Steelwork appealed to me in the final garden on the Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour last Saturday. Take this planter box, for instance. The plants will look better when they fill in, but for now the box is fabulous.

I also liked these bent-stake plant labels—clever.

And how about this contemporary trellis screen made of humble ranch materials: a fine, wire screen sandwiched between two sections of sturdy cattle panel, and attached to square steel posts.

A closer look at the screen and the passionflower growing on it

The house and garden are tucked behind a low stone wall. In front grows a native lawn of buffalograss, which rarely needs watering or mowing. Buffalograss tends to go dormant (i.e., tan) in summer, when it’s dry, but greens up with rain or supplemental watering, though you must be careful not to kill it with kindness.

The garden itself is a low-maintenance shade garden, with a tiled front patio anchored by a large, drilled rock. Perhaps it was meant to be a fountain, but no water bubbled out of it this day.

Certainly this is not a gardener’s garden, which we die-hards long to see on tours. But I can understand how a no-fuss garden like this might serve to inspire people who are not gardeners to substitute drought-tolerant native and adapted plants for traditional thirstier ones. And that’s a good thing.

For a look back at the Ridgecrest Drive garden (and links to all the others) click here. Thank you for following my posts about Gardens on Tour 2011. I hope they didn’t seem too rushed. I had to hurry and get my pictures up because starting tomorrow I’ll be posting previews of four gardens on the upcoming Inside Austin Gardens 2011 tour, which takes place this Saturday. Stay tuned for more garden tours!

All material © 2006-2011 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.