Gathering spaces in Ruthie Burrus Garden, part 2
In my last post I hope I wowed you — as I was wowed — by the colorful wildflower meadow and textural spiky-soft shade garden of Ruthie Burrus. If you missed it, check out Part 1 of my visit to Ruthie’s West Austin garden. Today we’ll explore the back garden, where Ruthie has divided her long, shallow backyard into welcoming and charming hangout areas for family and friends.
White garden
As you come around the house, you see a Mediterranean-style white garden — a new design since I last visited. A kiln-style pizza oven once sat at the rear of the house, but it’s been removed. Now a gravel garden sparkles with white flowers and silvery green foliage, nothing too tall — a vision of coolness. I bet this space is especially beautiful in the evening, as the plants take on a moonlight-garden glow.
The focal point of this space is Ruthie’s garden haus, cobbled together with Old World charm from stones unearthed from her property, scrap roofing, and antique doors and windows.
‘Helen von Stein’ lamb’s ear edges a curving stone path from the back door and porch to the garden haus. A pink ‘Peggy Martin’ rose once graced the shed’s face. But after the snowpocalypse killed it, Ruthie began training another type of rose.
A wider view of the white garden shows native blackfoot daisy along with artemisia and agapanthus.
Top view of the two-toned agapanthus, aka lily of the Nile.
Side view of the lamb’s ear path, with shapely pots of lavender, raised beds overflowing with pink evening primrose, and a curved border of dwarf apricot roses.
The white garden as seen from the lawn
Ruthie’s training roses up tall metal trellises.
L-shaped rusty steel bars make the sturdy frame, with cattle panel inserts.
Everything is welded together in back.
Another view of the garden haus. Notice how Ruthie echoed the burnt orange and sandy hues of the shed’s stones with terracotta pots and apricot roses. Even the decomposed granite fits the color scheme.
I couldn’t get enough of the stone shed, so here’s one more view.
Atop a stone wall, tiny purple flowers grace a round rustic pot.
And hardy Agave lophantha pairs up with a dainty succulent in a dish planter.
Flower border and skyline view
The next garden room perches on a steep hillside overlooking downtown Austin. Ruthie grows colorful perennials and annuals along the edge, backed by a trimmed hedge of Texas mountain laurels that screens the houses below.
It was a hazy morning, but what a view.
Standing winecup and California poppies replicate a little of the color explosion of the front meadow (seen in Part 1).
Hangout spaces
A wall of steel-framed windows looks out on that skyline view and a covered dining porch.
Beyond is a rectangular swimming pool framed by trees and backed by a part-shade garden of yuccas, native ornamental trees, and wildflowers. I love the petal-like stone dish planters by the pool.
They display a dusky lavender mangave underplanted with white flowers.
In another pot, a Queen Victoria agave bristles over a trailing ice plant.
I love this combo of feathery prostrate Japanese plum yew, blackfoot daisy, and verbena. I’m kind of surprised this works because blackfoot daisy can be finicky about too much water, and the new plum yew probably needs regular water. But it’s beautiful and looks happy.
From the pool you look across a lawnette of sedge — Berkeley sedge, I think — toward a three-sided porch. To the left of the porch…
…is a bigtooth maple underplanted with giant ligularia.
A flowering aloe in a round pot drew my attention to the porch.
But what stopped me in my tracks was a stunning floral display of flowering bulbs on the outdoor fireplace mantel.
I walked over, muttering, “I bet they’re real.” And of course — somehow — they were!
I marveled over the freshness of the flowering bulbs without any obvious water source, the beautiful way they’re arranged, the spiny eryngium tucked in here and there, the moss seeming to hold it all together. How pretty the colors look against the black-and-white picture of a bird nest.
It’s like a still-life painting.
Ruthie told me it’s the creation of Keith at Westbank Flower Market, and she had it made for a special event at her house.
From the shelter of the porch, you can admire — or mourn, depending on how long ago you arrived in Austin (haha) — the growing downtown skyline.
And oh hey, another pretty succulent dish
Ruthie has a talent for putting together eye-catching containers. I admired this spiky beauty in a copper tub.
I think that may be a ‘Sharkskin’ agave with the paddle plant.
The pool looks inviting as Austin heats up for summer. Those two white-and-black squares just beyond the hedge are chimneys on the roof of a neighbor’s house, which gives you a sense of the dropoff.
At the far end of the pool, a garden bristling with Yucca rostrata and giant hesperaloe is softened by flowering Gulf Coast penstemon and spuria iris.
There’s also a bronze rabbit sculpture, by Colorado artist Jim Budish.
Spuria iris
Spikes and softness. The rabbit’s long ears fit right in with those spikes.
Yucca rostrata, Gulf Coast penstemon, and heartleaf skullcap in bud. Broad limestone slabs make a rustic path through this garden and around to a private side yard.
The perfectly placed rabbit can be observed from the pool and porches. And he observes back.
Side garden
Following the flagstone path around the house I discovered more wildflower wildness in standing winecup and pink evening primrose.
And a few poppies for good measure
Hard-working bees too
A stone-walled circle appeared amid the wildflowers — a large planter showing off dianthus, flowering aloes, and more. A carved stone eagle perches on one side.
A window overlooks this planter, and it must make a lovely view from inside. As must every inch of this beautiful garden.
Thank you, Ruthie, for sharing your garden with me again this spring!
For a look back at Part 1 of Ruthie’s garden, including a colorful wildflower meadow, click here.
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Digging Deeper
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All material © 2024 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
That cobblestone haus… move-in ready if you ask me. Love all the stone planters and the rabbit (made me smile) is the cherry on the cake!
I think that little stone shed IS move-in ready – ha! Glad you enjoyed the tour, Chavli.
What a beautiful garden this is. The wildflowers are gorgeous and the buildings on this property are interesting. Pam, you have such a good eye for framing the scenes–a gift to the gardener that you present the space so beautifully.
Thank you, Susie! It’s a lovely garden for sure, and a joy to photograph.
Just gorgeous. A dream of a garden.
It really is, Jenny. Did you get to visit this one on the Austin Fling tour?
An incredible, fantastic garden. It’s like an intimate park. All those wildflowers in both front and back are so beautiful, along with all the accompanying plants. And that haus!!! Wow! This garden seems to have everything you could want. I smiled immediately when I saw the rabbit. I’m usually not fond of most statuary and such in a garden, but it’s so unusual and fits in so well with the plantings, how could one not love it.
I am curious as to what this garden is like in the dead of summer and autumn. Are the plants left to go to seed? Are the Spring wildflowers allowed to stay once seed is set and wither away in their own time? Are they pulled and summer plants put in? Or are there seeded summer plants that push through the spring wildflowers and take their time in the sun? I just wonder how this type of garden is managed year round. I do love the late winter / early spring wildflowers. I like that color palette of blooms of pinks, blues, whites, etc. Summer, to me, is the time where blooms are a deeper, more vivid color. I suppose they almost have to be to stand out under that blazing sun, hahah. However, I did have angelonias, cleome, torenia, blue daze and such along with ‘hot’ zinnias and plume celosia. And others. I realize these aren’t native, though.
Quite frankly, by the time the high heat hits, exhaustion sets in. Walking outside to water every day (many pots), it feels like a heavy wet blanket has dropped on you! I know it’s drier there than here in Houston, but I also know that sun is a furnace there in summer. Do gardeners in Austin maintain blooming summer gardens? I would imagine the drought situation puts a damper on that, even with cisterns (which don’t fill up if there is no rain!). And it looks like this summer will be very dry, even with the Seabreeze bringing in moisture. You’d think all that humidity would condense into rain, right? Hah! Well, we’ll have to see what Nature brings us this year.
Thank you for your wonderful photos and prose. You bring things to our attention that we might have missed or not given the attention to something unique that you point out. This garden is sensational, but this review, I think, is what brings it out to our view.
Nancy – This is Ruthie. Thank you so much for your compliments on the garden! Here’s the “short” answer to your questions: I’ve worked on my wildflower meadow for 10 years. At first, it was beautiful in spring, then chaos broke loose. Over the years, I’ve learned to plant perennials (Mexican mint marigold, Russian sage, skeleton leaf goldeneye, copper canyon daisy, coneflower, lots of native lantana, esperanza, etc.), palmettos, succulents (soft leaf, Blue sentry & twistleaf yuccas, hesperaloes), and grasses…finally got rid of the grasses b/c I don’t like to make homes for snakes. I do not add summer annuals b/c that’s not what my garden is about. There are plenty of flowers with the perennials. I am interested in creating beauty, but mostly want to feed our starving and homeless pollinators.
I do let plants go to seed…for the birds and for reproduction, eventually pulling up or cutting to the ground the messy ones.
Summer is brutal! But at least the weeds are tired too. All my stuff is drought and heat tolerant, and the few that aren’t, just go to sleep until the weather changes.
Thanks for your interest!
Thank you for answering my questions! All the work you have put into your garden has paid off very handsomely. I don’t think I have seen such an extensive private wildflower garden as yours. It must be very satisfying to see the native wildlife (pollinators and such) having such an oasis of life to use.
Thanks for your kind comment, Nancy. I’m so glad to know you enjoyed the virtual tour of Ruthie’s garden!
What a beautiful garden. I so enjoy your blog, Pam! It’s the only way I would get to see most of these places. You have a prefect eye for photography and every photo is a story. And thanks, of course, to Ruthie Burris for sharing her fabulous creation. That stone shed….. OMG!
It’s to die for, isn’t it? 🙂 I’m glad you enjoyed the virtual tour, Paula!
I still remember how much I loved this garden when I saw it in person at the Austin Fling. I’ve always liked the idea of a white garden but my personal obsession with color has prevented me from going that route but, with all the color provided by the wildflowers elsewhere, I can appreciate the value of the subdued silver, gray and white in the back garden, especially as I suspect that area is often used for evening gatherings when silver and white shines.
I agree, Kris. This space would be even lovelier on summer evenings.
Thanks to Ruthie and you, Pam, for sharing this beautiful garden. I love it all, but saw something I might be able to replicate – the heart shaped bowl! My little gray cells are in motion on how to make it ! I did not know about standing wine cup. Any idea where I could find a start or seeds for that?
Standing winecup’s botanical name is Callirhoe digitata, and I found seeds online at Everwilde Farms.
Pam, the photos are amazing, super enjoyable. Ruthie, your garden is amazing. Love the bluewood condalia tree with all the wildflowers, so beautiful. Thank you!
Happy to hear you enjoyed it, Doris!
Superb photos of this garden. The garden certainly has a lot to work with. That black and white painting arrangement is fabulous.
Thanks, Lisa. I’m glad you enjoyed the tour.