Coleson Bruce presents "Crevice Gardens: Finding Natural Resilience in Central Texas"
Crevice gardening is cutting edge and popular in dry, cool-summer climates like Colorado’s. But here in Texas, traditional crevice gardening with alpine plants is a nonstarter thanks to our heat and humidity. Enter Coleson Bruce’s Texas-style crevice garden! Coleson created a Texas-tough crevice garden during the COVID lockdown, when he suddenly had time on his hands and a lawn of thirsty St. Augustine to kill. In place of traditional alpine granite, he used local Texas limestone to form the gardening crevices. Instead of alpine plants, he deployed dry-loving species found in Zones 7 and up. As soon as he got it planted, along came Snowpocalypse in 2021, followed by the hellish summer of 2022. Learn what became of it all, as Coleson shares his experience in designing, building, and maintaining a Texas crevice garden. Whether or not a crevice garden (or maybe a crevice container?) is in your future, discover innovative techniques and practical tips that may help you unlock the natural resilience of Central Texas gardens.
Speaker Bio
Coleson’s garden has been described by Kenton J. Seth, author of The Crevice Garden, as “one of the finest crevice gardens: I’d put it in top ten earth-wide, maybe even top five.” A lawyer by trade, Coleson’s background includes desert biology and sculpture, both of which played a role in his fascination with crevice gardening. What began as a small landscaping project during the COVID lockdown morphed into an 8-month, all-encompassing passion project, from which he emerged narrowly expert in crevice gardening — admittedly a relatively small field of competition. His garden has been featured in prominent gardening blogs, photographed by internationally known garden photographer Claire Takacs, and will be included in a forthcoming book by Pam Penick. Coleson lives in Austin with his wife and three young children.
IMPORTANT INFO:
1. UPDATE: This event will be held indoors in the event barn at Barton Springs Nursery, with heaters. Talks are normally held outdoors, weather permitting. In the event of rain, seating will be in the nursery's event barn.
2. If you feel ill on the day of the talk or have recently tested positive for COVID, you're urged to stay home. If you'd like to let Pam know (email [email protected]), she can try to fill your spot from the waitlist.
GARDEN SPARK is a speaker series on garden design, open by invitation (email [email protected] to get on the list) and hosted at Barton Springs Nursery in Austin.
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