Monday’s we like to post about recent projects but progress has been slow this past few weeks with lots of rain and temperatures in the 30’s and 40’s. This makes it hard for the soil to ever dry out. I recently got a lovely card from a past client and that gave me the idea to share their project with you that we did in 2012. We will be back there soon to add a piece that was saved for a later date. The garden space was big and almost a blank slate, even the lawn was mostly dead due to the drought. The main feature was a very large sculpture they called the red man. It dominated the space and marrying it to the rest of the landscape was an interesting challenge. This couple love their home and are happy to spend time on the garden but they still wanted low maintenance and drought tolerant plants.Before, notice the over grown vegetation along the back fence.

They had recently renovated and updated the inside and the look of the home was now modern  with lots of windows that looked out on to the back garden. They had added a beautiful deck and pergola along the back that had strong clean lines. When we talked about style, words like Asian, Zen and modern came up!Here is the working plan. Originally we were talking about rainbow gravel instead of lawn in the main part of the yard but in the end they decided to get the grass to grow back. Now that we are back to normal rain I am happy we did because Saint Augustine grass in Houston is very low maintenance. And this is a hot space that needs the cool of the green grass.  Here at Ravenscourt even though we have irrigation for our lawn, I think we only ended up watering it 3 time last summer. The addition we are coming back to do is a raised vegetable bed at the end of the old cement patio that used to have the old red brick fireplace/smoker. The beds will be seating height and are an easy way to grow vegetables.I designed four large beds to surround or frame the large sculpture. We also had to move it to make it more centered when viewed from inside the house. That was not an easy task. We like to use 10 gauge black steel edging because it has a more crisp modern look and is quite sturdy. In time it disappears as the plants grow in. Each bed has a field of a different type of plant. The front right is Danny’s Dwarf Butterfly iris, behind it are red yucca. To the left we have bulbine and behind that Louisiana iris.In the back ground you can see we cleared most of the over grown volunteer plants and planted a row of one gallon Maiden Grass in the bed.

Quite a difference. This is about 6 months after we did the install and you can see that the Maiden grass has filled in and created a beautiful soft screen to hide the metal chain link fencing and neighbors wood fence.

The tree is a Drummond Red Maple which grows fairly fast and will help shade the porch from the southwestern sun in the later afternoon during the summer. The gulf muhly is in full bloom and their is a neat row of dwarf yaupon in front of them. We did have custom made shade cloth that blocks out about 70% of the sun and added it to the top of the pergola. Here is a card we just received from the homeowners. I have to say while we do work to earn a living getting a card like this really makes it worth while!Happy Gardening!