Drive-By Gardens: Woodsy cottage garden with no lawn
October 08, 2013 This tomato-red home in central Austin’s Bryker Woods neighborhood has the fairy-tale charm of a woodcutter’s cottage, tucked amid a veritable forest of small trees. Whether these were saved from the previous landscaping or planted by a tree-collecting owner, the effect is that the house appears to ...
Drive-By Gardens: Xeric, mass-planted garden replaces a lot of lawn
October 07, 2013 The lawn-gone trend is going strong, especially in Austin, where watering restrictions and the drought have galvanized even non-gardening homeowners to convert their thirsty landscapes into drought-tolerant planting beds. Here’s another one, which I spotted in the southwest Austin neighborhood of Covenant Estates. This lawn replacement relies ...
Drive-By Gardens: Terraced, xeric front yard garden
October 06, 2013 Driving through southwest Austin’s Travis Country neighborhood last week, on a tip from a regular reader (thanks, Charlene!), I spotted this terraced, lawn-gone garden. The front yard slants like a ski slope right down to the front porch, and I imagine the owners struggled with drainage issues ...
Drive-By Gardens: A red-carpet welcome of oxblood lilies
October 04, 2013 I spotted this cheery welcome in central Austin today: oodles of oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida), a fall-blooming, naturalizing bulb for central Texas, in bloom against a white picket fence. Happy Friday, y’all! All material © 2006-2013 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited ...
Drive-By Gardens: No-lawn, deer-resistant garden in Jester
September 19, 2013 While driving the hilly West Austin neighborhood of Jester this week, I couldn’t help noticing this attractive, lawn-gone garden that relies heavily on evergreens and ornamental grasses with a sprinkling of flowering perennials for color. Limestone boulders and pieced flagstone pathways are a key design element here ...
Drive-By Gardens: Bouldin neighborhood in South Austin
April 02, 2013Driving through near-downtown Bouldin neighborhood last weekend, I was struck by the number of lawnless front yards in one short stretch of W. Live Oak Street. Luckily I had my camera, so I decided a drive-by post was in order—but truth be told, I got out of the ...
Drive-By Gardens: Colorful culvert pipe planters in Houston Heights
March 21, 2013 The Heights neighborhood in Houston is free-spirited, as evidenced by this collection of culvert pipe scraps turned annual planters. While visiting last weekend, I spotted this colorful collection at an antiques shop along a tree-lined boulevard, and we did an automotive version of the double-take: we drove ...
Drive-By Gardens: Cottage updated with modern, no-lawn garden
February 23, 2013 Cruising through north-central Austin’s Brentwood neighborhood last week, I rubbernecked at this newly installed lawnless garden, whose contemporary styling really stands out against the cottagey charm of the home. There are a lot of things to admire about the design: the very drought-tolerant plant palette, which includes ...
Drive-By Gardens: Looking good in winter with lawn-gone gardens
January 23, 2013 I’m starting a new feature called Drive-by Gardens to show some of the many interesting gardens I see while driving around Austin on a daily basis to meet clients. Today I spotted three lawn-gone or reduced-lawn gardens that look pretty darn good for mid-winter, so let’s have ...
Drive-By Gardens: Sedge lawn and grasses make another lawn-gone garden
September 11, 2012 Driving in East Austin recently, I spotted this cheery yellow house with an alternative lawn of sedge—probably either Texas or Berkeley sedge—in the front yard… …and a row of native Lindheimer muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri) along the side-yard fence. A few brown patches marred the beauty of the ...
Drive-By Gardens: Rockin’ alternative lawns in north Austin
July 30, 2012 Driving around north Austin last week, I spotted quite a few nontraditional front yards, where the owners had traded in the typical expanse of St. Augustine or Bermuda for a smaller plot of grass, a sedge lawn, or a garden instead of lawn. No matter the style, ...
Drive-By Gardens: Colorful front garden instead of lawn in Mueller neighborhood
May 03, 2012 If you’ve always thought bigger is better where a garden is concerned, think again. This week I spent a little time in East Austin’s Mueller neighborhood, a planned community (on the site of Austin’s old airport) built to encourage a sense of community with houses close to ...
Drive-By Gardens: Creative cactus planter
October 09, 2010 A toy dump truck has to be the most unusual planter I’ve ever seen, and this golden barrel cactus looks right at home in it. I spotted this playful combo parked on the front lawn of an Allandale home yesterday. Towering on either side of it were ...
Contemporary xeric garden
December 08, 2007 I spotted this beautiful curbside garden at a house near St. Andrew’s Episcopal School and had to stop to admire it. While my own garden is cottage style, with a combination of drought-tolerant natives and tough cottage favorites, I find myself drawn more and more to this ...
