Gardening connections can get you into places you might not otherwise see. Austin Country Club, a private golf club on Lake Austin, being a case in point. I don’t run in country club circles. But I enjoy meeting enthusiastic plant people eager to share what they’re working on. Hannah, the club’s director of horticulture, is one such person. She reached out to invite me for a tour of the grounds, and when she learned of my husband’s family connection with Harvey Penick, the legendary golf instructor, she graciously invited him too.

Hannah wrote me, “A life long horticulturist, I moved to Texas almost 2 years ago with the mission of improving the landscape here at Austin Country Club. My true love is color gardens, though regionally appropriate perennial gardens make me sit up straight. But really…I see no reason to stick to the confines of any label. My goal is to make the landscape beguiling and distinguishable to those who wander through.”

The color and beguiling starts at the doors to the club, where Hannah designed and crafted a beautiful autumnal arch of cornstalks, eucalyptus, lotus seedheads, berries, and shed deer antlers. Pumpkins and potted mangaves, peppers, kalanchoe, croton, and coleus add splashes of orange and red.

Golden mums provide more fall color in a patio-adjacent bed. But what really caught my eye is a sea of cascading silver ponyfoot accented with blue-green paleleaf yuccas. Hannah has been using more heat- and drought-tolerant plants that still provide impact without sucking up a ton of irrigation. She said everyone comments on the ponyfoot, and no wonder!

A swath of low-water ruby grass dances against a bubbling fountain that looks perfect for attracting birds.

The feathery pink inflorescence of the grass harmonizes with the purple stems of a lacy-leaved kale. Hannah enjoys mixing perennials and edibles this way.

She also appreciates the serendipity of a plant showing up on its own, as if perfectly planted. Texas-tough holly fern did that here, springing up in the craggy crevice of a rock wall to soften it with green fronds.

When we spotted a statue of Harvey Penick, we paused for a photo.

Two Penicks! Their blood relationship is distant; my husband’s grandfather was Harvey’s cousin, or something like that. But my husband shares an appreciation for the game of golf, and it was fun to see how Harvey is celebrated at Austin Country Club.

Even more so in the clubhouse! We walked inside with Hannah and stood amazed before a wall of Harvey memorabilia.

“Penicks are royalty around here,” Hannah had told me, and now I saw what she meant.

According to the club’s webpage about Harvey:

“Harvey Penick’s association with the Austin Country Club spanned 82 years. Harvey started as a caddie at the Club’s original Hancock location when he was eight. Later, working weekends, summers and after school he became shop assistant; then, assistant professional. He was offered the Head professional’s job while still in school but had to decline when his family insisted he finish high school. In as wise a decision as ever made by any golf club, the job was held open for Harvey.

So, in May of 1923 when he was 18, Harvey graduated from Austin High School and became ACC’s Head Professional. In 1971 he was named Professional Emeritus when his son, Tinsley, succeeded him as Head Professional. In Harvey’s interpretation, ’emeritus’ meant he had been honored but did not mean he had been retired. By his choice, he was still around most of the daylight hours of every day so long as his health allowed; teaching, starting, assisting his son in any way needed and dispensing wisdom in simple, uncomplicated, but carefully chosen phrases.

Harvey Penick taught golf for seven decades and coached the University of Texas golf team for 33 years. Among his well-known pupils were Ed White, Betty Jameson; Morris Williams Jr., Betsy Rawls, Mickey Wright, Kathy Whitworth, Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw, and Sandra Palmer. Those ladies won over 240 LPGA tour events, two U.S. Women’s Amateurs and 10 U.S. Women’s Opens. The men account for five NCAA individual titles, two Masters, one U.S. Open and over 35 PGA tour wins.”

What a legend.

Pages from the manuscript of Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf are framed on the wall.

His other books are displayed too.

We have a copy of Harvey’s Little Red Book, and I pulled it off the shelf when I got home. I think it’s time to read through it again to see what lessons about golf might translate to lessons about life.

Big thanks to Hannah* for the tour of Austin Country Club and its gardens, and for helping us to know more about Harvey Penick.

* At her request, I am omitting her last name.

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Digging Deeper

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