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.

April is high season for wildflowers in Texas, and if you can’t get out for a country drive to admire them in meadows and fields, an Austinite can always get a fix at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I stopped by for a wildflower stroll on Friday morning. Before I’d even pulled into the parking lot I stopped to ogle this spiky/soft combo of agave (maybe A. neomexicana?), Gulf Coast penstemon (Penstemon tenuis), and pink evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa).

Muscular agave leaves…

…make a strong backdrop to the tissuey, pink petals of the primrose.

A closer look

Even closer. Notice the pollen dust held by the veined, cupped flower.

Entering the gardens you pass a grassy meadow studded with yuccas (perhaps Y. pallida), their bloom stalks held aloft like flagpoles. Soon they’ll all be flying white flags.

The striking architecture of the Wildflower Center, with its copper-colored stone and heavy arches softened by trailing vines, is an important part of the garden.

Tucked high up in an alcove planter, nesting under a Wheeler sotol, is a great horned owl. She has two nearly full-grown chicks that I’d hoped to see. But a brisk wind seemed not to their liking. The chicks tucked themselves in too low for photos, and Mama Owl turned her face to the wall, staring at it placidly as the wind gusted around her.

Just to her left is the pretty little entry pond.

I didn’t get the ID of this flowering pond plant. Update: Hymenocallis liriosme

A clear blue pond, built to resemble a spring-fed pool in the Hill Country called Jacob’s Well, or so I’ve heard, anchors the main courtyard.

Seating at one side of the courtyard makes a pleasant spot to enjoy lunch from the cafe.

More of that marvelous architecture. This is the Wildflower Center’s signature tower. The core houses a rainwater-collection cistern, and you can walk a spiraling stair up to the very top for an overlook of the grounds.

Continuing along the back of the tower instead, I snapped a photo of another of the massive cisterns that dot the grounds, a reminder of how vital water collection is in central Texas. I love this style of cistern—all that galvanized metal and the cylindrical silo shape—and wish I had one in my own garden.

Espaliered on a section of cattle-panel fencing, a Mexican redbud (Cercis canadensis var. mexicana) sapling’s glossy leaves show to advantage.

Another smaller cistern in the children’s garden makes a rustic backdrop to a blooming Texas wisteria vine (Wisteria frutescens).

I sat here for a few minutes to soak in the beauty of the morning—a cool, sunny morning of the sort we’ll be longing for soon enough—and the wildflowers blooming all around me…

…like this swath of pink evening primrose.

But what about Texas bluebonnets, you may be wondering? Oh yes, they were blooming too. Stay tuned—I’ll have pictures of bluebonnets in part two of my Wildflower Center visit.

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

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.