I popped over to my friend Lori Daul‘s house on Thursday, craving one more garden visit before the Arctic barrels down to Austin and brings our long growing season to an end. At Lori’s, fountains still trickle, ponds reflect sky, and plants sprawl luxuriantly. The garden echoes of summer 2024, even as winter 2025 lurks offstage.

Let’s start our garden stroll in the backyard, where limestone slabs lead to a big 8-foot-diameter stock-tank pond. A blue chair serves as a fish-feeding perch. A steel wall that Lori erected and welded herself, and then muraled and spangled with stars or fireflies, makes a magical backdrop. Its blue hills create a sense of distance — a trompe l’oeil borrowed view.

Her mostly green plant palette gleams against all that blue. Painted furniture and art accents continue her restrained color scheme.

Galvanized stock tanks — Lori has a dozen or so as ponds and planters — and floating steel balls add bright notes of silver too.

A rubber duckie bobbing in one made me smile.

Her pond plants combine green and purple to moody effect.

Another little container pond

A small variegated agave pokes out of a patinaed pot alongside flowering basil.

The garden is a water-lover’s paradise.

Lori clusters pots of agave, cactus, citrus, and tropicals in cobalt pots or perched on blue chairs.

Roses find a home here too, and they are fragrant.

This one especially. I wish I could share its sweet perfume with you.

Long view across the pond

The muscular cinammon trunks of crape myrtles run in rhythm along the back wall, shading an understory garden.

A steel grackle graces a periwinkle table with a sticks-on-fire euphorbia.

A bubbling fountain echoes the spherical curves of a strappy beaked yucca. Its pale terracotta echoes a peach rose and orangey shrimp plant.

A furry cactus in a face planter — “Dickhead,” Lori calls him with a gleeful smile — sports a squid agave hairpiece.

Sword-sharp leaves of variegated Spanish dagger look battle-ready in another stock-tank planter.

Arrayed on a mesquite’s arched limb, blue bottles make you look up. Below, a steely blue whale’s tongue agave holds court, framed by a blue-stained fence.

I love this gorgeous specimen. Look at these ghostly leaves and shark-fin spines!

Backed by deep purple ‘Princess Caroline’ pennisetum and the red berries of yaupon holly, this whale’s tongue agave is a princess herself.

One last appreciative look

OK, one more

Another face planter, a big one, dazzles with Argus-like eyes of ‘Quadricolor’ agave and a foxtail fern hairdo.

A pale sedge cascades out of the other side.

Above, a peach rose offers its sweet fragrance and velvety-pillow petals to passing noses.

A long stock-tank pond dressed up with a wall fountain enlivens the narrow side yard.

It also gives Lori a water view from her kitchen table window.

Split-leaf philodendron adds tropical flavor but can survive outdoors.

A potted kumquat is decked in orange fruits like a Floridian Christmas tree.

Lori says they don’t have a good taste, but all the more reason to enjoy them as living ornaments.

In the front garden, pink roses add sweetness alongside another stock-tank pond.

It’s sugar and spice with a toothy Texas sotol.

A pink flamingo fits right in.

‘Margaritaville’ yucca has soft, flexible, mellow-yellow leaves.

Other variegated plants join the yucca party including canna and agave.

Her eyes are dazzled by the scene.

Violets spring from paving crevices.

A curved piece of copper tubing makes another splashing fountain, spilling into an in-ground container.

Maidenhair fern soaks up the splashes.

The butter-creamy stripes of ‘Arizona Star’, a beauty of an agave that needs winter protection. It’s in good hands with Lori. She’s probably whipping out all her frost cloth right now, ahead of the coming cold front. Which reminds me, I need to do some winterizing prep this weekend myself.

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Digging Deeper

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