Drive-By Gardens: Waterwise front yard on Castle Hill

Drive-By Gardens: Waterwise front yard on Castle Hill

July 11, 2023 Cruising through the Castle Hill area of Old West Austin recently, I spotted this beautiful 1910 home with a sky-blue door and modern landscaping. I hit the brakes for a closer look. The house sits atop a front yard terraced with Corten steel and board-formed concrete walls ...
Drive-By Garden: Waterwise front yard and patio

Drive-By Garden: Waterwise front yard and patio

June 30, 2023 Driving around the Delwood neighborhood in East Austin last week I spotted this attractive waterwise front yard. A huge crape myrtle shades one side of the midcentury-style home, sheltering a small patio beneath its branches. On the sunny side, Mexican feathergrass, giant hesperaloe, firecracker fern, and fall ...
Tropicalismo drive-by garden

Tropicalismo drive-by garden

June 01, 2022 Driving through the South Austin neighborhood where my friend Lori lives, I passed this exuberant, tropical-style front garden. I immediately swung around and lurked at the curb to take in all the color and ka-pow energy of bananas and crinums and poppies, oh my. Under the shade ...
Early spring in Hyde Park cottage garden

Early spring in Hyde Park cottage garden

February 09, 2021 Spring has arrived early at this sweet cottage garden in Austin’s Hyde Park neighborhood. I was passing by on Sunday when the dark-pink roses rambling along a picket fence caught my eye. A sunburst-shaped wheeler’s sotol (Dasylirion wheeleri) and clipped germander bush (Teucrium fruticans) add pretty foliage ...
Contemporary front-yard patio makes inviting entry

Contemporary front-yard patio makes inviting entry

February 02, 2021 A subtle front-yard patio garden attracted my attention one day, as I passed a house with orange doors in my northwest Austin neighborhood. Steel edging outlines a rectangular planting strip around a simple concrete patio adjacent to the front walk. Low native and adapted plants add texture, ...
Drive-By Gardens: Lushly spiky gardens of Tarrytown

Drive-By Gardens: Lushly spiky gardens of Tarrytown

August 13, 2020 Forgetting about the closure of city parks in Austin due to Covid-19, my daughter and I tried to visit Mayfield Park in west Austin a couple of weeks ago. Finding the gates locked, we decided to make the best of it and drove around tony Tarrytown neighborhood ...
Drive-By Gardens: No-lawn front yards in South Austin

Drive-By Gardens: No-lawn front yards in South Austin

June 05, 2020 Driving through Bouldin and Zilker neighborhoods in South Austin, I cruise slowly to check out the diverse styles of architecture among the many, many remodeled homes. It’s just as interesting to see what people have chosen to plant in their front yards. Many have opted out of ...
Xeriscape in bloom at Wells Branch Community Garden

Xeriscape in bloom at Wells Branch Community Garden

May 14, 2020 Lemon-lime retama trees in bloom caught my eye recently as I drove by the Wells Branch Community Garden and its native xeriscape garden. Someone takes really good care of this waterwise garden, which dresses up the exterior of the walled community-garden plots. Until a few years ago ...
Drive-By Gardens: Front-yard style in Tarrytown neighborhood

Drive-By Gardens: Front-yard style in Tarrytown neighborhood

December 15, 2016 Cruising through tony Tarrytown neighborhood in West Austin last week, I slowed to a crawl to admire several houses with appealing front-yard style. For understated Christmas pizzazz, I like the way these homeowners hung a big, green wreath over their moss-green front door flanked by dramatic pots ...
Drive-By Gardens: Front yard gardens strong on foliage

Drive-By Gardens: Front yard gardens strong on foliage

October 17, 2016 I can’t believe I forgot about Foliage Follow-Up yesterday, and I’m the host! To make up for it, I’m combining my Foliage Follow-Up post with Drive-By Gardens, always a reader favorite. I have two Austin gardens to share with you for this Drive-By, and both are largely ...
Drive-By Gardens: Contemporary curb appeal in Shoalwood

Drive-By Gardens: Contemporary curb appeal in Shoalwood

May 17, 2016 Last week, while cruising around north-central Austin’s Shoalwood and south Allandale neighborhoods, I noticed a trend: contemporary curb appeal with gravel and concrete-paver paths, low walls and fences to separate public and private areas, and turf reduction in favor of lower-water plants. Take this 1950s ranch, for ...
Drive-By Gardens: Xeriscapes taking off at Mueller neighborhood

Drive-By Gardens: Xeriscapes taking off at Mueller neighborhood

January 08, 2016 On New Year’s Day, we took a stroll through Mueller neighborhood, a New Urban community in east-central Austin. Built on the site of the old airport, where acres of runways and parking lots once sprawled, attractive homes and row houses in a mix of different styles (no ...
Drive-By Gardens: Desert-style garden in Wells Branch

Drive-By Gardens: Desert-style garden in Wells Branch

December 19, 2015 In the Wells Branch neighborhood just north of Austin, on the way to my mom’s house, I regularly drive past this desert-style, no-lawn front garden. I’ve watched it evolve from a few tiny plants dotted across an expanse of decomposed granite to its current lusher look, softened ...
Drive-By Gardens: Home with the armadillo on South Lamar

Drive-By Gardens: Home with the armadillo on South Lamar

December 11, 2015 “All the fun of a real armadillo family with no unpleasant aftertaste,” is how the artist at 20 Digit Design describes his steel creatures. I’ve rubbernecked at these fun armadillo sculptures many a time while driving down South Lamar Boulevard toward Mockingbird Domestics, one of my favorite ...
Drive-By Gardens: A new lawn-gone garden in my neighborhood

Drive-By Gardens: A new lawn-gone garden in my neighborhood

November 19, 2015 Bravo to my neighbors, who’ve ripped out their front lawn and replaced it with native groundcovers woolly stemodia (Stemodia lanata) and sedge (probably Carex texensis), accented with xeric specimen plants like Agave parryi var. truncata, gopher plant (Euphorbia rigida), Wheeler sotol (Dasylirion wheeleri), squid agave (Agave bracteosa), ...
Drive-By Gardens: Formal, whimsical, and wildflower gardens in central Austin

Drive-By Gardens: Formal, whimsical, and wildflower gardens in central Austin

April 12, 2015 Central Austin’s front-yard gardens, free of any homeowners’ association rules, vary wildly depending on the owners’ tastes, energy level, and budget. Here are three that caught my eye over the past week, starting with Deborah Hornickel’s subversive formal garden in the Bryker Woods neighborhood. Why subversive? It ...
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