but it’s actually a bromeliad called Alcantarea odorata.

More Portea, I think

Neoregelia mcwilliamsii

Climbing up to the pavilion behind the waterfall, you look out over the negative edge at a colorful and palm-studded garden. You can see that some of the trees were still bare. According to a horticulturist I spoke with, some of the plants were recovering from transplant shock and the same January cold snap that hit much of the southern U.S. It dipped down to 31 F (-.5 C) in the garden one night and remained cold for several days, killing some of the subtropical plants and setting back others. For all that, I thought the garden looked remarkably healthy and established considering its recent planting.

Tropical water lilies

Red water lily leaves look like stepping stones

A path on the other side of the pond…

…leads to the Caribbean Garden.

The focal point of the Caribbean Garden is a turquoise cabana-like structure, providing welcome shade and open to cooling breezes.

The front yard, with crushed-shell “gravel” that looks almost like beach sand.

View from a bench inside

Gulf muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris) grows outside.

As does a cultivated grove of pineapple.

Palms dominate the view, no matter where you are in the botanical garden. I noticed a beautiful yellow fruit on this palm.

A closer look

The name of this one intrigued me: zombie palm.

A river of grass represents the Everglades, which begins just south of Naples.

Several lakes, whose excavation during the garden’s construction provided soil used to create topographical interest, offer a naturalistic experience and good bird-watching opportunities.

But signs warn you to look out for alligators! The horticulturist I spoke to assured me that alligators do inhabit their lakes. But they haven’t eaten anyone yet.

The only reptile we spotted here, however, was rather small: this little lizard on a fence in the Children’s Garden.

Kids would have a fun time exploring this garden—as did we, even though our children are too old for many of the features, including an interactive fountain for cooling off in and a charming playhouse, where children are invited to use one of numerous watering cans to water the vegetables growing all around.

Aside from a treehouse, a tall watchtower, a stream with stepping stones, chalk for drawing on the sidewalk, a sandpit, and a stroll-behind waterfall, the children’s garden entices small gardeners with colorful flowers like this pink cosmos…

…and fun purse planters that decorate a garden wall. Many other everyday objects were planted up and placed throughout the garden to provide a little surprise.

Bees were attracted too.

A few softer flowering plants like this beautiful vine…

…and this pink trumpet tree stood out amid the sea of colorful, dramatic foliage in the gardens.

But my main impression was of foliage—palms and bromeliads, especially. I never knew there were so many varieties of each, and such diversity of form and color.

I would love to see Naples Botanical Garden again in a few years, when the palms and other plants have had a chance to spread out and fill in and create even more drama.

My thanks to Shannon Palmer, NBG’s communications manager, who tweets about happenings in the garden at @NaplesBotanical, for taking the time to say hello and sharing some of the garden’s publications with me.

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