NxNA Garden Tour 2015: Ferguson and Williams Gardens

At the beginning of May, the NxNA Garden Tour took place and of the 24 gardens, I managed to visit 19 of them.  It was a busy day.

You can read my other NxNA Garden Tour entries (both this year and last year here).

The last garden I planned on visiting was the Ferguson Garden.  Ms. Ferguson actually lives down the street from Tina of My Gardener Says.  Tina's yard was supposed to be on the tour, but due to a family emergency she postponed until next year (so don't miss it!).  Ms. Ferguson has SO many plants in her yard - it's very cottage-y, and it's something that I actually really like.  My husband tends to claim that he likes the cottage garden look, but he really doesn't because it's too messy for his tastes.  In any case, I LOVED Ms. Ferguson's garden and I loved talking to her about it (especially with her wonderful British accent)

The agaves hold court

From a different angle

St. Francis?  Not the normal animals I'm used to seeing with St. Francis...

 Ms. Ferguson actually convinced me to head around the corner to the Williams garden (since I still had 10 minutes left in the tour time), it really doesn't take much to convince me to see another garden, though.  In any case, it was at the Williams garden that I met Lacey and Neil - two recent transplants to the Austin Area from Wisconsin.  Lacey is a teacher (speech if I remember correctly), and Neil does computer stuff.  They are one cool couple, and I hope to see them again at other garden tour-y type stuff.

NxNA Garden Tour 2015: Willis and Hall Gardens

At the beginning of May, the NxNA Garden Tour took place and of the 24 gardens, I managed to visit 19 of them.  It was a busy day.

You can read my other NxNA Garden Tour entries (both this year and last year here).


The Willis garden was another (mostly) Art stop - but this one was actually specializing in art FOR the garden.  This is more like what I was expecting for the tour when I thought it was Art in the Garden.  The artists here were Belinda Willis (www.kissedbyfirepottery.com), Jeannette Hargreaves, and Heidi Lowell (Etsy Store)

One of Belinda's pieces of art.  She also has studio rentals and classes on pottery.

The headless fenceman

After the Willis garden, I headed to the Hall garden.  Here, artwork by Rachel Sellars (www.artworkbyrachelsellars.com) was displayed along the fence.  Can I just take a minute to say how much I like artwork shown like this - I don't know what it is, I just like it.

Bench Art

Pond

Balanced Rocks

A garden gnome - I particularly like the key address plate.

Cool rocks

NxNA Garden Tour 2015: Herrick Garden

At the beginning of May, the NxNA Garden Tour took place and of the 24 gardens, I managed to visit 19 of them.  It was a busy day.

You can read my other NxNA Garden Tour entries (both this year and last year here).

Heather has an agave, named Agnes, who was gifted to her as a house warming present.  Agnes is an Agave Desmatiana.  Agnes is planted in the ground.  For those of you in the Austin area and who are into the spikey plants, you already know that Desmatianas aren't hardy down here.  Heather said that Agnes gets all tucked in whenever it's cold with Christmas lights and the whole shebang just to make sure she's happy through the winter.  I didn't take any photos of Agnes.  I don't really know why.

Heather was the only one I noticed on the tour who had before and after photos of the yard - it's always amazing to me to see the transformations these yards have gone through.

Dry Riverbed

Guara

Butterfly on coneflower (some type of skipper, I think)

Flowers (rudibekias?)

Front walk

Not a desmatiana.

NxNA Garden Tour 2015: Monnich Garden

At the beginning of May, the NxNA Garden Tour took place and of the 24 gardens, I managed to visit 19 of them.  It was a busy day.

You can read my other NxNA Garden Tour entries (both this year and last year here).

Ahhh yeah - back to the tour with an emphasis on the garden.  The Monnich Garden was lovely from the front yard.  It's amazing to me how you can just tell driving up to a house if the yard is going to be awesome or if it's only going to be so-so. But then, one of the other garden bloggers once commented that you can always find the house on the street where we're meeting up for our monthly get together just based on the yard alone.

Front yard

St. Francis

A bottle tree on the bank of agave in a sea of misflower

The artist at this garden was Stuart Wallace - his artwork tends to be more contemporary - I really liked the Captain Picard Face Palm piece and the one below.

Councilmember Gregorio Casar was chillaxing at the garden and I kept looking at him thinking, "Man, that guy really looks a lot like Casar.  I mean, it totally isn't him, but they could really be brothers.  I should tell him that he looks like Councilmember Casar; but then he'd think I'm really weird because who the hell knows what the City council members look like?"  In the long run I didn't talk to him only to find out from his twitter account later that is WAS him.  Sigh.  Totally should have gone out of my comfort zone on that one.

Bottles

NxNA Garden Tour 2015: Fulk Garden, Ortega Garden, and Gus Garcia Community Garden

At the beginning of May, the NxNA Garden Tour took place and of the 24 gardens, I managed to visit 19 of them.  It was a busy day.

You can read my other NxNA Garden Tour entries (both this year and last year here).

The Fulk garden was a themed container garden - the themes included Mojito and Spaghetti sauce (shown below) there was also a Salsa container as well.  This is a super cute idea and I've told my sister (who just started her own container herb gardens) that she might want to try this next year.  She lives in Colorado, so a lot of her herbs will need to be replanted as opposed to down here where most are perennial.

The main draw of this garden, though, was the artwork of Janet Fulk and Charlotte Barbini.

Mojito Herb Garden Plant list

Spaghetti Sauce herb garden

Janet Fulk Artwork - I really loved the watercolor (I think) of a flapper.  I should have bought one of the prints she had of it, but I had already purchased the bike photo and I figured Shawn wouldn't be happy with another art purchase.

The Ortega Garden is in its infancy, and the main draw here was the photography of John Raymond and the garden artwork of Linda Messier.

Randy must be doing something right since he has a visiting anole.

Garden art.

On my 8th stop of the garden tour, I ended up walking around the YMCA (because apparently I am blind as to where the garden was), but it's okay because they recently finished landscaping the area and it was a very lovely short walk along the Walnut Creek Hike and Bike Trail.

The coolest thing about the Gus Garcia garden was that it included garden tables so the elderly folks didn't have to bend over to garden.  The tables were very sturdy, and they also had actual garden plots for those who wanted to get down on hands and knees to garden.  Unlike the community gardens in some other parts of town, this one had plots that were open and not currently being used.  They also have a huge rain barrel cistern which collects the rain from the YMCA roof - it is gravity fed underground and fills the cistern (like a giant manometer tube - or the newly constructed Waller Creek Tunnel if Waterloo park was the YMCA gutters and the cistern was the outlet)

Entrance sign

The awesome raised tables

The exit from the Senior garden

Raised beds - the tree line behind the fence is where Walnut Creek is located.  I've heard the Hike and Bike trail is awesome, but I wouldn't know because the day I was supposed to bike it, we had a rain storm.

NxNA Garden Tour 2015: Slattery Garden

At the beginning of May, the NxNA Garden Tour took place and of the 24 gardens, I managed to visit 19 of them.  It was a busy day.

You can read my other NxNA Garden Tour entries (both this year and last year here).

The Slattery garden was the only one (I think) where the artists on hand lived at the residence, and the yard was just as artfully done as the artwork itself - in most cases the yards seemed very heavy on art, or heavy on gardening, but very few covered both equally - the Slattery house was one where they were equal.

Patrick and Joshua's artwork can be seen on his website here: PSArtworks

He also had featured some of his mother's artwork, which you can see here: Pattie C.S. Burke

The front walk

Snail on agave

Dead men tell no tales.

Relaxing in the yard

Artwork - this might actually be art by Karen McGarity - I don't know for sure since I can't find any of her artwork online (or maybe I'm not doing Googlefu right)

From Patrick's website, this piece is called "Black and Blue and Red All Under"

NxNA Garden Tour 2015: Guillot Garden & Wood Garden

At the beginning of May, the NxNA Garden Tour took place and of the 24 gardens, I managed to visit 19 of them.  It was a busy day.

You can read my other NxNA Garden Tour entries (both this year and last year here).

Third up was the Guillot Garden.  Ms. Guillot is elderly and she's made gardening tables to make it easier for her to garden (there's no bending over).  Her tables are homemade from picnic tables and a kiddie pools covered in weed barrier cloth.

Ms. G had Ethan Ham Photography as her garden artist and he was selling his photos on her back porch.  I was really taken with them and purchased one he took in Italy of a folding bike leaning against a doorway for my art wall. Shawn was very blase' about the whole thing, but I've also found that it's the piece of art that he looks at the most on our wall.

Ms. G showing off her squash bed to some other garden tour folks.

Bird Bath

Tomato Garden Table.

The main draw of the Wood garden seemed to be the secondary structure.  But she did have the most amazing hydrangeas.  Hydrangeas, in case you didn't know have flowers which are affected by the acidity in soil - the more acidic the soil, the bluer the blooms.  In Austin, it becomes much easier to grow the pink blooms because of our naturally calciferous soils.  Of course, I assume that it's easier to grow the blue ones in Houston because the soil is more acidic (think of it this way - places where roses grow well grow pink hydrangeas and places with azaleas grow blue hydrangeas).