Gardens at Festival Hill: The Roman Ruins Herb Garden

Over a recent weekend we headed east a few hours to visit family and tour some very special gardens.  Festival Hill at Round Top is a retreat for musicians from all over the world.  In addition to hosting a popular concert series, their beautiful grounds are open to the public.

We'll begin in the herb garden called The Roman Ruins built in 1993 to house the collection of well-known Texas herbalist Madalene Hill.  It is a beautiful tribute to her decades of work on growing herbs in hot, humid Texas.

This is the view entering The Roman Ruins.  The brown building to the left is the Menke House, a 1902 Gothic Revival structure moved to Festival Hill from nearby Hempstead.  The building is used for food service and meetings.

I didn't check the tags but I assume this is Madalene Hill Rosemary, a cold and humidity tolerant variety of Rosemarinus officinalis.



An Herbal Forum is hosted here each March. Spanish lavender in full bloom.

I didn't read many plant tags, preferring to enjoy exploring the spaces and that's how I'm presenting them in this post.

  

The style of the stonework was Madalene's idea and most of the materials are leftovers from local construction projects donated by contractors.  To learn more about the building of these gardens at Festival Hill see this video from Central Texas Gardener.

My first Monarch sighting of the spring was in these gardens.

The stonework was so awesome I'm just going to let you enjoy.....and I really did whittle them way down.

Ivy covered steps are purely decorative, I liked these quite a lot.

I enjoyed exploring the details.

I took lots of photos of the details for ideas

Using leftover materials gives the walls a quirky look with unmatched columns and changing styles.

This building is probably a shed, but I didn't check it out to see.

Happy Easter!

Next up are the Shakespeare and Pharmacy gardens.