Built in 1930, this home in East Austin is set to receive a state historical marker as the former home of one of the first Chinese immigrants to Austin, Joe Sing.  The house has now been passed down to Raul Hernandez, the great-great-grandson of Joe Sing.  Raul is dedicated to preserving the historical context of the home, and wanted to fix up the landscape in anticipation of the historical designation ceremony to be held this October.

Landscapes of East Austin homes in the 1930s were not what you call inspiring.  East Austin homes that are most period-accurate for that time are either cluttered with random pots and trinkets celebrating Catholicism, or are nothing but small compacted dirt plots maintained with a broom.  We didn’t have much to go on.

So Raul decided to keep it simple.  Don’t do anything to take away from the house.  Don’t make it modern, gaudy, or too simplistic.  Add a little color, but make it easy to maintain. 

We laid ‘Zorro’ Zoysia grass, famous for its thick bear fur texture, on a 3-4″ bed of Thunderdirt from GeoGrowers.  We filled the existing beds with Fall Aster, Twist Leaf Yucca, Orange Bulbine, and Mexican Oregano.  We added a ‘Desert Museum’ Palo Verde.  We also installed a fully automated water-efficient drip lines in the beds and MP Rotators for the lawn, and a simple path using sawed limestone slabs.

Maybe not exactly period-accurate for BioGardener 2010 with its..gasp..lush green lawn!  But it’s an appropriate turf for the site, on top of well-drained rich soil, and the sprinkler system uses about 50% less water than typical systems.   And we just want to roll in it, so that’s nice too.

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