hardscape Archives | Diana's Designs Austin

Spring in full swing at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

It was a beautiful morning. Drizzling, foggy, chilly and damp. But, I was at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center spring plant sale with my friend, Laura, of Wills Family Acres, with a smile on my face and money in my pocket!

Modified for Covid protections, reservations were required and the sale has been stretched out over multiple weekends. While there were less plants in a smaller space, that wasn’t surprising given the winter we just had and the spreading out of the event time.

As is often the case in the spring, we were greeted by one of the baby owlets that are hatched each year. For the last 10+ years, the entrance to the center has been home to a pair of great horned owls. The mom’s name is Athena, and she and her little ones can be seen high above the entrance arch for 6 to 7 weeks in spring. Can you see the little one peeking over the ledge just under plant on the right side? Learn more about our iconic feathered friends here

They still had lots of great natives in 4-inch pots and gallons. Sun plants, shade plants, trees, agaves and grasses and yuccas. As always, I was fascinated to learn about natives new to me, and a few of them ended up in my cart. (Surprise, surprise!)

I’m trying Geum canadense, a woodland herb that grows as a ground cover in a woodland setting, it has strawberry-like evergreen foliage and a sweet little white bloom April – June. Also new to my garden, I bought a Solidago – I admire them every fall and have said for years that I’d like to have one. Well, now I do!

I also picked up several of my annual sale favorites – Helianthus maximus, calylophus, Henry Duelberg salvia, and Datura. Having a new garden helps me rationalize my purchases these days.

After our retail therapy, we treated ourselves to a leisurely walk around the grounds. The spring wildflowers and other bloomers blanket the beds, filling them with a patchwork of colors and textures like a beautiful quilt.

Engleman’s sage clusters brightened the beds all through the grounds.

Winecup makes a beautiful border.

Several windows create a secret garden effect, allowing visitors to peek from one part of the garden into another.

I’ll try to keep up my blogging momentum and post the rest of my pics this week, so pop back over!

By Diana C. Kirby|2021-04-19T11:09:05-05:00April 19th, 2021|Engelman's daisy, geum, hardscape, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Sharing Nature's Garden, spring, spring bloomers, spring planting, winecup|5 Comments

Garden paradise at the Austin Pond Tour 2018

This summer, Laura Wills of Wills Family Acres, and I went on the Austin Pond Tour. It was blazing hot, and being in gardens with water feature focal points was a little relief from the heat. (But not much!)

I’m not sure what I expected. The ponds we saw ranged from absolutely amazing to I’m-not-sure-why-this-is-on-the-pond-tour. This one was my absolute favorite. I would never leave the garden if I lived there.

We arrived at the garden and began the tour in the front of the house next to the entrance.

It was a lovely waterfall that spilled down the side of the walkway and passed underneath the puddle on the other side.

Set on a hill, the front of the house was up a fairly steep slope so the pond looked very natural cascading with a beautiful rock design.

In addition to a collection of native plants and wildflowers, water plants were scattered throughout the pond, making it feel like a lush oasis.

Well done and surrounded by plants, it was lovely. It was a little small, though, and not quite what I expected. I also thought that I’d prefer to have it in the back yard, where I could relax beside it.

And then, we ventured around to the back.

Wow. Just wow. No other words. In the many private gardens I’ve been lucky enough to see, I’ve never seen such a beautiful landscape with a half dozen waterfalls and ponds.

The back landscape started deep in a ravine-like depression. Stone and decomposed granite paths criss-crossed up the steep hill to the back of the property. Interwoven with the paths and ponds and waterfalls, an array of the native and adapted plants of a collector delight visitors at every turn.

Even in the heat of a scorching summer day, we wound our way up and up and up, toward the top.

More waterfalls and ponds covered the sides of the back yard as well.

Nestled on one side of the main waterfall, a structure designed to look like a boat peeks out from the cover of trees and plants.

With a lovely deck and a large inside room, this haven must have been designed as a playroom for children or a secluded retreat for reading, writing or respite.

The garden (and the house) were for sale when we visited.

While the landscape was stunning, it clearly required a dedicated owner and garden lover who would attend to it with care. I wished it were mine, and came with a large contingent of diligent helpers!

By Diana C. Kirby|2019-01-02T08:00:46-06:00January 2nd, 2019|hard scape, hardscape, hillside, monarda, pond, Sharing Nature's Garden, Uncategorized, water feature, water features|8 Comments

Gardening trends in my landscape

I’m always fascinated about the transformations in the garden each year. From month to month and season to season, small adjustments often result in big changes.

Here are some of the new plants and hardscape changes in my landscape this year.

January: We enjoy watching the animals that wander, fly and hop into our garden. My husband keeps about 10 bird feeders full. We regularly see cardinals, titmice, sparrows, scrub jays and blue jays, wrens, mockingbirds, road runners, woodpeckers, finches, doves, cliff swallows, and every couple of years, a painted bunting. Several birdbaths and birdbath fountains provide water for sipping and bathing.

February: Last year, spring came very early, and the nurseries were full of beautiful plants at least a month ahead of schedule. If they are selling them, we should be buying them, right?

I didn’t count how many trips I made to our independent nurseries in Austin. Several times a year, I make all the rounds and come home with the SUV full of flowering friends.

Orders I placed over the winter also begin to arrive, ready to join the garden. The slew of catalogs, full of vibrant photos of unique plant specimens give us visions of plants as we settle in for our long winters naps

They provide promise as gardeners experiment with new colors, sizes and varieties.

March: I was delighted with the spread of my ground orchids this spring. The Bletilla striata finally began to naturalize in the woodland garden, making the shady path pop with brilliant fuchsia blooms.

April: When writing about Central Texas gardening, lush is a rarely used adjective. But, it was the perfect description for our beds after a unseasonably warm spring and much-needed rains.

May: This month marked the return of the Rio Grande Leopard frogs to the garden. We often find them resting in plants in the morning, showering in our accessible fountains during heat of the day, and skinny dipping in the pool at night. Fletcher runs around the pool in the dark, flushing them out from the neighboring plants so they jump into the pool. He whines and paces around the perimeter, frustrated that he can’t get to them. No worries, they can jump back out of the on their own.

June: With most of the garden filling nicely by the onset of the heat, I often shift my focus to decor, pots and creative elements in the landscape. This piece of aged cedar inspired me to place a few bromeliads in the shade bed. They had to come in later in the summer, but they added a nice touch for a while.

July: By now, the veggie garden provides us with an ongoing variety of great fruits and vegetables. Sadly, it is also the time for stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs to attack the tomatoes. Almost impossible to eliminate, I get depressed about the impending demise of my tomato crop. They multiply so quickly, it’s impossible to control them by hand squishing or spraying them with the hose.

August: The dog days of summer are also prime time for many of our native and adapted tropicals. Pride of Barbados, Caesalpinia pulcherrima, is bursting with blooms by now, like electric orange fireworks all over town — and along the sides of our pool.

September: This month marked the beginning of my major landscaping project for 2017. The removal of the playscape paved the way for a new garden. Eager to create something different, I settled on a pie-shaped parterre garden. Using the same Oklahoma flagstone in the existing garden path, I had my crew create a rough-edged set of symmetrical beds. To save money and recycle, I kept some of the pea gravel from the playscape area to build the pathway.

October: More progress on the parterre. We revised the existing left path to the vegetable garden, taking out the decomposed granite, flagstone steps and river rock. This path was a continual source of frustration and weeds. In spring, it brought forth a profusion of bluebonnets and winecup that were stunning. But the remaining 10 months of back-breaking proved too much. We then created a mortared flagstone path, leaving a few periodical spaces for plants — a guarantee that they wouldn’t be able to spread. I added another path to reach the new parterre.

November: Fall also brought forth blooms from the newly planted Phillipine Violet, Barleria polytricha. My first experience growing this plant, it was awelcome addition to the tropical garden.

Finally, we finished the parterre and paths. Well, almost. I still need to add one more rose bush and all the accompanying border plants in the beds. I filled the planting holes in the pathways with purslane. You can be sure I will post after pictures in the spring when the beds are full and blooming. To complete the focal points, I added a center birdbath, a wooden framed mirror on the back fence to provide interest and give the space more dimension, and a floral-themed bench to sit on and enjoy the growing garden. If you look closely, you can see my taking this photo in the mirror. Once those elements were in place, I sat on the bench and marveled that I have never really looked at my garden from that vantage point. It’s a wonderful and reflective place to sit and I’m so pleased to see my vision come to life.

December: This month shocked all Central Texas gardeners with a surprise snowfall. Not the dusting and melting immediately variety of snow we occasionally see, but a solid inch of sticking snow. It turned the garden into a southwestern version of a winter wonderland.

Luckily, the blanket of snow insulated the plants and we were spared the worst possible damage of the unseasonably early freeze.

Winter has officially settled in and January feels like January, just colder than normal. Seed catalogs sit by my chair as I cozy up to the fire with my hot tea, dreaming of garden plans to come in 2018.

What were your favorite garden additions in 2017? New plants, new beds, new hardscape — what rocked your garden last year?

By Diana C. Kirby|2018-01-13T11:42:26-06:00January 13th, 2018|beds, bench, bird feeders, birds, Bletilla Striata, bromeliads, cardinal, frog, frogs, hard scape, hardscape, path, paths, pathway, Pride of Barbados, projects, Rio Grande leopard frog, roses, Sharing Nature's Garden, snow, spring bloomers, tropicals, Uncategorized, vegetable garden, vegetables, winter|2 Comments

Now that winter is keeping us out of the garden, what’s a gardener to do? That’s easy — plan. Plan for all the big ideas you’d like to turn into reality once spring planting fever hits. It’s the perfect time to start planning structural hardscape changes in your landscape.

Today, our landscapes are becoming extensions of our homes. They bring us outdoors, in rooms and areas that provide entertaining space, room for kids and pets to play, or maybe a quiet reading nook.

Where to start? Ask yourself — was your patio too small for entertaining last year? Did you, or your dogs, wear a dirty path in the grass to get from area to area? Or do you just want to remove some grass, water a little less or solve a drainage problem with a dry creek?

Now what?

Ask yourself some preliminary questions. First, consider your personal style – are you traditional, natural or contemporary? Think about the existing area – do you want to use the same material as your house or other structures, or do you want something different? Identify whether you’d prefer creating a color contrast color or seamless hues of a single color.

Consider the type of material best suited to your project. Stone is sold by the ton — decomposed granite by the yard — your local landscape supply yards can help you determine how much you’ll need based on your measurements. Here are some of the choices that are commonly used for hardscape projects.

Flagstone – Can be used for a variety of landscaping projects, from paths to patios and walls. It can be mortared into place or simply set in decomposed granite or gravel so it remains permeable. Wondering what to do with the sidewalk strip in front of your house where the grass is perpetually dying? Consider some attractive flagstone set in decomposed granite. If you want a softer look, add a few Mexican feather grasses or a few small agaves or a boulder or two for interest.

River Rock – Available in a variety of size ranges, river rock is smooth and comes in a blend of colors. It can be used to create a meandering dry stream through your landscape or to solve drainage issues. You can also simply replace grass with an attractive contrast of natural material in your yard. It can be used to puddle below a water feature or a birdbath. Always be sure to vary the size of the rock in a dry creek, scattering in the larger rocks before you put down the smaller size for a more natural look.

Pavers – Man-made pavers come in very imaginable color and size. The most commonly used are made of concrete and can be used for patios and porches, paths and even walls. They can be laid on a bed of sand, placed close together for a more manicured look, or can be laid with spacing to allow for either grass or pretty little ground covers to grow between. Pavers create a more manicured, formal style in outdoor rooms.

Decomposed or crushed granite – Weathered granite that has broken down into small pieces and particles of silt, DG is commonly used in patios, paths and even beds with arid plants. It’s versatile as a filler for many different projects – just be careful not to use it on a steep hill – our periodic gully washers can wreak havoc with it. You’ll want to make sure to use some sort of edging – metal or stone – to keep the granite in place and separated from grass or beds adjacent to it.

Gravel – Available in many different colors and sizes, gravel is a great material. It can work wonders to help with small drainage issues and it adds texture and contrast to the garden. Because it is larger, when used in a path, it is less likely to wash away than decomposed granite.

Chopped block – Most stone can be purchased as a rough-hewn brick-like shape that is more natural in form. These are used to build retaining walls, benches, planting beds or pathway borders.

River rock, flagstone, chopped block and other stones come in specific palettes of color – Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado or New Mexico – are some of the choices you can find around Austin. From golds to browns and reds or grays and pinks, the right hues in your garden can be like a fresh coat of paint in your house.

If you are creating paths or dry streams, remember to use long, sweeping curves to provide flow and make your garden more natural and inviting.

Adding different types of material to you landscape can make it interesting and inviting – creating contrast and texture that enhance your garden.

These are all landscape design projects I created. For more ideas and information, go to Diana’s Designs and see other projects.

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By Diana C. Kirby|2020-06-25T08:28:49-05:00January 22nd, 2016|Blog, dry creek, flagstone, granite, hardscape, hell strip, leuders, paths, patios, paver, river rock, rock, Sharing Nature's Garden, stepping stones, stone, stone edging, walls|0 Comments

New dry creek project done and ready for rain!

The dry creek remodel is done and I can’t wait for it to rain so I can see how well it works.

I know that the very front of the dry creek already works because I washed all the dried dirt from the driveway puddle area into the creek bed and it just dropped down between the rocks like it’s supposed to, instead to swirling in the dirt and lapping back at me.

The moss rocks are gorgeous. (I know my crew thought I was crazy when I oohed and aahed over the great colors on them!) They’re set for the most part, but I will adjust them some more so that they look random. (I don’t really do random, so it will have to be a very carefully-arranged faux random.)

And, as always, one project begets another. During these two days, I:

created another bed which begs to be filled,
extended the path and opened up more area that needs to be planted,
removed rock from a bed that now needs more of the moss rock and Oklahoma to define it
put two new Oklahoma flagstones where old limestone steps were, so now I need a few more to make it look even nicer,
need to take all of the white/gray flat native stone that used to line the bed and move it to the back of the property to make a path to the shed so we don’t have to walk in the mud back there when it rains.

Then there are the plants. It’s time to move a few things, say good bye to a few things and go nursery trolling for some fabulous new additions to fill holes and begin new experiments.

This week’s lows in Austin range from 44 to 31 and next week’s lowest point only gets down to 39, so I will go ahead and start planting. We can most certainly have another freeze as far out as the next 4 weeks, but isn’t that what gardening is all about? Testing Mother Nature!

After the last two wonderfully warm days, I am eager to get into the garden – and glad to be done with digging and moving rock. Plants are much easier.

What tops your garden to-do list for this spring? Happy Gardening.

By Diana C. Kirby|2016-04-14T02:38:53-05:00February 22nd, 2015|Blog, drainage, dry creek, flagstone, hardscape, landscape project, moss rock, Oklahoma, path, projects, river rock, river rock bed, Sharing Nature's Garden, stepping stones, stone|0 Comments

Winter is perfect for spiffy new hardscaping to satisfy gardening urges

It’s almost planting season here in Central Texas, but to keep me from jumping the gun, I’m starting my winter hardscaping project. Winter is the perfect time to work on the bones of the garden — getting everything ready for the fun to come.

This was the path/dry creek when it was at its best with native stone that we collected from our property. But over the years, the rock has been kicked around, gotten buried with soil and mulch and the side rocks have moved out of place and gotten scraggly looking. So, yesterday my crew came here to start on this year’s main hardscape project.

They moved the existing flagstone and river rock and I outlined the new, curving shape.

Then they dug a deep trench and put in a French drain – perforated pipe with a sock on it to prevent soil from getting inside of it. A flood of rain water comes across our driveway from our neighbor’s house and we have two downspouts that empty onto the driveway. We (that would be the royal we) also buried the one downspout at the entrance of the creek. This will allow the water to rush on down the path and empty into the end of the path in the woods. This is where it normally puddles, because there isn’t much of a slope down the creek, it also backs up onto the edge of the driveway by about 4 feet by 4 feet, leaving a dirty, wet mess when it rains.

I also brought in moss rock to match the two most recent dry creek projects that we’ve updated the last two years. You can see those projects here and here. The big, beautiful rocks along the sides are moss rock – they have great markings and lots of character and color and, yes, some mossy stuff.

At the beginning of the path, the crew had to use a chipping hammer to get out some big rocks to create a large rock basin that will help absorb the leftover water when it’s a light rain or it stops flowing. Now it will be in the creek bed instead of in the dip on our driveway. (Don’t get me started on the architect/builder that created this problem by not adequately assessing the drainage issue!)

Today we’re putting in some more pipe, placing some medium-sized Oklahoma stone and the final 1-3″ river rock and flagstone stepping stones. I’m out digging and placing the decorative rocks, because they have to be just so to give it a more natural look.

So much for having the day off!

By Diana C. Kirby|2016-04-14T02:38:53-05:00February 21st, 2015|Blog, dry creek, flagstone, hardscape, moss rock, Oklahoma, path, river rock, rock, Sharing Nature's Garden, stepping stones, stone|0 Comments

12 Next

hardscape

Spring in full swing at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Garden paradise at the Austin Pond Tour 2018

Gardening trends in my landscape

Build beautiful hardscape projects in your garden now

New dry creek project done and ready for rain!

Winter is perfect for spiffy new hardscaping to satisfy gardening urges

Escape in the garden