The Lush Summer

It’s late summer in Dallas, one of those dog days when the morning temperature is already nearing triple digits. Over in Lakewood, landscape architect David Rolston has gotten up early and headed outside.

With clippers in hand and a garden hose nearby, Dave is whistling a tune while deadheading a rose bush. Then he moves on to watering a potted cedar. While most of Dallas is wilting, the garden Dave shares with his wife, designer Julie Cohn, is flourishing.

Ornamental grasses provide a variety of textures and heights.

Dave has a passion for gardening. But the fact that this garden is lush and beautiful in late summer is no mere feat of garden maintenance—he estimates he spends only 3 hours a week working on it. Nor does he change plants each season. His secret is structure, both in garden design and individual plant choices.

“My experience with the seasons is that they each have their own inherent beauty,” Dave says. “I don’t do seasonal color or annuals. My plant choices are based on texture, height, form—and then color. If you take a black and white photograph of a well-composed garden, it will still look beautiful. Without structure, it won’t.”

Structure here takes the form of a tall juniper beside a dwarf purple peach tree with ‘Powis Castle’ artemesia at its base. All three differ in height, texture, and even shade of green. Or a coral-bean bush next to slender maidengrass, with purple phlox and wood ferns beneath. Each plant’s shape complements the others. “I think the garden’s strongest statement is made late in the growing season,” he says, “when the plants have enough growth so that you can see their texture and form.”

The self-proclaimed pruning enthusiast clips an elaeagnus shrub back into shape.

An expansive but boring lawn was sacrificed to create an easily maintained, striking garden.

The son of Iowa farmers, Dave grew up gardening with his parents and gained an innate understanding of Prairie plants. “Dallas is black-land prairie, just like Iowa,” he says, “and the same native grasses and trees grow in both places.” After completing his landscape architecture degree, work brought him to Dallas, and Dave started his own gardens, first at an M Streets cottage and now on this large lot near White Rock Lake.

When Dave and Julie first purchased it, the property, like most homes in Lakewood, was nearly all lawn. Its only design elements were a small patio, some perennial beds around the perimeter, and a scattering of mature pecan trees. But it wasn’t featureless, like most Dallas flatland. “Our lot has an almost 10-foot drop, so we had interesting topography to work with,” Dave says. “My design strategy was to focus on delineating and accentuating the natural flow of the property. Rather than work against it.

“When I started creating garden beds, some of the neighbors criticized me for getting rid of this big lawn,” he adds. “But I think by creating more edges and flowing the lawn around them, you create interest and a wonderful sense of expansiveness. You can’t see all of our garden from one spot; you have to walk through and be surprised around each bend.”

Creating an easily maintained garden was also key. “I tried to get all of the existing trees inside garden beds, so lawn mowers and weed eaters wouldn’t bump up against them,” Dave says. “That guided the design, because I had to figure out what was practical within the existing arrangement of trees.”

A copper basin planted with horsetail reeds is a delightful surprise at the end of a garden path.

When selecting plants, Dave says he kept thinking of “survival of the fittest.” “I chose tough, adapted plants with a Texas feel to them,” he says. “I don’t choose native plants exclusively, but I do choose those plants that will do well here. Otherwise, they take a lot of maintenance. And I don’t have time to fuss with each one.”

Flowering perennials, many of which Dave transplanted from the original perimeter beds, create spots of color against the backdrop of greens, blues, and greys. “The flowers are a highlight, but the structure of the garden is based on texture,” he says. “Smaller punches of color are so much more satisfying to me than big expanses of it. If you see a little bit of color in a nice composition, then you notice the color. If all you see is color and no composition, your eyes get saturated and you don’t really see much of anything.”

A self-proclaimed pruning enthusiast (he admits that using his hand clippers is the “sweet stuff” of gardening), Dave shapes the plants before they become overgrown, thus extending their bloom well into the fall. “I’m always walking through the garden shaping things, bringing them into scale. I try to create defining forms so that all our plants keep their shape throughout the year,” he says.

Water elements are strategically placed as tranquil focal points: a pond with a classic fountain adds interest to the patio, a copper basin marks the end of a path from Julie’s office, a creek trickles lazily down the back of the garden. “Water adds sound and an obvious sense of life,” says Dave. “It’s especially wonderful this time of year when the mere sight of water is refreshing.”

The ultimate secret to why his garden maintains its beauty throughout the seasons is that Dave chooses to work with the Texas climate instead of against it. “A lot of what I’m doing here in this garden is promoting the things that are the most fulfilling to longtime gardeners: those plants that give you maximum visual impact with a minimum amount of work,” says Dave. “I’m letting the principle of survival of the fittest show me the answer to what works best in Dallas gardens.”

 

Rather than seeing the lot’s almost 10-foot drop as a minus, Dave sees it as a plus: “We have a lot of interesting topography to work with. I focused on delineating and accentuating the flow of the land,” he says. “Not working against it.”

the secrets of his
garden’s success

Landscape architect Dave Rolston shares his
tips for a beautiful, late-summer garden.

1. Use native or adapted plants. If you love plants that are not as hardy, add just a few of them in key spots.

2. Avoid all plants that need spraying with insecticides to maintain their health.

3. Choose plants in a variety of textures to keep your garden
visually interesting.

4. Repeat easily maintained plants so that they have enough mass to hold a garden together. Individual plants can then stand out against this backdrop.

5. Trim back “leggy” perennials throughout the growing season to keep them in shape and blooming.

6. Include plants with sculptural lines (evergreens and ornamental grasses) as a visually interesting alternative to flowers.

7. Water plants efficiently, meaning an adequate amount of water, not just the length of watering time. Use a straight-sided cup to measure how much water different areas of the garden receive.

8. Incorporate water features to add interest and attract wildlife.