No, I’m not looking for a Mildred or Louise to eat bugs and lay eggs in my garden. But I couldn’t resist buying a ticket to Austin’s 5th annual Funky Chicken Coop Tour after watching a recent Central Texas Gardener episode (below) about Dani and Gary Moss’s charming and playful garden in southwest Austin.

Located on Westview Road, the garden is a homegrown creation by the retired but hard-working owners, who clearly can create anything they set their minds to. Dani envisions projects like their whimsical Chicksville hen house, and Gary builds them. He also welds metal into flowery stair railings, arbors…

…and decorative accents placed throughout the garden, like this metal heart inscribed with Dani’s nickname. How adorable is that?

Their chicken coop is sturdily constructed of wood and wire, with a metal roof for shelter from sun and rain. A ramp leads up through a hen-sized doorway in the stone foundation…

…into the colorful hen house itself, which also offers storage space for food and other supplies. It looks more like a lucky little girl’s playhouse than a hen house, doesn’t it? A tiny chandelier even hangs from the porch ceiling.

Similarly, the English-style conservatory that Gary built for Dani is dressed up inside with two chandeliers.

In the garden, roses were in bloom—lots of red Knock Outs plus a climbing pink rose and this flaming orange-and-yellow beauty.

Gary’s metal flowers provide nonstop blooms along the fence.

As does a bottle tree set in a garden bed near another of Gary’s heart creations.

What don’t they have? There was even this metal giraffe, cheekily wearing Mardi Gras beads…

…and a banded armadillo made of scrap metal.

Everywhere you looked, there were more of the couple’s creations, as well as lush plantings of evergreens and flowering perennials.

I’m glad I had a chance to see it, along with these two docents wearing hilarious chicken hats.

Happy Easter and happy spring!

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

My fourth stop on Saturday’s Open Days tour was the Bonnell Drive Garden in hilly West Austin, created by my friend Curt Arnette of Sitio Design. (For a post about Curt’s fascinating personal garden, click here.) The contemporary front garden complements the Texas-modern style of the wood-and-limestone house.

A dynamic, poured-concrete walk curves downward to the front door. Curt said the owner wanted the home to have universal design (generally thought of as being wheelchair accessible), so steps were eliminated in favor of a ramp-like path set in contrasting Texas Black gravel.

The driveway is constructed in a similar style, with “floating” concrete pads “grouted” by gravel, allowing air and water to reach the roots of trees growing close to the house. Chartreuse clouds of bamboo muhly (Muhlebergia dumosa) accent either side of the driveway.

Stepping back to the streetside garden, you see an explosion of fall-blooming Gulf muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris), beautifully sunlit. Bamboo muhly glows on the left, desert spoon (Dasylirion wheeleri) adds a spiky sphere on the right, and ‘Sharkskin’ agave and silver ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea) fill in below.

Is there anything more lovely than this? Agave parryi var. truncata, a spiky rosette of an island in a sea of silver ponyfoot.

Well, this may be more lovely, with the addition of yellow-gold skeleton-leaf goldeneye (Viguiera stenoloba ).

Farther around the corner lot, where the property drops off steeply, exposing the caliche bedrock, tough agaves and native perennials find a home: Agave ferox ‘Green Goblet’ and skeleton-leaf goldeneye (or the native variety, plateau goldeneye).

Yuccas stand tall above groundcovering silver ponyfoot. I don’t know the name of the handsome shrub at left. Update: It’s Jatropha dioica, or leatherstem (thanks, Cheryl!), a South Texas native.

More daisies, spineless prickly pear, and silver ponyfoot—tough, drought-tolerant, and beautiful.

In the background stands a shoestring acacia (Acacia stenophylla), an Australian native.

Just look at all those ruby-red tunas—the fruit of the prickly pear. You can make jam or lemonade out of the tunas if you burn off the thorns and glochids (tiny, almost translucent thorns).

More sotol and Gulf muhly. The toothy sotol leaves catch the light so beautifully.

Yucca rostrata ‘Sapphire Skies’

Between the streetside beds, which help to screen the house from view, and the home itself is a lawn that slopes down to a limestone-block wall with a row of vertical windows. At the house end of the wall, a gate opens onto this view…

…a reflecting pool with a carved stone fountain by Berthold Haas at one end.

A small lawn to the left leads to this view of the terraced back garden and a view of downtown Austin in the distance.

Aloe (‘Blue Elf’?) and giant hesperaloe (Hesperaloe funifera) edge the top of the terraced garden.

Monumental limestone blocks and treads create a stair that leads down to the lower part of the property, which is more naturalistic than the streetside garden in front.

More massive limestone blocks terrace the steep hillside, creating planting pockets. Curt told me that a lot of the native trees in the densely planted lower garden were already here, and he built the garden around them. This sunny opening offers a spot for agaves, palms, and roses as well.

The lower part of the garden is a sloping, narrow lawn that runs between beds of perennials and ornamental grasses, and leads to another stair that takes you up to the back patio. Philippine violet (Barleria cristata) was in glorious purple bloom alongside skeleton-leaf goldeneye, Gulf muhly grass, Mexican feathergrass (Nassella tenuissima), and groundcovering pink knotweed (Polygonum capitatum).

Another view of the Gulf muhly, daisy, and Philippine violet. I really need to try the Philippine violet in my own garden. It’s stunning!

Steel risers and Texas Black gravel treads, edged with limestone blocks, make a contemporary stairway up through the hillside garden.

A queen butterfly was enjoying Gregg’s mistflower (Conoclinium greggii) and butterfly vine (Mascagnia macroptera).

‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave (A. ovatifolia) and pink roses

Looking back, you see a haze of pink muhly and lovely fall perennial blooms.

A wider view down the steps to the garden

At the top of the steps, a limestone patio offers a shady spot to enjoy the garden. A deck off the second floor, above, shades this patio from the Texas sun, as does a cluster of live oaks.

Climbing up to the second level, you enjoy this view of Lake Austin between the trees.

A pool with a beautiful Lueders limestone terrace sits atop the slope at one corner of the house. ‘Sparkler’ sedge, one of my favorite shade plants, brightens up a dark corner under a Valencia orange tree.

And here’s the man who created all this for the lucky owners, Curt Arnette.

Up next: A tour of an art collectors’ garden on Rockcliff Road on Lake Austin. For a look back at Christine Ten Eyck’s water-conserving garden, click here.

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

My second stop on Saturday’s Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour was the courtyard garden of Yvonne Tocquigny and Tom Fornoff, located in West Austin’s tony Tarrytown neighborhood. Elegant but relaxed and beautifully designed, this garden has a secret-garden aspect, with green walls erected in front and in back to define garden rooms, provide privacy, and screen unwanted views.

From the street you see a lawnless space with a gravel forecourt, a large island bed newly planted with sedge, with silver ponyfoot spilling over the raised edge, and crepe myrtles and variegated dianella flanking a gated entry in a wall cloaked in fig ivy.

A closer look reveals oversized bowl planters on limestone plinths, planted up with an evergreen shrub and white cyclamen, and a glimpse of Wedgwood blue doors. French-style lanterns hang on the ivy-covered wall.

The sedge in the foreground is probably either Berkeley or Texas sedge. I’m betting Berkeley—it’s fuller and more beautiful than our native sedge and just as hardy, and it’s showing up in designer gardens all over town.

Classy bowl planters with cool-season cyclamen

Step through the gate and your attention is drawn to the left by the trickling of a fountain that feeds a negative-edge trough housing goldfish and a single water lily.

To the right, Berkeley sedge (I think) creates a tufted, no-mow groundcover under yaupon or possumhaw hollies, with a large oakleaf hydrangea at back-right. A solid limestone block is a simple bench.

A boxwood topiary accents the front door.

Stepping back out to the forecourt and following a discreet path around the garage, you find yourself in a side yard that’s been turned into a lovely garden room, not merely a pass-through space. Cut-limestone pavers (or concrete that skillfully imitates limestone) set in gravel lead to a side door and around to the rear garden. A line of crepe myrtles planted in a raised bed adds privacy along the fence line.

To the right, along the house, a metal-and-wood-slat trellis with rambling roses creates a leafy and flowering scrim. Lanterns are mounted directly on the trellis.

It’s a delightful surprise to see the house framed in this manner.

Continuing down the path, you look back and see this view, with the raised bed with crepe myrtles on the right and a simple limestone bench tucked between boxwood rectangles.

A closer look at the bench

The entrance to the back garden is marked by an arbor entry, a continuation of the metal-and-wood-slat trellis that frames the house. Evergreen, glossy-leaved star jasmine cloaks the arbor and offers creamy, fragrant flowers in spring.

Step through the arbor and the formal, courtyard-style garden opens up to view, with an unattached guest house/studio framing the far side. Four indented, rectangular raised beds frame a stone, urn-style fountain set in a round, limestone-edged pond. It’s a beautiful, serene, inviting space.

The small pond is softened with papyrus and other water-loving plants.

At the back of the garden, a metal-and-wood arbor shelters a dining table, enclosed by a horizontal-slat fence that screens a less-than-picturesque arroyo from view (as I heard the owner say). Those are my friends Diana and Catherine peering through the fence to see what’s back there.

Potted bamboo in front of the slat fence adds a hint of Asian style.

Looking back across the garden you see the whole scene: vine-smothered trellis screening the house and framing French doors that open into the garden; formal raised beds crowded with yellow-blooming iris, softened by ferns that have “escaped” at the base; the symmetry of potted, cone-shaped topiaries that mark the doorways; and the splashing fountain in the center. This is a low-maintenance garden with a limited, restful, mostly evergreen plant palette.

Yvonne’s garden is featured in the book Tomorrow’s Garden, from which I learned that she worked with two separate designers to create this garden: Berthold Haas and Patrick Kirwin.

I loved the horizontal slatted arbor attached to the eave of the guest house/studio. At the far end of the garden, atop a low stone wall, a wooden lattice screens the neighboring house from view and provides a pretty backdrop for a rusty Japanese maple.

A garden bench sits under the maple, with a fringe of river fern on either side.

Looking back at the arbor-sheltered seating area

The view through the arbor doorway to the side-garden path. This is a finely crafted garden, very lovely and a treat to visit.

Up next: The garden of renowned landscape architect Christine Ten Eyck. For a look back at the eclectic and romantic garden of Jennifer and Fred Myers, click here.

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