October 15, 2024
I wasn’t in town for the Leaf Landscape Tour on October 5th, and one garden I was sad to miss belongs to two talented gardeners and knowledgeable plantswomen, Julie Clark and Mae Sanchez. Julie is the owner of Stronger Than Dirt Gardens, a fine garden maintenance company. Mae is the operations and field manager. They kindly invited me over last Saturday morning for a private tour so I could see what I missed.
This was Julie and Mae’s front yard when they bought their South Austin home in the Garrison Park neighborhood last year, according to a Zillow listing. It was mostly lawn with a shade tree front and center, with dianella and tightly pruned shrubs along the foundation and Asian jasmine in the hellstrip. A typical suburban yard with no place to sit, nothing for pollinators or other wildlife, and no flower color — a static landscape.
Lawn-gone front garden
Right after moving in, they took down the ailing Arizona ash, killed the lawn, and ripped out the foundation bed and Asian jasmine. Inspired by a trip to Terlingua in the West Texas desert, they decided to make a gravel garden. Julie craved desert-style openness, sparse but with clustered plantings, with no fussy edging to delineate seating areas and paths. Open spaces show you where to walk and where is a good spot for a couple of chairs. A newly planted Mexican sycamore in the south corner of the yard will frame the house as it grows without shading out the sun-loving garden.
The sun-drenched garden means waterwise flowering plants are at home here, annuals like ‘Strawberry Fields’ gomphrena and perennials like gopher plant, salvia, dalea, mullein, copper spiders, purple heart, and grasses. Hesperaloe and yuccas add year-round structure. Artistically arranged landscape timbers, rocks, and scrap metal add structure and interest too.
My favorite focal point is a trio of dark landscape timbers turned into a multi-level display for glowing glass candleholders that function as sun-catching finials.
Copper spiders, a tough South Texas native, echoes the golden glass with its own yellow flowers.
Sideoats grama adds fringy texture.
Mae and Julie embrace red in their garden palette, with ‘Strawberry Fields’ gomphrena adding swaths of crimson pom-poms.
‘Ellen’s Legacy’ rock rose, a newly introduced variety of our native hot-pink pavonia, puts on a show too.
A couple of chairs by the house offer a spot to enjoy the garden and wave to neighbors passing by. Scrap metal rings set in the decomposed gravel set off more golden candleholders.
Gourds add a little fall color.
Annual hyacinth bean vine partially shades sun-blasted windows on the front of the house. At this time of year it’s a cascade of lavender-and-pink flowers — so pretty against the slate-blue painted brick.
Black dalea’s tiny purple flowers and airy texture looks nice with the fleshy, eggplant-colored foliage of purple heart.
Yucca sunburst
Mullein sends up a towering flower spike as a last gasp before the whole plant dies — but not before seeding out its progeny.
Golden hour
The thready, spear-like foliage of giant hesperaloe adds great form in a garden. In my garden, the deer antlered it to smithereens each fall, but Julie and Mae don’t have to worry about deer.
‘Ellen’s Legacy’ pavonia with an interesting boulder and a rusty saw blade as garden art.
Julie wanted to keep the Arizona ash trunk, at least for now, for an elevated cavity…
…a hanging-garden spot for a Texas nolina.
The women have an eye for upcycling into garden art things that other people might consider junk: scrap metal like this old crankshaft and interesting rocks Mae inherited from a collector.
Morning light filtering through the plants
Back garden
Now let’s explore the backyard. Here too it was all lawn when Mae and Julie moved in. Today a cowboy swimming pool made from a stock tank, installed by Austin company Cowboy Pools, is the centerpiece of the garden. With an umbrella for shade and a pump and filter, it provides a cool dip in the summer and a water view that can be enjoyed from the house and patio.
The blue shed in the background used to sit where the pool is now, and it dominated the view. So Julie and Mae had it rolled on PVC pipes over to the side fence, where it’s still functional without cluttering up the view.
Now they can sit on their back patio and enjoy the pool and garden surrounding it.
Pool garden plants include dwarf palmetto, Texas palmetto, Lindheimer muhly, pink salvia, mangave, and hyacinth bean vine.
A silvery variety of softleaf yucca harmonizes with the fuzzy, pewter foliage of orange globemallow.
Orange globemallow
Double datura blossoms add a touch of lavender.
A scrap metal grate accents the round ruffled leaves of a plant whose name I’ve forgotten.
A cultivar of purple coneflower started out orange and has gone pink. It’s pretty either way.
Freckled mangave
A metal disk and red glass chips show off a cool rock from Mae’s collection.
Hyacinth bean vine looking fabulous
Patio pots display heat-tolerant small agaves and succulents.
Canna against the blue shed wall
Julie and Mae’s golden-eyed kitty was exploring the garden too, weaving through tall verbena (Verbena bonariensis).
Soft pink hesperaloe blossom
Lindheimer muhly catching the morning light
Gray shrub sage (Salvia chamaedryoides)
Gray shrub sage with tall verbena
Mae pointed out the unusual flower of snake gourd vine climbing the back fence.
And here she is showing off one of the long fruits the vine produces!
It was fun seeing everything that Mae and Julie have created in just one year. Thanks for sharing your beautiful garden with me, ladies!
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Digging Deeper
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