Reaping the Harvest—Leatherology’s Rae Liu Shows Off Her Backyard Garden

When the oppression of midsummer’s stifling heat weigh heavily in the air, edible plant leaves curl with yellow-tinged edges, and weeds proliferate, it is, perhaps, the best time to be a friend of Rae Liu. The season’s result of her yearslong dedication to her cut-flower and edible gardens culminates in an abundance of her favorite tomato varieties—ripened Black Krim, Thornburn’s Terra Cotta, and Napa Chardonnay blush gems. They simultaneously peak, and Liu extends a quick invitation to visit her North Dallas home to harvest and taste test her most beloved of garden treasures. It’s an inkling of her farm-to-table gathering aspirations.

Liu’s plant list for spring

But Liu—who, alongside her brother, David, cofounded Dallas-based Leatherology—has a business to run and children to raise. She designs every one of her company’s carefully crafted handbags, backpacks, wallets, and other leather goods. She hosts nationwide events, partners on collections with such renowned designers as Diane von Furstenberg, and helps oversee worldwide product sales and ensure smooth operations.

One might wonder how she has time to grow anything. But gardening has always been in Liu’s roots. “My grandmother taught me how to sprout seeds in tissue paper, and we would put them in my brother’s baby-food jars,” she says. “Then I started saving and planting seeds from fruit—I was always fascinated. The summer after high school, my mother let me dig up half the backyard. I grew one sunflower and a bunch of luffa.” 

Liu left home to earn a political science degree from Columbia University and worked at the World Bank before enrolling in classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She then spent three years as an accessories development manager at Alexander Wang, where she helped launch his handbag and footwear businesses. In 2011, she returned to Dallas to build Leatherology with her family.

Cultivation is a talent of Liu’s, and she often has a side venture, be it a cooking class or pottery lesson. In 2015, Liu utilized North Haven Gardens’ Garden Coach program to help determine where to situate a garden in her home’s backyard, and her husband, Kurt Johnson, built and fenced several raised beds for her edibles. 

After the Dallas twister decimated the yard in 2019, Liu expanded her raised-bed footprint to include a cut-flower garden inspired by an online class from famed Floret owner Erin Benzakein. Each season might reveal zinnias, cosmos, poppies, ranunculus, or celosia. Her surrounding landscape beds are dedicated to perennials, including daffodils, peonies, and native plants, which she tucks into cheerful arrangements for friends at the height of spring. 

With a drove of bees flittering through the blooms by day, and string lights casting a soft glow over her natural cache by night, Liu’s garden is a bucolic realm she traverses often, snipping, harvesting, and surveying in the early morning hours before work. “It is so good for my mental health,” she says. “Seeing something grow is like raising children—as you nurture them, they turn into these interesting little people.”

Her crew includes Kressa, 7, and Maxwell, 6, who help with the more simplistic plantings, like beans and peas. But the most important aspect of her garden might be that it is something she has created—not as a business venture, but simply for herself. “Gardening has brought me a lot of personal joy,” she says. “I am always telling people that you can do this in North Texas! I love spreading my love for it to others.” 

Liu’s plant list for summer & fall