Saving Ida: My English Garden in Texas

by Claire Zinnecker

Springtime is here and we've been spending a lot of time in our garden. It’s hard to believe it’s been 2 years since we first started the landscaping plan. Between the wedding and filming the episode for Magnolia Network, "In With The Old," (Season 2, Episode 6), things were so hectic that I never shared our entire design process. Exactly 2 years later, I'm finally sharing with you our design and all the plants we picked!

I printed out a footprint of the house and handed it to Adam with a bag of colored pencils to hopefully get him excited for the project...it worked! He drew the paths and the garden beds, and with a few minor changes from me, we had our plan in place.

I was going for an overgrown English garden look but with some Texas touches. We looked for a lot of Texas native plants and plants that could withstand extreme heat and bitter winters. I wanted it to be very little maintenance, and it is! All these plants need are sunshine, water, and some good soil.

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For the paths, we sourced all our materials from Austin Landscape Wholesale Supply. We used 1/4 inch crushed limestone for all of our walkways. I love the way it looks, but I will say, it's not the softest on bare feet. We made sure to scrape the ground and cover the dirt with weed barrier fabric before laying the gravel. Aligning the paths with larger stones that I collected from our land.

For the plants, we headed to our good friends at Austin Plant Supply, and spent the afternoon there taking photos of everything I loved and talking with Michael about which plants were best suited for where. Here’s a list of all the plants we bought!