Eden Garden Design

Fig Ivy Garden Wall

Closely sheared creeping fig vine (Ficus pumila) covers the columns that define a garden courtyard.

Garden Gate

A glimpse into a pea gravel garden courtyard.

Outdoor Dining Room

A custom steel arbor, covered with fragrant star jasmine vines (Trachelospermum jasminoides – hardy to USDA zone 8), provides an easy and casual dining area.

Subtle Landscape Lighting for Entry

A grove of spring-blooming Texas redbud trees (Cercis canadensis var. texensis) defines the entry to the courtyard and frames the home.

Outdoor Breakfast Nook

To create a private courtyard just off the home office, Eden fabricated a perforated steel screen to enclose a pea gravel lounge area featuring concrete benches and a coffee table.

Custom Steel Walls

A custom steel privacy screen covered in ‘Tangerine Beauty’ crossvine (Bignonia capreolata ‘Tangerine Beauty’) and punctuated with a large specimen Agave weberi.

Lueders Walkway

A custom-cut lueders limestone walkway and lawn area of fine-textured ‘Cavalier’ zoysia grass, defined with steel edging.

Texas Landscape Design

Striking Texas native botanical design featuring palo verde trees, specimen Yucca rostratas, fall-blooming pink gulf muhly grass, whale’s tongue agave and trailing purple lantana. These drought-tolerant plants create year-round garden interest and provide habitat value.

Steel Fire Feature

Playing off the midcentury lines of the limestone ranch-style house, Eden introduced limestone and steel retaining walls and steps to create an easily accessible, navigable pathway leading to seating and garden areas below.

Fall Picnic in Texas

Decomposed granite gravel provides an easy-care surface for a seating area with a rustic and portable steel fire pit. A small lawn area is buffered by a billowing stand of big muhly grass (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri).

Steel and Limestone Retaining Walls

Natural, locally-quarried limestone boulder retaining walls are an organic element countering the clean lines of the steel. Plantings feature tough Texas natives like basketgrass (Nolina texana), twistleaf yucca, fragrant mistflower and trailing purple lantana, which tumble over the walls, softening the space and attracting pollinators.

Custom Steel Retaining Walls

Custom steel and limestone boulder retaining walls and steps with xeric, native Texas plantings.

River of Sedges

Confronted by an eroding 500’ long drainage channel along the frontage of a sloping property, Eden transformed the area into an ephemeral dry creek populated with dense native sedges. Mesic and xeric sedges and rushes in the thin, rocky soil provide lush vegetative cover, creating the look of a flowing river of grass, as well as an extensive root system to help prevent erosion within the channel.

Dry Creek Bed

Looking to Texas Hill Country waterways for inspiration, Eden created limestone boulder terraces and utilized large Brazos river rock at infiltration points to slow the flow of water and create pockets of moisture to allow plants to thrive.

Drainage Channel

To stabilize the upper banks of the drainage channel and increase habitat value, Eden seeded and  planted pollinator-friendly native plants like low-maintenance Four-nerve daisies (Tetraneuris scaposa) and Mealy blue sage (Salvia farinacea).

Sedges for Drainage

Because of an ability to perform in the very harshest of circumstances – hot, dry summers to intermittent flash-flood conditions – Texas sedge was planted within the drainage channel.  Featured: Scott’s sedge (Carex leavenworthii x retroflexa), White- topped sedge (Rhynchospora colorata) and Lawn sedge (Carex leavenworthii).

All Photos by Greg Thomas.