February’s Yard of the Month is often a toss-up - an attractive winter landscape or the survivors of freezing weather. This year Spring Lake Garden Club’s winner was thriving in mid-January and still shines after an arctic blast, thanks to a front yard that is its own urban forest microclimate. This small 1940s cottage on Wilson Street in the block south of Martin Luther King Dr. is home to Analiza Carson, a graduate student at Texas State, and owned by her aunt Kathleen Loisel, another San Marcos resident and avid local gardener. Many plants on Wilson Street are passalongs from the Loisel landscape and now thrive in an environment of mostly dry shade. Two large oaks dominate the front yard, one a burr or blackjack with large lobed leaves and the other a chinquapin with oval serrated leaves. Other upright plants, ligustrum and mature crape myrtles, provide both shade for smaller plants underneath their branches and also natural privacy for the house and welcoming front porch.
Except for an entry walk and driveway, the entire front yard is covered with plants adapted to this environment, including clumps of irises, sago palms, broad-leaved cast iron plants and delicate asparagus ferns. Other plants on this “forest floor” are purple-leaf tradescantia and even some red sage. A water feature on one side of the walk — an oval galvanized tub with a frog as the fountain source — offers humidity to a nearby root beer plant’s broad green leaves and a colorful pot holding a bird of paradise. A concrete birdbath on the opposite of the walk is surrounded by dark green cast iron plants and chartreuse foxtail ferns. A subtle piece of garden art is a slate gray Chinese lantern near the birdbath, one of many decorative pieces and plants incorporated in the yard by Cameron Cooke, a good friend and exceptionally talented landscaper. He also laid a flagstone extension connecting the entry walkway to the street.
A sunnier side yard is dedicated to turf lawn and also hosts jasmine beside a neighboring fence. Cenizo (Texas sage) and mountain laurel grow well in shaded areas with more light. Carson recalls the enticing aromas when once both purple mountain laurel and white ligustrum flowers bloomed at the same time. The front yard recently gained more sunlight after the City of San Marcos contracted tree trimming services to prune near power lines on Wilson Street, thinning out some branches of the larger oak and its broad leaves. For yards with very heavy shade, adjustments like this can improve growing conditions underneath as well as reduce risk of wind damage.
So how did February’s Yard of the Month fare with extended frigid weather? Except for expected die-back from frigid temperatures, most of the front-yard plants survived even without covering and are expected to regrow in warmer spring weather. Many native plants benefit from being cut back near the ground, whether after an annual growing season or an extended freeze. As homeowners deal with whatever winter weather comes, we are reminded of possibly the most important element in gardening, often described as “nature’s secret,” which is patience.
