November 15, 2023
An Outdated Austin-style backyard was featured on the Backyard Conservancy’s Open Days tour two weekends in the past: Colleen Belk’s 43-year-old backyard. Sure, 43 years! What’s Outdated Austin model, it’s possible you’ll ask? I consider it as a lushly planted Austin backyard with Deep South-meets-Southwest plant selections, kind of rugged, with winding paths, accents of pure limestone and shaggy cedar, and a group of potted-up succulents. Examine, verify, and verify!
Colleen labored at Barton Springs Nursery for a few years, bringing vegetation house to strive them out. Her backyard has a splendidly collected really feel, with actual beauties like this silver Mediterranean fan palm and Texas palmetto.
Pea gravel paths meander by dense plantings, with groundcovers filling in round the whole lot.
Fairly pink chrysanthemums sprawl throughout a rock, including fall colour to the backyard.
A bunch of Colleen’s potted succulents in classic containers reside on tiered shelving. A greenhouse is located close by, good for storing tender vegetation when it will get chilly.
A terracotta duck totes a passel of agave pups on her again.
This cactus is one completely happy camper.
A galvanized tub and cylinder planter perch amid holey limestone to mark the place two paths meet.
Colleen says this begonia, charmingly paired with pink guara in a stock-tank planter, comes again from the roots every spring.
I used to be smitten together with her plume poppy (Macleaya cordata), which has self-sown all through the shady areas of her backyard. I do know it may be terribly invasive in some elements of the nation, however I ponder if in Austin it’s stored in verify by our brutal summers?
Variegated Queen Victoria agave, with its lemon-lime stripes
Colleen’s backyard perches on the sting of a canyon, and a big lined deck takes benefit of the view.
Lovely canyon view
Another
As I used to be testing this hanging succulent planter, Colleen got here up and mentioned it’s a classic enema pot, which she collects. I’d by no means heard of such a factor, and it made me chuckle.
A wood-burning hearth pit constructed into the deck has a considerable vent hood to maneuver smoke out from beneath the roof.
An outdated red-and-blue patio set holds a giant concrete bowl strikingly planted with a totem pole cactus and different succulents.
A cedar tree (native juniper) that the deck was constructed round has been misplaced to storm or different illness. I used to be charmed to see that Colleen stored a tall part of its trunk and is rising vegetation on it. Within the core, she’s turned a hole area right into a planter for moss rose.
Slightly hiker frog sporting a backpack stands right here, admiring the view.
The principle a part of the backyard surrounds a fishpond outlined with limestone.
Grasses and flowering perennials like cowpen daisy that like full solar are planted right here. Within the background, two monumental, upright ‘Will Fleming’ yaupon hollies — which Colleen correctly spaced about 10 or 12 ft aside — make residing gateposts into the backyard.
A pea gravel path wanders off to the left of the pond…
…and overlooks the greenhouse beneath.
To the suitable of the pond, plenty of fall-season colour
Beautyberry in purple glory
Native cowpen daisy (Verbesina encelioides)
Bees had been having fun with the cowpen.
An outdated pump spigot spills recirculating water onto a bowl-shaped limestone rock, making nice music. The slanted deck roof is seen within the background, floating over the eave of the home.
Texas sabal palm — its trunk is arrow-straight, however my pano shot gave it a distorting lean.
Fireplace-engine-red canna
The crimson canna pairs superbly with purple smoke bush and ‘Fireworks’ gomphrena.
A mature Queen Victoria agave in all its bloomin’-onion symmetry
A wider view exhibits Queen Victoria agaves maintaining firm with a white-trunked Texas persimmon, extra cowpen daisy, and Mexican feathergrass.
When you’d wish to see extra of Colleen’s backyard, it was just lately featured on Central Texas Gardener. Thanks, Colleen, for opening your backyard to the general public!
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Hey, Austin-area gardeners! Wish to find out about rising a biodiverse hedge for screening your yard, including wildlife habitat, and making a extra ecological alternative than a fence? Register for my subsequent Backyard Spark speak with Shaney Clemmons on December seventh at 7 pm. Come get concepts for what to plant that’ll stand up to our Central Texas climate extremes. Plus it’s enjoyable to hang around with fellow gardeners beneath the large reside oak and string lights at lovely Barton Springs Nursery! Hope to see you there!
Come find out about backyard design from the specialists at Backyard Spark! I set up in-person talks by inspiring designers, panorama architects, and authors a couple of instances a 12 months in Austin. These are limited-attendance occasions that promote out rapidly, so be a part of the Backyard Spark electronic mail listing to be notified prematurely; merely click on this hyperlink and ask to be added. The Season 7 lineup will be discovered right here.
All materials © 2023 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized replica prohibited.