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Maggie Ross's English Garden in Texas

© Carol Wallace

Our subdivision is built on used-to-be prairie grasslands of a two-inch chocolate-brown-clay icing spread over a white cake of solid-limestone. The heavy clay over chalk stone grows beautiful Texas bluebonnets and other native wildflowers, but not the diverse mix I desired for year-round evolving colors. A plant collecting mania and an artist's desire for design complicates my attempts all the more. The trials and joys of figuring out 'how-to' have been described in an unpublished work; an extension of the site which further narrates our living and working in the garden.

The previous owners of our house had never tended this ½ acre wedge-shaped lot, where once there was little more than Johnson grass enclosed by chain link fencing. After building the pool, we not only wanted to improve our outdoors 'living room', but we also enjoyed the work and the results to the point that the lawn kept receding and bed-making stopped only at fences. There was never a grand scheme or an overall plan. I just kept looking behind me, rather than ahead, when deciding what to do next. The features arose from my fascinations of the gardens I had known in England as a child. To me, I was just making a garden of hedges and beds in the yard when visitors dubbed it an 'English garden'. Whatever they shall, it is our haven, our bliss.

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