November 06, 2026
You know that excited feeling when you open a box of plants from a mail-order nursery? You peer inside, trying to recall what you ordered, eager to see how the plants look after enduring the shipping process. You tease each pot out of its packing material. Ta-da! Cool new plants ready to experiment with in your garden.
High Country Gardens was one of the first online nurseries — if not the first — I ever received a shipment from. Founder David Salman sent me a big box of agastaches, the prize for a photo contest I’d won, along with an encouraging personal note about growing them in the sauna-like conditions of Central Texas. With that, David won me over. We kept in occasional touch, and he sent me a few other plants to trial later on. He also made an appearance at the Garden Fling in Austin in 2018.
When David died in 2022 I knew we’d lost a giant in the gardening world. As a plantsman and pioneering proponent of waterwise gardening, he introduced many fantastic plants to the nursery trade including ‘Blonde Ambition’ blue grama, ‘Raspberry Delight’ salvia, ‘Dark Violet’ scutellaria, and ‘Ava’ agastache. He changed the way people garden in the American West, helping them see the beauty and value of plants that thrive in arid, higher-elevation climates.
I never saw David’s home garden in Santa Fe while he was living. But the opportunity arose in early September of this year. Austin designer Patrick Kirwin introduced me to Ava Salman, David’s widow and co-founder of High Country Gardens. Yes, the Ava that ‘Ava’ agastache was named for. She kindly invited me to come visit and gave me a personal tour.
The garden isn’t far from town but feels somewhat rural thanks to its large lot. In Santa Fe style, there’s an outer garden and an inner courtyard garden behind a sheltering adobe wall.
Ava told me that David was the gardener during their 41-year marriage. (Her focus at High Country Gardens was on marketing and the print catalog and website.) But since his passing four years ago, she’s been learning to care for the garden.
Mr. Biscuits kept us company as we walked around.
Agave
In the courtyard, hummingbirds zipped around, wings trilling.
They sparred aerobatically like Snoopy and the Red Baron.
Outside the garden wall, it felt a little less like a hummingbird battlefield. I admired this bobblehead Yucca rostrata…
…and a silver-green dwarf pinyon pine bookending the gate.
An elevated bed along the wall features agave, prickly pear, yucca, pines, and flowering perennials.
Prairie zinnia (Zinnia grandiflora), I think
I love the mix of spiky and bristly evergreens paired with soft perennials.
Faxon yucca — a starburst of sword-like leaves
In the back garden, covered porches for relaxing and cooking overlook a native lawn of blue grama grass.
The view from the porch
‘Blonde Ambition’ blue grama
Brown-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia triloba)
Mojave sage (Salvia pachyphylla)
Hardy plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides)
Rabbitbrush and hummingbird trumpet
Yucca with curly filaments
A euphorbia, maybe?
It was delightful to meet Ava and see her and David’s garden. I met two of her friends as well: artist David Loren Bass (left) and gardener Kenny Sanchez. Thanks for the lovely visit, Ava!
Now that I’m living in a high-country climate, I look forward to growing some of David’s plant introductions. I know I’ll think of him when I do.
For a tour of another Santa Fe garden I visited in September, click here.
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