Central Texas gardeners, join me on Thursday, January 18th, for a Garden Spark talk by Coleson Bruce, an Austin gardener extraordinaire! Tickets are on sale now. This is an in-person event, and seating is limited, so grab your spot today.

And hey, a gardening talk makes a great holiday gift! It’s a learning experience and an opportunity to meet fellow gardeners, and it won’t clutter up anyone’s house.

Here are all the details:

Crevice Gardens: Finding Natural Resilience in Central Texas

Crevice gardening is cutting edge and popular in dry, cool-summer climates like Colorado’s. But here in Texas, traditional crevice gardening with alpine plants is a nonstarter thanks to our heat and humidity. Enter Coleson Bruce’s Texas-style crevice garden! Coleson created a Texas-tough crevice garden during the COVID lockdown, when he suddenly had time on his hands and a lawn of thirsty St. Augustine to kill. In place of traditional alpine granite, he used local Texas limestone to form the gardening crevices. Instead of alpine plants, he deployed dry-loving species found in Zones 7 and up. As soon as he got it planted, along came Snowpocalypse in 2021, followed by the hellish summer of 2022. Learn what became of it all, as Coleson shares his experience in designing, building, and maintaining a Texas crevice garden. Whether or not a crevice garden (or maybe a crevice container?) is in your future, discover innovative techniques and practical tips that may help you unlock the natural resilience of Central Texas gardens.

Speaker Bio

Coleson’s garden has been described by Kenton J. Seth, author of The Crevice Garden, as “one of the finest crevice gardens: I’d put it in top ten earth-wide, maybe even top five.” A lawyer by trade, Coleson’s background includes desert biology and sculpture, both of which played a role in his fascination with crevice gardening. What began as a small landscaping project during the COVID lockdown morphed into an 8-month, all-encompassing passion project, from which he emerged narrowly expert in crevice gardening — admittedly a relatively small field of competition. His garden has been featured in prominent gardening blogs, photographed by internationally known garden photographer Claire Takacs, and will be included in a forthcoming book by Pam Penick. Coleson lives in Austin with his wife and three young children.

Learn more about Coleson’s garden here:

• A Texas-style crevice garden – and neighborly collaboration – brings midcentury Austin home to vibrant life
• Coleson Bruce’s crevice garden in spring flower

When/Where

Coleson will speak on Thursday, January 18th at 7 pm. The approximately 1-hour talk with Q&A will be held at Barton Springs Nursery: 3601 Bee Cave Road, Austin 78746. Seating will be outdoors under the big live oak. In the event of rain, seating will be in the event barn.

Tickets

Purchase your ticket at this link. Ticket price is $35.50, plus a small fee that goes to the ticket-processing website. 40 seats will be available initially. I’ll open additional seats the week of the talk if the weather forecast looks good (more seating is available outside than inside).

Refund Policy

Tickets are nonrefundable. Your attendance helps cover a fair speaking fee for our presenters and other expenses, and collectively we’re able to bring talented design thinkers to speak to us!

Thank You to Our Sponsor!

The 2023-24 season of Garden Spark is sponsored by Barton Springs Nursery, which has been serving the needs of Central Texas gardeners since 1986 by offering one of the best selections of native and well-adapted plants for this area.

Subscribe to Garden Spark

To be notified about future Garden Spark talks, join my email list! Simply send me an email with “Subscribe” in the subject line.

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Digging Deeper

Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, authors, and gardeners a few times a year in Austin. These are limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance; simply click this link and ask to be added. Season 8 kicks off in fall 2024. Stay tuned for more info!

All material © 2024 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.