Another day in the garden?

Just us sitting around the kitchen table....

.....with a TV crew and mics on!

Photo by Steve Maedl

We made our garden available to PBS show Central Texas Gardener (CTG) on short notice due to a cancellation.  It was one busy day because a freeze the night before had us running around covering and uncovering plants.  Since the temps were barely above freezing the interview (which is normally conducted outdoors) was obviously moved indoors to the kitchen with my favorite view of trees through the back window.  We put on the coffee and I somehow found time to make a coffee cake (mix) to welcome the crew.  Ed Fuentes, director of Central Texas Gardener (CTG) is Technical Director at Austin City Limits and also does the location camera work for CTG.  Producer Linda Lehmusvirta is across the table doing our interview.

Ed on the porch, Photo by Linda Lehmusvirts

The "Bottle Branch" was inspired by Lori in Austin whose garden I visited in 2017.  (Note: The branch was already dead.)

My view of Ed on the porch.  It was cold out there!

Steve Maedl worked with Ed.  Steve is originally from a cold climate so he looks remarkably comfortable.

With our appearance on Central Texas Gardener airing this weekend I thought it would be fun to give you a bit of background on the tour.

In addition to short notice we had to put many plants under cover and then run around replacing them as the temperature dropped below freezing.  Some plants like begonias and orchids remained indoors so the usually full outdoor shelves were a bit bare.  What you see on the video is pretty much how my garden looked if you had stopped by unexpectedly on that day in early November.

Check out the CTG video here:

Like most gardeners, I kept thinking how much better the garden would have looked had they arrived a few weeks earlier in October.  Through my blog I can take you back in time to my October garden tour post.

In front it all looks pretty much the same year round.

The back garden is a different story with many perennials that die back.  Fortunately our plants behaved for a few hours just long enough to get enough on camera.  The light was terrible with bright cloudless sunlight piercing deep shade.   Linda and crew did a great job.  Still I couldn't help but think how it all looked just a few days earlier.

Linda's photo of the tank garden

That same view just a few weeks earlier!



I've known producer Linda Lehmusvirta for a number of years so I (mostly) stayed out of the way and trusted she would work her magic.  And she did.  We loved the resulting CTG on tour segment!

I'll give a few examples of areas we discussed in the interview.  I like to soften the spikiness and rocks with native perennials, wildflowers and grasses.

Wildflowers and spikiness.  Here I give credit to friend and fellow blogger David Cristiani of "It's a Dry Heat."    If there's one thing I forgot to say in the interview it was that these wildflowers volunteered themselves.  Once we decided to put out the welcome mat, wildflowers started to appear on their own.



I mentioned those evergreen bright blooming Damianita replacing Lantana which dies back and looks terrible in winter.  Here they are in full bloom a few months ago.

Two years ago I pulled out a ton of messy liriope and planted sedges.  That's Berkeley Sedge on the left of the path and locally native Webberville Sedge on the right.  They look very close in texture so it works.  This stuff takes a long time to fill in!

How we built our Texas style shed from scratch is outlined in this post which has become one of my most popular posts.  No surprise there because when we went looking for how to build our own shed we couldn't find much help online.  So there may be a lot of copies out there -- glad we could help!

We talked about our deck renovation and you can find our deck "Before and After" here.  That's native Ironweed and Turk's Cap in the bed along the deck.

To learn more about our vintage D'Hanis brick walkway, check out this post.

If you'd like to know more about our landscape process my  "Zeroscape" post shows how we got started.

We even recruited our neighbor Karen Guz of SAWS to do the studio interview!  She is such a pro.

It was so much fun hosting the CTG crew and absolutely love how the show turned out.  Thank you Linda, Ed and Steve!

Linda's blog post on our garden and the show is at this link.  I'll need to read it again because I was overwhelmed with her beautiful photos and text.

Watersaver Landscape Tour April 2016

Water conservation is a must in south Texas, so each year our San Antonio Water System (SAWS) sponsors a tour of watersaving gardens to inspire customers to replace water-guzzling lawns with more drought tolerant plants or hardscape.  The tour was held in the gated community of Inverness on the north side of San Antonio and a bus was provided from a nearby staging area.  Since I was busy volunteering on the tour, I handed off photo duties to Neal for the day so many of the photos below are his.

Our bus dropped us off at the start of the tour route and picked up return passengers near the last of six gardens. The garden at the first house starts off nicely, blending into the neighborhood with a mix of lawn and swath of foliage plants under sculptural oaks.  Very fitting for the tour goal of encouraging lawn replacements.

Quercus fusiformis is such great name for our variety of Live Oak.

We were directed around to the backyard and quite a contrast for it was filled with garden art and lots of interesting potted succulents.  A good example of hardscape and groundcover replacing lawn.

Bright colors are a change from the mostly monochromatic scheme out front.



The swinging hammock purchased online was popular and the owners said their grandchildren enjoyed it as well.

Colorful art was also visible inside through the glassed-in porch windows.

Whimsical touches to match the theme of this garden were evident throughout.

Neon profile on the oak is visible from indoors.

Amusing art pieces.

Double the interest with back to back staghorn ferns.

A swag of succulents decks out the bright red pergola.

These succulent arrangements were show stoppers and Pam Penick at Digging figured out they were created by Abbey McKenna Succulent Designs.  Abbey usually has a booth at Festival of Flowers in May so you can see more of her work.  Before or after Pam's talk and book signing that is!

A fun way to display such a common plant as Sanseveria and a fun way to replace your lawn.

The next garden actually not on the tour was a standout for its array of blooming society garlic.

House 2 demonstrates how just a few plant choices can make a nice no-lawn watersaving garden.  The dry creek is functional during rainstorms.

Maybe not for everyone, but some good principles were employed for a low maintenance landscape.

Another garden not on tour but a nice example of house and landscape.  I think Neal took this photo as a reminder we want to do something similar with a rock out by our driveway.  We have the numbers, just need to get the project done!

Along the way Neal spotted Heather Ginsburg (l) from SAWS.  Heather blogs at Xericstyle though lately she's been writing more at SAWS website Garden Style San Antonio.  Neal mentioned to another SAWS employee that he was waiting to say hello to Heather.  "Everyone knows Heather!" she said.   (I don't know the other names, but I'm sure Heather will supply them when she reads this.)

Home 3 is where I volunteered during the morning shift, you can see a more detailed take of this garden on my blog post from last fall.  My friend Cheryl was stationed near the front gate which meant she got stuck saying "Berkeley Sedge" several hundred times!

To the right of the walk a Pineapple Guava was in bloom.  Back in October I wasn't even sure what the plant was.

A great non-linear entrance

Leuders limestone pavers replace typical concrete sidewalk.

Native trees left in place

The back yard was my station for a few hours.  Those teak benches were attention getting and we had numerous discussions about what appears to be two different sedges.  I concluded that some of the sedge is not Berkeley Sedge but possibly a native Texas Sedge.



The buffalo represents the owner's roots in Manitoba, Canada.

Lush and restful.

If Cheryl said "Berkeley Sedge" numerous times, then I said "Aloe" just as many.  This blooming soap aloe was quite a hit and many folks were skeptical the bronze leaves below it belonged to a Kalanchoe.  I also pointed out many times over that no one buys soap aloe in San Antonio, it's a passalong plant!  The Bay Laurel on the right was also a surprise since so many people do not know you can easily grow your own bay leaves in our climate.

Outside the back gate, another garden not on tour caught our guest photographer's eye.

On to House 5 which I also profiled previously on my blog.  The tour route took us around back first so we'll start there with Horsetail Reed and Sticks on Fire.

Horsetail Reed, newly planted when I was here in October has filled in beautifully.  This is a perfect spot to keep it contained and show off the great lines of this plant.

Artfully hiding utility boxes

Silvery gray on gray, I like this a lot.

Repeating orange accents.

A view over those orange Panton chairs to the pool

Sticks on Fire and Knophia stand out against the gray and rust.

A glass sculpture tree had been added since my last visit.  Underneath is a holding tank for air conditioning condensate used to water plants in the garden.

Nolina nelsonii standing out on this corner reminds me of the newly planted yucca in my own yard. Now I wonder if this is where the idea began to form.

This cutaway of underlying rock gives an idea of what it takes to build a house and garden in our area.

Nice bench in a neighbor's courtyard.

The last house on tour featured a naturalistic landscape with groundcover and foliage plants under the native live oaks.  The goal of the tour is to encourage SAWS customers to remove lawn and save water and this garden is a good example of a simple, natural lawn replacement.

A dry creek channels downpours away from the house and through the garden.

The side courtyard garden was more formal and quite relaxing to tour.



Trimmed hedges provide a contrast to the more natural plantings outside the walls.

My guest photographer missed one house, but it was mostly a swimming pool courtyard with tropical plants so I think you've seen the best of the tour here.