Linda’s live oak courtyard garden in San Antonio
After the tour of the Ten Eyck garden last Saturday, I visited my friend Linda Peterson’s garden, one of my favorites in all of Texas. Her garden is home to several charismatic live oaks, including this one with octopus-like arms stretching through a porthole cutout in a courtyard wall.
The trees embrace the garden — and you — as you walk through it, or you can choose among several patios to sit and commune with them.
The inner courtyard garden is shaded by a grand old tree whose gnarled limbs support a hammock for napping.
An outdoor fireplace offers a cozy spot for the chilly season.
Linda makes these charming flower sculptures out of flexible copper tubing. She bends them into abstract floral shapes and secures them atop copper pipe stems.
I also enjoy her metal and stone animal menagerie, like this rusty porcupine alongside a faux bois birdbath fountain.
Sage green and a dusty turquoise make a consistent color scheme throughout Linda’s garden, harmonizing with the olive green leaves and charcoal trunks of the live oaks.
A stumpery garden contains this big tree stump with a fern planted in it. A wire bird’s nest with a single turquoise egg makes a charming accent.
Linda brightens up the shade with bottle shrubs made out of green glass bottles and painted rebar.
A spiral staircase on the back deck leads up to the flat roof, where Linda can enjoy a bird’s-eye view of the garden.
Everywhere, Linda creates artful arrangements of her exquisitely maintained potted plants, seating, and her menagerie. You just want to sit and LOOK.
Succulent pots under a window with a beaded curtain
A careful color scheme, little pedestals to elevate pots, and creative top-dressing materials — colored stones, frosted glass chips, broken tile, etc. — make each one a thing of beauty, but the full effect is unified.
And look — after I just said that I never see anyone growing bananas in this part of Texas! Linda said that this summer’s extreme heat put a damper on the banana’s growth. It was only when temperatures cooled that the banana unfurled new leaves. Just in time for my visit — yay!
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Digging Deeper
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All material © 2024 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
I’ve enjoyed all of your posts from Linda’s garden over the years. She has a talent for creating exquisite vignettes, and I always come away with new ideas. This time it was the beaded curtain. I don’t know if Linda has issues with birds hitting that window, but it’s a problem I’ve had to deal with, and this looks to be a beautiful solution! Thanks to both you and Linda for the lovely post.
Thanks for the generous feedback, Maggie. And yes, I bet you’re right about the beaded curtain — a pretty solution to prevent bird strikes.
An intriguing, fascinating, and truly beautiful space!
Yes indeed!
In Linda’s garden there is a brown fenced with what appears to be ‘weaved’ metal flat plat. Can you share some details as to what that is made of and was it built on site or a prefabricated fence
Linda and her husband, Carl, designed and made that screen out of leftover metal roofing pieces. I don’t know the details of how they fabricated it.
Darn it, I wish I would have stopped to think about the banana when I saw that vignette on Instagram. Of course Linda would be the exception to your observation!
Of course she is! 😉
Linda’s garden is unforgettable with the wall carefully created to accommodate the oak tree. She’s done a beautiful job inside the walled area too.
She truly has. I adore her and her garden.
I was just coming back to your blog to look up an old post of this garden to show someone – how lovely to see a brand new post, especially after this hell summer. I agree – one of my favorites in all of Texas. Thank you!
I can’t wait to feature Linda’s garden in the new book I’m working on! It comes out in spring 2025. 🙂
A beautiful inspirational space, Pam. I love the combination of turquoise and sage green, a great contrast with the browns of the metals and wood, all embraced within the live oaks. Just beautiful.
Linda’s way with color is so well matched to her site’s natural features.
I can understand why this is one of your favorite garden in all of Texas!
A lot of artistic expression everywhere, a lot to take in. What stands out for me first and foremost is the consideration of the majesty of the live oak, building around it, preserving it in all its gnarling goodness.
So true, Chavli. It’s the starting point for the whole garden.
This is why I stopped shopping at the HEB by my house. Now I go to an HEB further away,
so that I can drive past this house and yard.
What a treat for me !
A garden to detour for — that’s a nice compliment on Linda’s design skills. 🙂
Absolutely masterful pot gardening here.
I agree — the plants, the pots, the mulch finishes, and the groupings.