Friday, November 16, 2018

The garden of Donna Fowler, from the 2018 GB Fling...

On day 2 of the Austin GB Fling both buses converged on the garden of Donna Fowler for lunch. You know a garden is large when it can host 90-ish people who all spread out and find a spot to sit down and eat.

From our Fling paperwork: "My garden is about carving out my own little piece of heaven on earth by filling it with beautiful plants, so many of which are edible or useful for medicinal purposes. It's also a natural habitat for all kinds of critters and pollinators. The garden is full of art and sculpture of all sorts. To me a garden should be a place where you can relax, think, entertain, and have interesting encounters. I do my best to grow Texas plants and plants that are adapted to central Texas. Sometimes temptation overpowers me, and plant something that needs extra attention." The garden dates to around 2005.

A quick glance at this photo and I had no problem identifying a few of the pictured Flingers, left to right: wearing the visor is Shirley of Rock, Oak, Deer; in the white shirt is Denise of A Growing Obsession; wearing a straw hat with black ribbon is Pam of Digging; Pam is chatting with Kelly; in the blue jacket is Beth of Plant Postings; and taking a photo on the far right is Jane, the Mulchmaid.

This structure was crazy-cool.

Lorene (editor of PacHort) is about to enter...

And now it's my turn...I wonder what it looks like in the winter when it's bare?

As Donna said in her garden intro there is a lot (A LOT) of art in this garden. Much of it glass and/or metal. It was a bit much for me, but I photographed quite a bit of it. Wait, quite a bit? No. A small fraction.

The plants seemed to take a back seat to the art and garden structure.

But there were a few stand-outs, like this patch of Hesperaloe.

I want a three-branched Yucca!
What an interesting interplay of glass and metal framework.

Oh so very green...

This photo confused me, such is the problem with waiting 6 months to look at your photos. At first I thought "are those ceramic flowers?"...then I thought "the tops of persimmon fruit?" (in May, in Austin?)....

I'm still not sure.

Is Graptopetalum hardy in Austin?

Ah yes! This is the garden where I discovered Callisia fragrans.

I did really like this piece made from plough discs and other rusty metal bits.

Lots of garden art...

Graptopetalum must hardy in Austin...

This garden had a lot of hippos, I think it was a tie-in with a local school? This/these (one is submerged) are the only ones I managed to photograph.

I do remember taking this photo. I was standing in the baking sun with several other ladies in line to use the restroom. The garden owners were kind to let us use it, but waiting was miserable.

Finally, our Portland-bloggers "group photo" happened here, Portlanders represent! But where are our men? Left to right are Tamara/Chickadee Gardens, moi, Jennifer/The Rainy Day Garden, Alyse Lansing/Garden Inspiration Blog, Ann/Amateur Bot-Ann-Ist, Darcy/E-Garden-Go, Jane/Mulchmaid, and Heather/Just a Girl with a Hammer. Did I mention this garden is where I got my first ever fire-ant bite?

Weather Diary, Nov 15: Hi 56, Low 43/ Precip 0

All material © 2009-2018 by Loree Bohl for danger garden. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

20 comments:

  1. How did I miss the teepee?! In my garden, a lot of the unripe persimmons fall to the ground when the temperatures soar, leaving debris just like that.

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    1. I don't know, but I'm bummed that you did, it was very cool. And thanks for the persimmon info.

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  2. You did mention the ant bite (to me, at least). Those things hurt like hell. I hope the memory of the fabulous Cinqo de Mayo lunch and camaraderie of your fellow Portland bloggers outweighs the ant bite. This garden had the best Hesperaloe I've ever seen, by the way.

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    1. Oh definitely, and bite memory only ignited when I saw that photo of myself and thought "I look odd"...then I remembered!

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  3. I do like the patch of Hesperaloe and sitting area. I wonder about the metal chairs in the hot sun... would be too hot to sit on until night falls.

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    1. Ah good point, but the sun-down hours do eventually come.

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  4. This looks like an interesting garden. I love the bottles with their squirrel stoppers. It's always nice at the Fling when there's a garden big enough for everyone to visit at once.

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    1. I think you would have enjoyed a lot of this garden Alison.

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  5. Space for 90? Wouldn't it be grand to have that much space to play with? Loe the glass art and the dinosaurs coming to drink made me laugh out loud. I may have to copy that in my own garden!

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    1. I would love to see the "outlaw" version of the dinosaur drinking pool.

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  6. Love gardens with lots of quirky art, so this garden was right up my alley.

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  7. You covered a lot of Texas ground here: baking sun (Death Star, check!), fire ant bite (state mascot, check!), Hutto hippos (symbol of Hutto, where owner Mike is the former mayor, check!), graptopetalum (one of our few summer/winter-hardy small succulents, check!), and garden art out the wazoo (survives drought, freeze, deer, Death Star, check!). It was so great to see so many bloggers from Portland in Austin -- our sister city, as I think of it.

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    1. I guess I've kinda thought of Austin as our sister city too, good know we're in sync.

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  8. This is the first Austin Fling post that I've seen (I haven't been looking at enough of them maybe?) where I got the sense of the heat. Parts of this garden just look so hot!

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    1. It was hot, but not miserably so. A little humid for my taste.

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  9. Since it is supposed to snow tonight, all I can think about is how warm and sunny it looks in these photos.

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    1. I understand! I've got hundreds of Arizona and New Mexico in June photos that I'm saving for our cold days ahead.

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  10. I remember the heat. Your post brings it back. We ended up eating on a doorstep on the backside of a building because there was a very small strip of shade there.

    Kind of had a Texas-farm-garden vibe to it. What farmers would have for a garden--too busy taking care of the cattle to have a lot of ornamental plants near the house.

    Both Portland and Austin seem to have distinct and vital garden culture, which is a beautiful thing.

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  11. Yes, that was a wacky garden, even by my high-Quirk-Quotient standards. But it made me laugh out loud, in a good way, many times. You all look cool as PNW cucumbers in the shade of that tree.

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