No stone unturned to create lush xeriscape
Home’s drought-tolerant plants, multicolored rocks save water
The house Bill Barcus built in Estrellita Estates east of Canyon Lake isn’t on city water, so he knew he’d have to rely on well water to keep his landscape alive and growing. Which was perfectly fine because he wanted a yard that didn’t have a single blade of grass on it.
“I’ve owned other properties around Texas and I’ve always had a traditional landscape — you know, sod, shrubs and trees,” said Barcus, 64 and retired from real estate management. “There’s a lot of maintenance involved and trying to keep grass alive in the Hill Country is tough. I wanted something different.”
So he called in Cooper Henk, owner of New Braunfels-based Skyline Landscaping, to develop a xeriscape that would save water while still being lush.
The plan, which Henk started shortly after Barcus and his wife, Kay, moved into the hillside house in December 2021, combines plenty of colorful, water-sipping plants and multicolored stone in various sizes and textures, and is on several levels to accommodate the lot’s front-to-back slope. The result is a classic, Hill Country home surrounded by landscaping capable of thriving in what scientists warn will be a more arid future, with beautiful views of the canyon, called Heiser Hollow, below the backyard.
Begun in mid-may, the landscape work took about two months to complete and, according to Henk, required trucking in 500 tons of rock and 140 yards of enriched garden soil. Barcus pegged the cost at “north of $100,000.”
“I’ve always had a green thumb, and growing and caring for plants is just therapeutic for me,” said Barcus, a full participant in the planning of the new landscape.
Indeed, even while the contractors were still cutting into the hillside so the house could be built on level ground, Barcus was there with his tractor
with a grapple attachment, putting large excavated rocks to the side. He and Henk later scattered many of these throughout the flower beds as design elements, using several larger ones to build a set of rustic steps leading from the upper to the lower level.
“I knew I wanted to do some sort of step feature, and the stone we dug up came in handy,” he said.
At the front of the house, a pleasant pathway leading from the driveway is bordered with numerous native plants that, even in November, were blooming in a profusion of purples, yellows, pinks and red.
Henk landscaped with a variety of familiar, mostly deerresistant Texas natives, including lantana, muhly grass, purple fountain grass, Mexican bush sage, milkweed, salvias and others. Bougainvilleas cascade from one raised bed while nearby, newly planted green mound junipers prepare to overrun another. With everything in bloom, the air is filled with butterflies, bees and hummingbirds, flitting about from plant to plant.
“I’ve got a neighbor who keeps bees,” Barcus said. “When he saw how they just covered my Mexican lavender, he said, ‘Well, I guess I need to bring you some free honey.’ ”
Beneath the front portico is a burbling fountain, as well as several shade-tolerant tropicals, including philodendron.
Barcus also incorporated a few plants he especially wanted throughout the landscape, including, around the side of the house, some cholla and other cactus, chile pequin he grew from seed, a peach tree he transplanted from a pot and a lime tree.
“I like fruit trees, but the Hill Country is tough on them,” he said.
Although most of the plants are native or adapted to the Hill Country, Barcus doesn’t leave them completely on their own. Beds are watered about twice a week — some more, some less — via a buried drip irrigation systems, and he fertilizes them
periodically.
While most of the plants appear to be doing well, there have been some setbacks. One bed, for example, contains only about 10 inches of soil before hitting bedrock. So there’s no place for water to drain.
“We lost a few plants there,
some rosemary and lavender, that need more well-drained soil,” he explained. “So I have to watch that bed’s irrigation schedule more carefully. If I put it on the same cycle as these other beds, it’s going to flood the plants.”
And in the backyard, he lost
a Texas madrones, which are native to the Hill Country but hard to get. Henk had several shipped in from California, but said it was worth it for the trees’ distinctive, polished red bark.
In addition to the plants, Henk used a variety of landscape
rock in place of sod to create areas of different color and texture while also conserving water. These include separate beds of colored river rock, washed granite, small shadow stone and crushed limestone.
“Cooper also put down this fantastic fabric barrier under the stone,” Barcus said. “We hardly get any weeds growing.”
In the backyard, Henk built a low, undulating wall to demarcate the line where the land falls off to the valley below. He initially took down several trees to enhance the view of the valley.
But when developers began clearing land to build camping cabins to the southeast, they decided to plant new ones, locating them to funnel the eye toward undeveloped parts of the hollow, according to Cooper.
Those included crape myrtles and those red-barked Texas madrones.