Soft spaces for a modern world
Thoughtful plant additions and new zones to add to a nearly-native cottage garden surrounding a historic house in Central Austin. This design is an example of adding to a space with the intention to enhance the good in the garden rather than scalping the landscape already there and starting over.
This design makes much of a city backyard space, using mostly native plantings to define spaces for work, hosting, teen hangouts, lounging, and connecting with family-neighbors.
A native "garden in the city" for Christ Church of Austin, where children play in nature weekly, and groups of all demographics can enjoy. This space needed to be able to host hundreds of parishioners, neighborhood events, summer camp. The design met (and exceeds) ADA requirements, passed a safety review, and uses natural and permeable materials to define zones.
Meant to be implemented in manageable stages, this design addresses concerns with over-irrigating to establish multiple areas. We came up with a plan that meets the the needs of gathering a large extended family, provides seasonal interest year-round, resolves some privacy concerns, and adds to groves of live oaks throughout the property. The zones include: native privacy hedge, prairie, perennial beds that create walkways, shade ground cover, and a defined entrance to the property.
After the sad loss of a heritage live oak, this once full shade backyard became a mostly-sunny space. This design sets a new vision for how the space can be used, and introduces the family to the joy of some new plants that they couldn't grow previously.
This garden design is centered around both complimenting a beautifully restored older home in east Central Austin and becoming the backdrop of gatherings for a family who enjoys hosting often. This space gets mostly bright shade, so plants were thoughtfully selected based on slivers of light that come through a heritage red oak and large elm at certain times of day.
These incredibly thoughtful homeowners are well versed in native plants and desired to install an ecologically responsible garden in phases. Due to grading, water went towards the house in heavy rains, so a plan was created to slow water, catch it in tiered rain gardens, and soak it into plants with the right roots for the job. Also included is a pocket prairie, shrub borders, full shade gardens, and an edible garden area for the backyard.
For this Lost Creek garden, we sought to work with materials available on site by adding to plantings, repurposing structures built, and defining paths and garden spaces. We matrix planted both a shade and sun space, added irrigation, installed sod that's more drought tolerant, and created a welcome garden from the street entrance.
A re-imagined garden for a cut flower grower who wanted a space for her child to grow up, a gift for passing neighbors on the sidewalk, and more variety of beautiful plants, many of which could be used to add to arrangements!
Thoughtful additions for leisure and gathering spaces were added in two spots of this garden. Newly edged native beds, green mulch, stone walkways, and steel beds were added. In addition, a full drainage plan was created for a new build ADU that was graded towards the building on three sides. This landscape needed to pass city environmental inspection for new build, and we were able to do that without invasive ground cover.
This garden belongs to a family who wanted to add some seasonality and lots of blooms to their space. Having gardened in another part of the country, they already knew how to plant, but just needed some direction for planting on Blackland Prairie in Central Texas. This needed to be a fast-growing garden for a family who hosts a lot in a home they rent and plan to stay in for awhile. In addition, the garden needs to be very drought tolerant after establishment, safe for children, and manageable for self installation.
