Visiting Festival Hill: Pharmacy Garden, Greenhouse and Lake

We recently toured the beautiful gardens at Festival Hill in Round Top, Texas.  The gardens have so many interesting features that I've divided the photos into several posts.  This post covers the Pharmacy Garden, Greenhouse, and Lake located just behind the Menke House featured in the last post.

The Pharmacy Garden is organized in raised beds of textured stucco or concrete.

From the description of the gardens:

The Pharmacy Garden contains medicinal plants arranged by their geographical origin. It is said that more than 75% of the world's population still obtains its medicines from plants. Admire the rare Melaleuca from Australia, Zatar (Thymbra spicata) from the Mediterranean and the unique Wolfberry (Lycium barbarum) in the China collection. Other rare plants from Africa, India, Mexico, South America, Asia, and Europe are growing here, as well as North American species used by Native Americans.

Tiles set in cantera stone mark the entrance.

Madalene Hill was an herbalist who did groundbreaking work regarding growing herbs in hot, humid Texas.  I met her briefly during a chance encounter at the Houston Airport decades ago.  I smiled to see these signs and think that gardeners were my rock stars even in my early 20s.

We had the gardens to ourselves most of the time.

We found a helpful gardener who gave us a tour of the greenhouse.



She explained that plants from the greenhouse are due to be moved out into the gardens soon.

I'd love to come back and see the gardens in early fall with all the plants, such as this Silk Floss tree, in place.

Pesto is one of five resident cats.



The others are named for herbs but I'm not sure which is which.



The cacti collection is also medicinal

Madalene collected herbs from all over the world to grow in Texas.  Many herbs from Southeast Asia would be quite at home in the Texas climate.

A few pieces of garden art to round out the tour.

A large lake with stone bridge is near the Pharmacy Garden and greenhouse.

Pretty picnic area in the fruit tree garden by the lake.  The Pharmacy Garden is in the background.  

Happily we had our lunch along and enjoyed this classic view across the lake.

Beethoven's Woods along the path to the bridge.

The back of the tower in the Roman Ruins garden from my first post on Festival Hill.

Benches of all types are located throughout the property.  These near the lake match the style of the log cabin guest house.

With a look over our shoulders at the lake we continued along the road to the fanciful stonework of the chapel and seashell grotto which will feature in my next post.