Christy Ten Eyck-led tour of San Antonio garden

On Saturday I headed down San Antonio mode for a Garden Dialogues event led by Christy Ten Eyck, main of Ten Eyck Landscape Architects successful Austin, astatine a backstage plot she designed successful San Antonio’s Hill Country Village. Christy has agelong been an inspiration for her plan work* successful Texas, Arizona, and beyond, utilizing a mostly autochthonal works palette and originative h2o harvesting to bring quality backmost into over-paved oregon degraded spaces. As her bio reads, “Christine has drawn upon her intuition and cognition to physique a assemblage of enactment which celebrates the inherent quality of Texas and the Southwest, the civilization of its people, and the ineffable way of water, pioneering modern regionalism successful the Southwest.”

She is simply a stone prima of scenery design, with a heavy instrumentality basal among plan lovers, including myself.

Garden Dialogues events are sponsored by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) passim the state and let attendees to larn astir designed spaces straight from scenery architects, architects, and their clients.

Christy (center-left, successful sunglasses) greeted america astatine the gross and introduced america to the owners, the architect Michael Imber, and different cardinal collaborators successful this multi-year project.

The 6-acre spot greets you with charismatic unrecorded oaks spreading their gnarled limbs supra meadowy swaths of Berkeley sedge (not autochthonal but good adapted), autumn aster, and inland oversea oats, accented with whale’s lingua agaves and either sotols oregon bluish nolinas.

The autumn aster was successful glorious afloat bloom.

This is limestone country, and large slabs of it were layered on the driveway, with Berkeley sedge and inland oversea oats encouraged to dispersed beneath the oak canopy.

A furniture barroom of ‘Powis Castle’ artemisia, limestone, and Berkeley sedge

A wider view

Guest parking is alongside this beauteous bermed plot with unrecorded oak, autumn aster, yucca, sedge, whale’s lingua agave, and ‘Blue Glow’ agave. Virginia creeper traces greenery up a limestone wall, with cut-out windows and a wrought-iron gross offering views of the home’s introduction courtyard.

Christy pointed retired the masterful stonework of paths and walls astatine aggregate points on the tour. The stonemasons were the Francos — a household of 9 craftsmen, if I retrieve close — employed by residential operation steadfast Truax Construction. It was so stunning.

The courtyard is simply a shady plot country planted with Berkeley sedge, metallic saw palmetto, oakleaf hydrangea, and elephantine ligularia nether a canopy of unrecorded oaks. It’s overlooked by aggregate ample windows and a shaded arcade from the store to the house.

Palmetto and Virginia creeper

I privation my ain Berkeley sedge looked arsenic fluffy arsenic this!

A smattering of stream fern, ‘Everillo’ sedge, and oxalis adds antithetic greens and a interaction of purple. Redbuds are included for understory outpouring flowers and autumn color.

In the halfway of the beforehand walk, a carved limestone basin holds a reflecting ellipse of water.

You tin spot the limestone h2o basin successful the background, arsenic seen from the arcade.

The arcade is built with reclaimed woody beams, arsenic I recall. Beautiful stonework with an arched doorway frames a presumption of a tiny outbuilding — formerly a playhouse and present a crafting studio, I believe.

A tile representation connected the partition offers a bucolic Old World scene.

Arched view

One much glimpse of the introduction courtyard, framed by a unrecorded oak limb

Next we entered the backyard, wherever a chromatic fireplace supports a metal-grid roof, which vines are starting to climb. In a twelvemonth oregon 2 they’ll shadiness the seating below.

A terracotta cookware packed with sedge and ornamental cabbage makes a beauteous vignette.

Fireplace patio

An olive histrion stretches toward a brace of cushioned chaise lounges alongside what I deliberation is the impermanent house. I emotion that light-blue trim.

A brace of carved vertebrate heads marks each broadside of limestone steps.

The patio overlooks a negative-edge excavation that mirrors the entity — and our group.

Beautiful bluish Munder-Skiles Swan lounge chairs

From the swimming excavation patio, elegant limestone stairs, planted on the edges and bisected by a rill, pb down to a concentric-circles pool.

Tufts of sedge soften the pool, which is overlooked by much Munder-Skiles chairs. Fort Worth scenery designer Lorie Kinler (she and hubby Michael, co-owners of Kinler Landscape Architecture, drove down for the tour) gazes astatine the scene, taking successful the details.

Both patios — the swimming excavation and the ornamental excavation — place a large, picturesque pond backed by a loop of trees.

Cattails framework a presumption of a chromatic summerhouse successful the distance.

Buttonbush enjoys a moist spot astatine the pond’s edge.

The superior chamber helping of the location overlooks the pond from a treehouse-like perch nether sinuous unrecorded oaks. Below its upper-story porch, a trickling grotto fountain visually serves arsenic headwaters for a watercourse that drops on ledges connected its mode toward the pond.

Along its path, a riparian plot of grasses, palmettos, and bald cypress adds greenery and movement.

A gravel way leads astir the pond to the limestone summerhouse. A flagstone patio with a alloy firepit offers a marshmallow-roasting spot adjacent (where I’m lasting arsenic I instrumentality this photo).

The interior of the summerhouse is lovely, with different tile representation creating a consciousness of extent on with thick-walled model openings.

I deliberation I would unrecorded present connected chill outpouring and autumn days. Imagine the bird-watching opportunities astatine the pond.

Christy talking astir these large limestone slabs that pb crossed the marshy extremity of the pond

Grasses and sunlight

On 1 broadside of the pond, a willow grows consecutive retired of a stone marooned successful the water. You couldn’t works thing amended connected purpose.

As the circuit wrapped up, the annular star eclipse was making itself known. San Antonio was successful the way of totality, though successful an annular eclipse the entity doesn’t spell dark. Instead the airy went level and weird, and we each donned the silly but protective eclipse glasses the circuit organizers provided. Here are Christy and my friends Cat and Jean staring astatine the prima arsenic the satellite dilatory slid crossed it.

The owners fto america enactment to ticker the eclipse from their driveway. Shadows connected the courtyard partition soon caught my attention.

The trees were filtering airy similar a pinhole camera, creating shadiness images of the prima arsenic the satellite crossed successful beforehand of it, making small crescents everywhere. It was fascinating.

You tin spot crescent shadows connected the crushed wrong the courtyard gate. Notice the scrolled chromatic detailing astatine the apical of the doorway.

Solar crescents connected the limestone basin

A cardinal small suns turned into crescent moons

What an enlightening tour, successful each sense! My acknowledgment to Christy and the different architects/designers who led the circuit and particularly the generous owners for opening their backstage plot to us.

*Some of Christy Ten Eyck’s projects that I’ve photographed done the years: her idiosyncratic garden, the landscaping astatine Hotel Magdalena, the Scottsdale Xeriscape Garden, Pease Park’s new Kingsbury Commons, San Antonio’s The Pearl plaza, the grounds of Arizona State University’s Polytechnic Campus, and the Family Garden and Culinary Garden astatine San Antonio Botanical Garden.

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Digging Deeper

Come larn astir plot plan from the experts astatine Garden Spark! I signifier in-person talks by inspiring designers, scenery architects, and authors a fewer times a twelvemonth successful Austin. These are limited-attendance events that merchantability retired quickly, truthful articulation the Garden Spark email database to beryllium notified successful advance; simply click this nexus and inquire to beryllium added. The Season 7 lineup tin beryllium recovered here.

Tour respective Austin gardens connected Saturday, November 4, connected the Garden Conservancy’s Open Day circuit for Travis County. Tickets indispensable beryllium purchased online successful beforehand and volition beryllium disposable opening September 1st.

All worldly © 2023 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The station Christy Ten Eyck-led circuit of San Antonio garden appeared archetypal connected Digging.