Golden hour in The Briscoe Western Art Museum garden

We were invited to an evening reception in the McNutt Sculpture Garden at the Briscoe Western Art Museum.  The event was sponsored by San Antonio Water Systems (SAWS) and we made a point of arriving early to take advantage of the light.



The courtyard incorporates an ancient access pathway to the San Antonio River so it's open free to the public during museum hours but is usually closed in the evening and early morning making this quite a treat to catch native Lindheimer muhly grasses grazed with the sun's last rays of the day.

The "golden hour" for photos as one of our SAWS hosts put it when she welcomed our early arrival.

The Rainmaker

Lake|Flato architecture designed the Jack Guenther Pavilion event space in 2013 as an addition to the 1930 Art Deco gallery building.  Austin-based Christy Ten Eyck landscaped the courtyard.

Another excellent Lake|Flato and Ten Eyck collaboration in San Antonio and it's been on my must-see list for a while.



These two firms are so prolific it's a challenge to keep up with them.

Riverfront hotels form a backdrop to this small urban space.

El Caporal

Live Oak trees screen nearby buildings.

Or at least screen as much as possible.  Someday those oaks will meet and the parking garage across the street should disappear.

Dance of the Eagle

Golden Wings

Cow's tongue opuntia native to Comal County just north of San Antonio and Hesperaloe set the stage.

The century old original waterworks for San Antonio forms one side of the courtyard.  It's small because our underground aquifer water source is so clean it's simply piped out of the ground and into our homes with only a spritz of chlorine to keep bacteria at bay.  

The Eyes of Texas

Lindheimer's Muhly in a slight evening breeze.

Sculptural Live Oaks, like the one at the end of the walk, fit right into this garden repeating the curvy form of those longhorns.

Horses on these large panels which also function as gates.

The 'Partners in Conservation' event celebrated a milestone of a trillion gallons of water saved through conservation over twenty years.  Another milestone, a new desalination plant is up and running.  We're about 150 miles from the beach so what gives with that?  We have a major source of brackish, but otherwise clean, water in the Wilcox aquifer south of town which now provides 12 million gallons of drinking water a day.  More importantly, the Wilcox aquifer is not subject to drought restrictions.

Strength of the Maker

Variegated ginger adds a bright highlight.

More of those sunlit grasses.



The event got underway just as the sun set.  During regular hours you will find tables and chairs to enjoy lunch or a break from a day of walking in the city.

On the right is a group learning about the first artesian well in San Antonio depicted in a tile mural.

The gusher just right of the Alamo marks the waterworks and museum location.

The museum's river portal has a spectacular waterfall.

A look down at live oaks from the upper level of the pavilion with the San Antonio River just visible through the trees.

Bird Woman

What a beautiful place to spend an evening!

I'll be sure to detour through the Briscoe sculpture garden during future trips downtown.

The Briscoe is open until 5pm most days and until 9pm on "Downtown Tuesdays" which is a popular night for locals to visit.  Parking is free on Tuesday night plus many restaurants and other venues feature specials enjoyed by locals and visitors alike.

Squished

Sometimes the plant that seems best for a spot doesn't work out quite that way.  After six tries I thought I had found the right grass for the driveway island bed.  Pennisetum grasses just had to be an excellent choice for that spot because they defy sun and drought better than most plants in my garden.  With the added bonus of being absolutely deer proof, the only downside seemed to be that they reseed prolifically.  So prolifically that I did not purchase a single one of the dozen or so in my garden.  Nope, a couple years ago the seeds floated two doors down from my neighbor up the hill and I've been transplanting seedlings ever since.  It was all good.  Except this morning I found the pennisetum grasses had been flattened by one of our deluge storms last night with as much as three inches during the 6 am hour.

Rainy Bloom Day November 2014

It's Garden Blogger's Bloom Day and we have rain!  It's a light rain but the forecast was for only morning drizzle so we'll take it and join Carol at May Dream Gardens for a damp and chilly GBBD. We've been about 20 degrees below normal for most of the week but we haven't quite reached freezing yet so let's see how the blooms are faring ahead of a predicted freeze next week.

The inflorescence from ornamental grasses are standouts when droplets from the light mist make them shine.  This unknown Penstemon seeded over from the neighbor's landscape several years ago and has made itself at home.

Regarding Re-Gardening

Sometimes a good garden requires several attempts.  Take my driveway island...please!  I've been working and reworking the west half of this small spot for three years.  Maybe, just maybe, it's now right.  The driveway island was one of the first areas completed in the front yard makeover and by the fall of 2010 it was looking just as I had envisioned it.

The Zebra Grass (Miscanthus zebrinus) planted there looked especially good while dormant so I crossed this spot off the to-do list.

Not so fast...

A  year later the Zebra Grass and Ruby Crystals Grass (Rhynchelytrum nerviglume) in the front island bed had been reduced to toast by the drought and heat of 2011.

Clearly a rework was needed and since this is a highly visible spot, it moved quickly to the top of the to-do list.  I replaced the miscanthus with three drought and heat tolerant Lindheimer's Muhly.

Or so I thought...

Soon after planting the "Lindheimer's Muhly" I noticed they didn't look quite right.  These plants were purchased during the fall sale at a very reliable independent nursery and all three were labeled Lindheimer's Muhly.  No reason to doubt, except they didn't look nearly as nice as the Lindheimer's muhly planted a year earlier.

In fact, they looked weedy and more like field grasses.  Definitely not a good look for the front yard where I need plants to hold up through the winter.  They were dormant when planted and I was pretty busy last fall so I decided to wait.  When they began to green up this spring I compared the blades and, sure enough, they are not Lindheimer's Muhly. 
  
This all worked out okay because I had changed my mind about what I want there anyway.   I decided to add Gulf Muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris) to my yard after seeing the most amazing displays of them all over town last fall and noting that they continued to look good all winter.  The Lindheimer's Muhly originally appealed to me because I didn't think I would like the Gulf Muhly pink as much.  Plantings like this one along Josephine St. changed my mind.

The unidentified grasses have been moved to new beds in the back yard.  Fortunately my husband disliked the mystery plants even more than I did and was more than willing to help me move them and plant the Gulf Muhly.  We also relocated the Ruby Crystals Grass and replaced them with the more drought tolerant Mexican Feather Grass (Nasella tenuissima)

That looks better already!  Well....at least to me it does.  It will take about 18 months before they mature, but these plants will stand up much better to our weather and drought.  We finished just in time for rains this weekend.

The three misidentified plants were deeply discounted in a fall sale last year and I've found a new spot for them so I'll just let the nursery know what happened.  It'll be a fun surprise to see what they are when they bloom in the fall.

It's such a prominent spot that if this doesn't work, I'll rework it again.  Meanwhile, I love it when I change my mind and it works out.