driveby agave garden revisited

I’ve been thinking of Jud’s garden. Did the recent unseasonal heat waves bruise any agaves? I didn’t memorize the address, so it took a while to find again, which seems to be a recurring theme with this garden. Was it on Colorado or Fourth Street? East or west of Termino? After about a half hour’s meandering, suddenly there it was again, rising up out of the suburbs like a desert oasis mirage.

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It certainly holds its corner like no other house I know.

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The driveby view is splendid enough, but seeing it on foot is the only way to appreciate the multiple shifting perspectives of rosettes and spikes.

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I’ve never seen Sticks on Fire as tall and narrow as cypresses. I wonder if they had to be pruned into these columnar shapes.

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The agaves were indeed left unblemished by the 100-degree temps.

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I’ll post a few more detailed photos of Jud’s garden this week.

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10 Responses to driveby agave garden revisited

  1. ks says:

    Hot damn, that is a stunner.

  2. Hoov says:

    Yes it is really wonderful. Might be a wee bit crowded in a few years, though. Oh well, what the heck.

  3. Pam/Digging says:

    Awesome garden – so textural! I’d paint that wall a bright color, if it was mine, but otherwise I love everything about it. Bet they never have to water either, eh?

  4. Kris P says:

    I remember your earlier post on this garden and how it set me on a search to find an anchor plant. I’d almost forgotten how fabulous it is. Now that’s a garden that sneers at heat like we had in recent weeks!

  5. Mark and Gaz says:

    That’s a splendid front garden!

  6. Denise says:

    Glad you all enjoyed seeing Jud’s garden. There’s always so much interest in what he’s done. Just last week a photo was featured in a water district’s symposium on the possibilities of losing the lawn.
    @Pam, does Austin have Spanish houses like this? I’m inclined to leave the walls white, especially since they belong to the house. There’s so much color from the plants! Maybe an interior courtyard wall.
    @Hoov, I’ve been shuttling back and forth between the old photos, and there’s very little change in growth. I did notice some aeoniums were gone. And Jud mentioned he did lose a barrel cactus he had just planted before the heat wave.
    @Kris, there’s a variegated anchor plant I hadn’t noticed before! You can see a bit of it in the photos with Agave ferdinandi-regis. I’ll see if I have a clearer photo of it.

  7. Pam/Digging says:

    Some but not a lot. Stucco walls are not particularly common here either. I definitely think of it as California style.

  8. This is pretty much my dream garden. Wow. Do you know when it was created? It looks perfect; it has none of the awkwardness of a new garden, and none of the tiredness of an old garden where plants are often beyond their useful life.

  9. Denise says:

    Gerhard, it must be six years old now, since when I first blogged on it in 2012 it was four years old. Jud says he’s going to start work on the parkway now, which you can see is tantalizingly empty in the first phot.

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