I don’t seem able to attract nesting screech owls to my garden anymore, alas. (Lots of other owl boxes out there to choose from, maybe?). But my garden sure does attract plenty of baby deer. Hmm, I don’t think I’ve come out on the winning side of that tradeoff. But I’ll admit the fawns are awfully cute whenever I discover one “hidden” in the garden.
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This little one was tucked up in the sedge lawn this week, holding still as I stepped out to go for a walk.
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It moved around a bit over the course of a few hours, waiting patiently for mom to come back…
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…eyes watchful and those big ears swiveling as construction workers made a racket at the house across the street. It may not have been the quietest place to bed down, but it looked comfy enough.
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That evening, a doe showed up with twins, and I wondered if she’d hidden them separately while she went off to browse.
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They trailed her closely as she investigated the island bed…
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…and then ambled across the drive to crop a mouthful of dianella. I know she doesn’t even like that dianella, but she took a bite just to make sure, I guess.
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After a bit of nosing around, they melted into the grasses and were gone — for now.
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June 1-2: Take a self-guided, 2-day tour of ponds and gardens in and around Austin on the annual Austin Pond and Garden Tour, held 6/1 and 6/2, 9 am to 5 pm. Tickets are $20 to $25.
Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, authors, and gardeners a few times a year in Austin. These are limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance; simply click this link and ask to be added. Season 8 kicks off in fall 2024. Stay tuned for more info!
I road-tripped up to Dallas in mid-May because…more garden tours! Dallas master gardener Suzy Renz had alerted me to the Dallas County Master Gardener Association Tour on May 18th, on which her garden was featured, and Michael McDowell had clued me into the White Rock East Garden Tour the next day. An overnight trip was in order! I enlisted a friend to join me, and off we went.
It turns out Dallas loves a garden tour! On Saturday, visitors of all ages were eagerly exploring each garden, which was heartening to see. The crowds (and bright sun) meant I wasn’t able to take many photos except at Suzy’s garden, our first stop as the tour opened. Her stone ranch with colorful porch trim offers happy curb appeal. Potted plants and a whimsical found-art sculpture waving hello draw you toward the front door.
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Side view of the shady porch garden
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Suzy has collected a number of Janice Somerville‘s found-art figures. They appear throughout the garden like quirky robots made of rakes, trowels, and other cast-off tools.
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A garden sign beckoned us into a narrow side garden overlooking a ravine and creek.
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Another funny face greeted us here.
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Suzy loves going to Round Top Antiques Fair to hunt for interesting objects with past lives. This one she turned into a one-of-a-kind planter.
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She and her husband also like antique cars, judging by The Judge, a shiny red 1969 GTO parked in the driveway. Its stable, a pristine garage adorned with antique signs, served as a pass-through to the back garden.
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Entering the backyard, the first thing you see is a colorfully painted shed with a tongue-in-cheek sign. Danger: Men Gardening, it warns.
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A farmhouse sink-turned-planter stands alongside another Janice Somerville face.
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Another Somerville creation
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A screened porch was set up with refreshments, which was welcome on this hot day. Inside, Renz is spelled out with old sign letters.
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A swimming pool with covered outdoor kitchen and counter seating looks like a great place to entertain.
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The pool patio overlooks the rest of the garden below, down a surprisingly steep slope. A path leads down to a large fire pit patio. Easy-care shrubs — juniper and spirea — cloak the slope, and flowering perennials add color in flatter areas that are easier to tend.
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Hello, you
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A rainbow of Adirondacks encircles the fire pit. I imagine this is a cozy spot on a chilly fall day.
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Back through the pool patio
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Heading out, I stopped to admire a gorgeous swath of purple skullcap. It’s planted in a semicircle around a flagstone patio with a yellow bench and umbrella. What a cheery front-yard patio.
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Red yucca was in full bloom along the street — a display that must drive hummingbirds crazy with excitement.
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Their unmolested flower spikes tell me that Suzy does not have to contend with deer, which makes me envious.
Thank you, Suzy, for inviting me up to your beautiful garden and the warm welcome to the tour!
I welcome your comments. Please scroll to the end of this post to leave one. If you’re reading in an email, click here to visit Digging and find the comment box at the end of each post. And hey, did someone forward this email to you, and you want to subscribe? Click here to get Digging delivered directly to your inbox!
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Digging Deeper
June 1-2: Take a self-guided, 2-day tour of ponds and gardens in and around Austin on the annual Austin Pond and Garden Tour, held 6/1 and 6/2, 9 am to 5 pm. Tickets are $20 to $25.
Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, authors, and gardeners a few times a year in Austin. These are limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance; simply click this link and ask to be added. Season 8 kicks off in fall 2024. Stay tuned for more info!
I’ve visited Michael McDowell’s garden — aka the Plano Prairie Garden — several times over the past decade (see here and here; it’ll also be featured in my forthcoming book). My visits have always been in the fall, when purple spires of gayfeather turn Michael’s prairie garden into a Buc-ee’s rest stop for migrating monarchs. I’d never seen it in the spring until two weeks ago, during a mid-May trip up to Dallas.
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Michael graciously said yes when I spontaneously asked to drop in with a friend. It was late afternoon on a hot spring day, and the front garden was dramatically backlit, illuminating the ballerina-skirt petals of purple coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia) and feathery stems of standing cypress (Ipomopsis rubra). Lime-green gayfeather foliage promises another spectacular fall show.
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American basketflower’s woven flowerbuds…
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…were opening into fringey purple flowers.
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But the star of the spring garden was purple coneflower, its spiny orange cones punctuating the scene, its delicate pink skirts waving in the breeze.
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Bees were enjoying them too.
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A few black-eyed Susans added golden yellow to the mix.
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Giant coneflower (Rudbeckia maxima) too. That’s Michael in the background.
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I love this stock-tank planter by the front door, where metal fish “swim” through an “underwater” scene consisting of ‘Brakelights’ hesperaloe and ‘Blue Spruce’ sedum. The illusion of water with tough, dry-loving plants!
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A gray hairstreak butterfly was nectaring on Mexican hat.
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Purple coneflowers along a nearly hidden path
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Graceful
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One more
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At last I tore myself away from the coneflower extravaganza and headed into the side yard, where I found cheery black-eyed Susans…
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…and antelope-horns milkweed.
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In the sunny back garden, salvia, nicotiana, and coneflowers make a buffet for pollinators.
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Pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallida) and fleabane — a sparkling white combo.
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A few more pale coneflowers
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And the purple ones
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Michael pointed out a new little bluestem cultivar he’s trying, ‘Twilight Zone’. I’m really liking the mauve streaks of color.
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A wider view of the gravelly back garden, where a rebar bottle bush lifts the eye up as a tall focal point
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Giant coneflower soaring skyward along the fence. I love its blue-green leaves.
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The yellow flowers perch on impossibly tall stems.
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A mockingbird came in for a drink at a birdbath in the purple coneflower.
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A little closer
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Gravelweed (Verbesina helianthoides)
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A few gayfeathers were blooming (in spring!) alongside purple coneflower.
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But it’s really purple coneflower’s time to shine.
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Let’s admire them one more moment.
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And another wide shot
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Mexican hat
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In a shadier spot along the house, pigeonberry makes a pretty groundcover under a bubbling fountain.
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Heading out the gate to the alley-accessed driveway…
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…I admired Michael’s driveway garden, fluffed out in mid-May with spires of standing cypress.
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Standing cypress
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And sunflowers
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Bees were busy here.
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Horsemint was drawing in fuzzy bumblebees.
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Look at those wings going.
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A delicate penstemon
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And sturdy Mexican hat
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One last bumble, with its nose buried in horsemint
Thanks, Michael, for sharing your garden with me again! I’m delighted to have finally seen it in a different season. By the way, readers, Michael will be giving a Garden Spark talk in Austin on November 14th, showing how he transformed a featureless lawn into his gorgeous prairie garden on a budget over the years. Mark your calendar to join us!
I welcome your comments. Please scroll to the end of this post to leave one. If you’re reading in an email, click here to visit Digging and find the comment box at the end of each post. And hey, did someone forward this email to you, and you want to subscribe? Click here to get Digging delivered directly to your inbox!
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Digging Deeper
Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, authors, and gardeners a few times a year in Austin. These are limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance; simply click this link and ask to be added. Season 8 kicks off in fall 2024. Stay tuned for more info!
I have exactly one Japanese maple in my garden, inherited with the house. But I’ve enjoyed the graceful beauty of its foliage and form for many years. So imagine my delight when I visited collector Cindy Bolz‘s garden in Farmers Branch, an inner suburb of Dallas, where she’s growing sixty Japanese maples on an average-sized lot. Sixty! And that doesn’t include her canopy trees that provide the shade Japanese maples need in a Texas summer.
(image)Acer palmatum ‘Shishigashira’
Many of Cindy’s trees are small and slow growing, and some she grows in containers. Others are big enough to shade a garden bench. And despite the increasing number — 60, remember — Cindy can instantly rattle off the name of each one when asked.
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Cindy purchased her first tree in 2000 and brought it with her when she moved to her current home in 2001. It was the beginning of a Japanese maple obsession.
(image)Acer palmatum ‘Garnet’ (front) and ‘Bloodgood’ (back left)
Her collection eventually gave rise to her entire garden. As she brought home each new maple, she created a little garden around it with complementary plants. Every time she acquired another one, she carved out more lawn and built out the garden. And so on and so on, until she had a serene, Asian-style garden with multiple seating areas and paths to explore.
(image)Acer palmatum ‘Butterfly’ (foreground)
Often, a collector’s garden can look like, well, a collection, with little thought given to design. But Cindy has a discerning eye for contrasting shapes and textures, showing off the unique forms of her maples, drawing visitors through the garden, and creating vignettes to enjoy along the way. She’s also handy with tools and isn’t afraid to try making whatever she needs, as I’ll show you.
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And now let’s stroll.
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I’d hardly stepped into the garden when a small, potted Japanese maple, displayed on a pedestal and illuminated in a shaft of sunlight, caught my eye. I headed straight for it but got sidetracked by a Cousin Itt of a plant: a weeping Japanese maple, Acer palmatum ‘Ryusen’.
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Here’s that ‘Ryusen’ with Cindy for scale.
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Just beyond is a flagstone-and-gravel patio with the little maple on a stacked-paver pedestal. (Cindy built her pedestal after I posted about making one; click for instructions.) The pride-of-place maple is a new variety, as yet unnamed, purchased from Scott Hubble, the owner of specialty nursery Metro Maples in Fort Worth, which I visited last spring. Cindy says it’s “one of only six in the world.” Along the fence grows variegated privet, which Cindy has pruned up like small trees.
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A pedestal is a great way to display a treasured potted plant.
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A large ‘Bloodgood’ Japanese maple shelters this small patio. Beyond, another patio with a shoji-style backdrop beckons.
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Cindy added Asian style to her garden with this DIY project on a blank shed wall. “I wanted to turn my shed wall into a shoji wall of sorts,” she told me. “I bought 1×2 lumber, measured, sawed, painted, and nailed it to the wall.” She found the brass Asian characters at an estate sale and fixed them to the wall too.
An 18-year-old ‘Tama Hime’ dwarf Japanese maple is displayed in a pot at the end of a ribbon of clipped boxwood. ‘Viridis’ (green) and ‘Dragon Tears’ (red) maples add more leafy texture.
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On one side of the patio, coralberry cascades from a container — a smart idea for containing this pretty runner of a plant.
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On the other side, a copper-tube fountain drips steadily into a bowl of water. This is another of Cindy’s creations. She let copper tubing warm in the sun so it would bend easily without crimping. Then she gently shaped a piece like a candy cane and hooked it up to a small pump. To create more interest, though, she added a second copper tube with a spiraling shape. This one doesn’t actually funnel water at all. It just looks like it does.
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View to the ‘Bloodgood’ maple
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A glass-mosaic birdbath adds color that harmonizes, I imagine, with the maples’ fall hues.
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Another containerized water feature, this one with a bamboo fountain, accents a swath of liriope.
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‘Butterfly’ Japanese maple displays bright variegation. A slow grower, this one is 12 to 15 years old and not even 3 feet tall.
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A closer look at those cream-and-mint leaves
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A gracefully pruned ‘Garnet’ Japanese maple screens the dining patio.
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Rusty red leaves overhead
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Oakleaf hydrangea, giant liriope, and loropetalum make a pretty shade combo.
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In a fence corner, Cindy made a solo seating area with a stone bench, Asian lantern, and bowl fountain. Gray river rock beside the fountain offers the idea of a small pond.
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Long view across the garden, under the ‘Bloodgood’ maple
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A simple and sweet vignette skirts the textured trunk of a tree: river cobbles, pink-flowering oxalis, and chartreuse ‘Everillo’ sedge.
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Nearby, another nice combo: Oregon grape holly, ‘Sparkler’ sedge (one of my favorite shade plants, but so hard to find nowadays), and purple oxalis
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White-veined hardy Dutchman’s pipevine (Aristolochia fimbriata), a perennial vine groundcover, adds contrast with rambling, rounded leaves. Cindy loves that it attracts black pipevine swallowtail butterflies, which lay their eggs on it. The caterpillars nibble it down, but that’s OK because it results in more butterflies.
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I walked through Cindy’s garden multiple times, taking in all the views she’s created to display her maples.
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On the way out, I admired a big ‘Feather Falls’ carex in a tall pot on a pedestal that Cindy constructed herself. She bought 2×12 lumber at Home Depot and had them cut it according to the measurements she needed. She screwed the boards together to make two boxes and painted them black. Then she stacked them with three large Saltillo tiles for a tiered effect. It looks great with her red brick house and the black pot.
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Outside of the gate, a textured gray pot contains boxwood, ‘Angelina’ sedum, and a few other small plants.
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Cindy continues her Japanese maple collection in the front foundation bed, which is edged with a ribbon of pink and gray river rock. Acer palmatum ‘Fireglow’ adds a splash of wine-red foliage. Beneath it, flanking a lantern, are two smaller maples, ‘Golden Falls’ and ‘Sister Ghost’. Don’t you love the names?
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Red-veined sorrel, ‘Red Dragon’ persicaria, and smoke bush continue the red theme in the understory layer.
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My thanks to Cindy for reaching out and welcoming me and my friend Cat for a delightful garden visit!
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