Great Gardens of the USA: The Austin Garden
Post date: 29 Jun, 2016
‘Great Gardens of the USA: The Austin Garden’ is the second garden of three from Sadie May Stowell to be featured at this year’s RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show that CED Stone Group are proud to be supplying.
Supplied by our West Drayton Depot, the garden takes inspiration from the natural beauty of Austin, Texas, including its landscape and gardens in and around the area. Local landmarks such as the Lady Bird Wildflower Centre, Blackland Prairie and the Edwards Plateau also provide hints of inspiration.
Corten steel and sandstone are materials commonly used in the region and have been heavily featured within the garden. A large structure composed from aged and rusting scaffolding poles, topped with corrugated iron and a circular water feature constructed from natural stone, supporting a corten steel bowl make focal points within the garden’s design.
Crushed stone, reflecting the colours of stone found within Austin, make up the pathways around the garden, and, when combined with the varying sizes of our Yorkstone Rockery Rocks, truly create the feeling of a Texan landscape.
Formed in 1982 and situated 10 miles south west of Austin, Texas, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Centre attracts 100,000 annual visitors. It’s 279 acres are devoted entirely to native plants, with more than 700 species native to central Texas. The Centre is a public botanical garden and is dedicated to creating a more sustainable Earth through research and education. These values are reflected in the planting scheme in Sadie’s garden.
Spanning 6.1 million hectares, Blackland Prairies is an ecoregion which runs from the Red River on the north to near San Antonio in south Texas. Although historically a region of tall-grass prairies, today much of the land is used for agriculture and devoted to cropland, despite its heavy clay soil. This characteristic black, calcareous soil has been developed due to the region being underlain by Upper Cretaceous marine chalks, marls, limestones and shales. The Upper Cretaceous is the last geological epoch in the Cretaceous; the period which followed the Jurassic era, and which lasted 80 million years.
With elevations ranging between 100ft and 300ft, the Edwards Plateau is a region located west of Central Texas. With a scattering of trees, its landscape is mostly savannah, with a lack of deep soil to allow other vegetation to grow. The trees of the savannah include a juniper-oak mix and a mesquite-acacia mix, scattered over short grasses, with some pecan trees found near to the springs and rivers. Nearly all of the natural habitat of the Edwards Plateau has now been converted to ranch-land, farmland or urban areas, such as Austin.
With the hard landscaping to Sadie’s garden consisting of CED’s Yorkstone Rockery ranging in size from 140kg to 1700kg, Purbeck Rockery varying in size from 140kg – 300kg, Golden Amber Footpath Gravel, 20mm Cotswold Aggregate and Gabion Stones, the overall design will bring together the colours, materials and feel expected of a Texan landscape.
Having visited our West Drayton Depot and hand-picking the required stone, designer Sadie May Stowell states:
“This garden includes materials such as Sandstone, Limestone and Corten steel. The inspiration has come from the landscape and gardens in and around Austin, Texas. The stone provided by CED was perfect to bring this garden to life and create the character of Austin.”
The garden is open to viewing during the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, which runs from 05th - 10th July 2016.