Fabian Garcia Landscape Garden

Driving to my weekly, away-from-home place to write, I enjoyed the cool morning at a public garden in the valley.

My first and only time at Fabian Garcia was on another perfect April day – in 1996. I was getting the Las Cruces tour from Mesilla Valley native, plant-soil-tree nerd, Mike Melendrez. It’s part of NMSU, home of the Aggies. I sometimes drive by here between home and errands in town, never stopping to look.

Photos are from my iPhone 13 mini, on 4/17/24:

Each time I notice how much it’s growing in, as the trees take over. Bradford pears and chitalpa are slowly declining, while retamas volunteer around, and so on.

It also looks like NMSU is responsible for not just the desert-hatin’, mesic lollipop tree scourge this state’s public and landscape industry can’t let go of – Bradford pear. The Aggies also trialed and introduced Afghan pines (good but overused, so beetle bait) and Chitalpa (too mesic for some soils, bacterial leaf scorch magnet), but NMSU also planted plenty of other trees, shrubs, and spiky plants.

Many of those are regionally or locally native, which over the years, if not shaded out, are outperforming Nandina and Photinia – the latter didn’t make the cut!

Onto some other cool plantings, such as this focal point in the form of a Montezuma Cypress / Taxodium mucronatum.

Maintenance of gardens, private or public, is not a priority in this state.

Of course, at NMSU chiles and pecans are a major focus, as well as ranching.

Though there’s potential to up the ambition and foresightedness, and focus on horticulture’s connection to economic development, quality of life, and so on.

Chinese Fringe Tree and a happy, but too-shaded, Peony join with natives like Chocolate Daisy (aka Chocolate Flower).

On the east side of the garden, there’s a secondary garden entry, made of what appears to be stabilized adobe. That’s framed by bullet-proof natives Desert Willow and Beargrass, offering a glimpse to the inside.

Once inside, a small area that may have held plants at one time joins a few wood latillas, one of which is now a feature in the Mescal Agave grouping. With Beaked Yucca and Texas Sage standing guard further inside the garden.

While many plantings here are now over-shaded by the trees to really perform and inspire the public to use them, there is Mexican Feather Grass under this trio of pecans. They are living their best, graceful lives!

Of course, a garden needs to have a gazebo, joined by roses and irises, which announce spring where moderate irrigation sustains them.

Mediterranean Fan Palm is another favorite from older times around Las Cruces, and despite the deep shade, this one still fruited profusely under its spiky foliage. Nearby is a chaparral native from parts of Arizona and southern California, Sugarbush, plus one of several blank spots naming the plant that is no longer in existence.

Western Honey Mesquite provides a moderately open canopy for plants that seem to tolerate that, Engelmann Prickly Pear and (the real) Claret Cup Cactus.

Blue Sotol (aka Desert Spoon) and Sand Sagebrush somehow are tolerating more overstory trees, with even a shaded Soaptree or Palmilla, in front of it’s aspirational tall plant, California Fan Palm.

Retama (aka Jerusalem Thorn) is a near-native from the lower elevation Big Bend valleys, and it is quite common thanks to it reseeding a bit much from landscape plantings. Except for a few thermal belt areas above the valley, other palo verde relatives (Parkinsonia species) are often killed including their roots, during our periodic, generational freezes. Retamas, though, usually grow back rapidly from freezing to their roots.

Looks like with this shade, I’ve found a great picnic spot!

This might also be a place to enjoy even in the summer, but earlier with a breakfast burrito and before it gets too hot out.

Mellower Marfa

One early Sunday in October, I made the final day of Chinati Weekend, the annual event many people return to from around the world, and of course, the four cities of the Texas Triangle.

That was looking east towards the sunrise, somewhere around Lobo or Valentine. Below is looking west.

Upon arrival and after a breakfast taco or three at Stripes, I zipped over to the late Robert Irwin’s work at Chinati: untitled (dawn to dusk).

We’ll peek inside before it’s closed for the day.

The play of light through the windows and onto the scrim, with so few others including docents around – and nobody in sight – begged me to take those clandestine interior photos. Begged.

Agave salmiana / Green Maguey is one of the more common agaves in Marfa, being bold right in front, as I drove off to the next stop.

There was a screening of the Irwin film, “A Desert of Pure Feeling“, at the Crowley Theater. Front rows usually have many open seats, which got me into enjoyable conversation with a couple of women friends visiting from Dallas, sitting behind me and higher up. Both were friendly, but the wittiest of them (Ann?), peered over my shoulder, remarking about my Irwin photos taken inside!

Soon the crowds filtered away, the locals came out, and I got to take in all the peace that’s always in the background, while working on some writing or working on my business.

Then I wrote, explored, ate, and drank well, ….

Clerestory windows and Dasylirion wheeleri in rhythm, but a across town (not many blocks) is a patio restaurant with better landscape design and plantings than many where I live, closed and for sale. Their usual Chilopsis linearis with Muhlenbergia lindheimeri and some Muhlenbergia emersleyi closer to the building.

Returning to my home for a couple nights, then walking by to grab breakfast…..

The same home’s front garden by Jim Martinez. I took too many photos there! So, expect more on another post explaining the Bouteloua gracilis with conifers up-front. Or something else.

Arriving in Marfa at the end of the weekend nowadays is ideal.

It used to not be ideal, under a decade ago, but today many food and drink options are available from Sunday through Wednesday.

Before lunch or a Chinati visit, the mid town park called, to get more photos of the tile bench and plantings.

Two Nolina species stood their ground here, and were enjoying life. The smaller one is Nolina lindheimeri, and the larger, trunked one is Nolina nelsonii.

Visitors from the larger cities to the east are long gone or leaving, and few remain. I see some of what they see at the close of weekend events. Sometimes, I even overhear what they and the person across the table from them are discussing (hello, Barbara Hill!), which is perfect…for putting on my iPods to hear music!

I’ll post some more on this trip, since I spent more time with my camera than I did writing. Writing was a big reason I visited.

Words of wisdom

Next time.

Sprinter is Over

Las Cruces is generally too far south this far west, and too far east this far south, to get surprised by wintry weather after some point in March, let alone snow.

Though there was April 1983’s 7 inch snowfall around Easter. But I was in high school then, far away in Denver, where it snows almost every April a few times!

With a persistent cool and unsettled pattern of a waning El Niño along the west coast, we even managed to stay a little cooler than usual. But after a few weeks of spring then winter, and back and forth (“sprinter”), it’s warming nicely here in the last half of April. Sprinter is over, it’s spring.

The plantings nearby and in town are responding.

Since this streetscape is a couple neighborhoods from my home and on the way to my hiking spot, I see at least a few sections of it each week. While bullet-proof planting and irrigation design is going into entropy due to a lack of any maintenance* savvy, there are still a number of places that still have appeal.

(*I was the landscape architect and primary designer on this years ago, and those plans included an entire sheet with clear maintenance graphics and scheduling by plant type, so…zero excuses)

Yucca faxoniana (Faxon or Palm Yucca) are at peak flowering, though over half have died in the last decade.

Some of the Blue Ranger (Leucophyllum zygophyllum ‘Cimarron’) shrubs were starting to flower, so given the year of drought it is likely proof this section of the drip irrigation line is functioning.

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Returning home after an energizing but brisk hike, I drove past two of the Las Estancias neighborhood entries. ‘Silver Sierra’ Texas Mountain Laurel (Dermatophyllum secundiflorum ‘Silver Sierra’) is ending it’s 2 week show of flower and fragrance.

And the exit onto Anthem Road, back from where I drove from home for my hike and these photos.

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At home on my patio, I enjoyed some shade and the cool breezes, with my own, future back garden area at home. Mostly native wildflowers and grasses have been volunteering into this spot for all 5+ years living here.

From warm, dry afternoon light, to nearly the same vantage point with also dry but chilled morning light.

Only the Agave weberi and hybrid Opuntia aren’t native. In the ground we have Giant Dropseed (Sporobolus gigantea), Fluffgrass (Dasychloa pulchella), and Desert Marigold (Baileya multiradiata) slowly multiplying, as they sway and dance in the daily breezes.

And within the week, I was able to spend a couple hours returning to looking at my design ideas here and throughout the property.