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.

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 a look!

The first is this adorable blue bungalow in West Austin. I guess that it was recently relandscaped because the plants are few and widely spaced. The limestone walk doesn’t look new though, does it? A mystery. Anyway, I like that the walkway is broad at the curb (about 9 feet wide), offering an open-armed welcome to visitors. Clumps of coppery grasses repeat along each side of the walk, leading your eye toward the front door, where two tall, red pots offer a jolt of warm color and hold two more ornamental grasses.

The garden is punctuated with evergreens to keep it looking lively in winter. The house and pot colors do so as well. A screen of bamboo poles hides the driveway (and maybe a front parking area?) from view. My drive-by impression? This is a welcoming garden that suits the colorful house and should become even more interesting as additional plants are added.

Here’s a bold homeowner! The large front yard of this ranch house in Allandale has been entirely converted into a vegetable garden. A long, curving, raised bed constructed of native limestone not only lifts the plants within easy reach (and keeps them away from dogs marking their territory) but also functions as a friendly barrier and indicator of private space, the same way a picket fence would.

Lettuces green up the wall/bed for winter. Inside the wall, additional raised beds lie fallow, neatly mulched, waiting for spring. The whole garden is paved with decomposed granite (DG), eliminating the lawn altogether. A generous DG strip along the curb serves as a walkway for visitors—a much smarter decision than bringing the wall all the way to the street, which would have blocked the car doors of visitors and been less welcoming.

The last drive-by garden for today is this somewhat contemporary, reduced-lawn garden in Tarrytown. Again, the welcome begins at the curb with a cut-stone walkway, accented with cut-outs filled with Mexican beach pebbles. Rather than making a beeline for the front door, the walk leads the way around a series of steel raised beds and follows the driveway toward the house before curving back toward the avocado-green front door and an inviting terrace.

The terrace is partially screened by another steel planter, anchored by a large agave and a shoestring acacia, both evergreen. Silver ponyfoot cascades over the edges of the planter, offering additional greenery. Roses, foxtail fern, sedge, and a philodendron (still green despite a few freezes) add their own softening greenery to the winter garden.

Looking back as I drive away—the terrace is nicely constructed with a sheltering arbor offering protection from the summer sun. A cattle-panel trellis, framed by the arbor’s posts, is planted with what looks like star jasmine, an evergreen vine that will provide additional privacy as it fills in. Wouldn’t it be great to have a front “room” like this instead of just a big swath of lawn?

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

Last month I had the pleasure of meeting Mark Word, a highly regarded residential and commercial designer here in Austin. Thanks to his work designing unique and memorable gardens for Liz Lambert’s boutique hotels, including uber-hip Hotel San Jose and the more luxurious Hotel Saint Cecilia, Mark’s pared down but still lushly planted style has inspired rapturous reviews from fans and gained him wider recognition than if he were designing only for high-end clients. He does plenty of that too, of course (you can see images of several of these gardens in Stephen Orr’s Tomorrow’s Garden), but for some reason they don’t tend to pop up on Austin’s numerous garden tours.

When Mark told me about a new commercial landscape he’d just finished in Georgetown, Texas—El Monumento, a farm-to-table style restaurant overlooking the San Gabriel River—I knew I would make the 30-minute drive north to see it.

Opened by the owner of popular Georgetown diner Monument Cafe, the new place specializes in home-style Mexican food. The contemporary building and garden look like something you’d see in trendy Austin, not quiet, family- and retiree-friendly Georgetown.

The experience of visiting the restaurant starts in the parking lot, before you even reach the door, thanks to sweeps of groundcovers and ornamental grasses between rows of cars. I was captivated as soon as I drove into the parking lot on a busy lunch hour last month.

The excitement starts at the public sidewalk along the street, where this concrete retaining wall is made artful with paint and colored strips of some material bolted to the wall. A steel fence planted with vines will soon become a green wall, which is almost a shame since the metalwork of the fence is interesting in itself. A globe mallow (Sphaeralcea) greets you at the stairs.

A wider view shows a massing of Mexican feathergrass (Nassella tenuissima) and giant mullein (Verbascum thapsus)—no boring lawn grass or the usual evergreen shrubs here—anchored by a large olive tree.

Tousled and oh-so-touchable

I spotted this grasshopper resting in a mullein’s felted leaves.

Yucca gloriosa (I think) punctuates ground-covering wooly stemodia (Stemodia lanata). Simple and beautiful.

A closer look

In the middle of the parking lot, a stand of miscanthus grass evokes a prairie. The grasses were lovely, their tasseled blossoms sparkling in the midday sunlight.

A closer look: flowering grasses and a blue, blue sky

The parking lot is largely paved with water-permeable decomposed granite, with terracotta-colored, herringbone-patterned brick walking paths set amid the planting islands.

A few potted agaves punctuate the walkway.

Exploring around the side of the building, I caught a glimpse of the back deck, with an edible garden planted below, including a tropical-sized root beer plant (Hoja santa).

A colorful staircase descends to a lower garden…

…and is itself a work of art. Why don’t we paint stairs more often? This is so cheerful and fun.

The wall and sidewalk along this side were given the same color-strip treatment as on the wall I showed earlier. I wonder if this would work to jazz up a boring wood privacy fence?

Beneath the deck I found more painted walls and a low-care, shade-tolerant planting of Manfreda maculosa, foxtail fern (Asparagus densiflorus ‘Meyers’), and purple heart (Tradescantia pallida).

I really like this, and imagine how nice it will be when the purple heart has filled in around the purple-spotted manfredas.

Another look

In back of the restaurant, a hillside of flowering perennials and ornamental grasses was alive with butterflies. The restaurant’s rear terrace overlooks this garden and the San Gabriel River.

Moving back to the front of the building, you see more of Mark’s signature use of massed grasses—including defined swaths of drought-tolerant turf grass used as just another plant species, not necessarily as a carpet for walking on. (In his residential gardens, such swaths of turf grass are often set off in raised beds for emphasis.)

Pennisetum—I’m not sure what kind

Spineless prickly pear (Opuntia) edges the front walk with Zen-like simplicity.

Step through that southwestern wall, from bright sunlight into the cool shade of the doorway, and you enter a tropical courtyard, with red-leaved banana trees pushing against the shade-providing arbor.

Looking right, you see an inviting courtyard with plenty of seating in both sun and shade. The vine-draped arbor in the background runs on three sides of this courtyard.

Immediately to your right as you enter the courtyard, a long, trough-style fountain runs the length of the wall that you just stepped through.

Rusty, grid-like metal fencing, a steel pipe fountain, and concrete basin trough—all very Austin

The shady arbor along the back of the courtyard has additional seating and is overlooked by interior windows, giving inside diners a nice view of the courtyard garden.

In back, a deck bridges one side of the building, leading to a rear terrace paved in the herringbone brick. Deep eaves, fans, and generous container plants all promise a feeling of coolness on hot days.

A steel raised bed along the back of the building holds coleus and leopard plant (I think).

Dishes of lavender top short stone columns.

Banana trees along the sunny outer edge (at right) continue the tropical vibe. This whole space overlooks the hillside perennial and grass garden shown earlier.

Persian shield (Strobilanthes dyerianus) and coleus

Avoiding the interior of the restaurant, which was full of noontime diners, I strolled back around the deck, admiring this view of the parking lot garden through the grid of a steel gate.

Along busy Austin Avenue, tall steel arbors hung with heavy-duty netting support young muscadine grapevines.

Other edibles grow in the raised beds laid out here, surrounded by generous paving of decomposed granite.

The grape arbors are cleverly constructed to arch over the public sidewalk, creating, one day, a shady tunnel for passersby.

A bamboo trellis supports some other newly planted climber.

One last look at the entry garden from the Austin Avenue side. The decomposed-granite path and parallel lines of retama trees (Parkinsonia aculeata) and ‘Blonde Ambition’ grama grass lead to the door in the wall.

Airy, green-trunked—and spiny!—retama in flower is a lovely sight.

And bees love those yellow blossoms.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of this commercial project by designer Mark Word. I would love to be able to show some of his residential work one day. Until then, I plan to visit this new garden again in a year or so to see how it’s matured—and maybe I’ll even try out the dining experience in the meantime.

Speaking of food, I bet many of my American readers are prepping today for the big Thanksgiving feast on Thursday. I’ll be doing the same. Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

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