July 16, 2025
I made a return visit to Coleson Bruce’s front-yard crevice garden a few weeks ago and found it bristling and blooming and fabulous as always. Clusters of beaked yucca (Yucca rostrata), which Coleson strategically planted to screen street views from inside the home, are bigger and more bobble-headed than ever. Just look at these beauties!
Bell-flowered red yucca (Hesperaloe campanulata) sends up bloom spikes in summer that resemble long fishing poles, with moonshine-yellow and rose-pink flower lures for hummingbirds.
Coleson’s gardening friend and neighbor, John Ignacio, who helped with plant selection, has shared the following with me about them:
“Those are Hesperaloe campanulata I raised from seed from my specimen. It’s a Mexican species with the most open flowers in the genus that puts on much taller and more branched and floriferous spikes than our native parviflora [the standard red yucca]. They’re one of the rarest species in the genus and worthy of much broader distribution.”
A wide view of the garden in front of Coleson’s mid-century modern house
Coleson created two distinct crevice gardens when he overhauled his front yard during the pandemic. The one closest to the front door has chunky boulders mounded to make a dry-garden hill. Ocotillo, small agaves, dyckia, small palms and palmettos, and xeric groundcovers thrive among the rocks.
Detail view
And here it is from the side, with ocotillo in leaf. Ocotillo is unusual here in Austin and rots if not given excellent drainage. Even when happy it’s generally a collection of bare, upright, thorny branches — interesting, but perhaps an acquired taste? After a rain, it clothes itself in tightly held green leaves.
Hesperaloe campanulata flowering along the front walk
Its pretty, bell-shaped flowers bob at eye level on those fishing-pole stems.
Hummingbird bait
Coleson’s second crevice garden is composed of limestone slabs tilted and sandwiched together to form tight crevices. This one fills most of a curbed island bed along the street, tucked within a circular driveway. The crevices provide a root-cooling microclimate for heat- and dry-loving plants.
From the street, Pride of Barbados and palmetto (silver saw, I think) screen the crevice garden from view.
The feathery foliage and tropicalesque flowers of Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima) don’t hint at how summer-hardy this plant is for Texas gardens, but it is.
Once established, it needs little water to flower all summer long.
Just beyond Coleson’s garden, a stratified cliff wall rises along Bull Creek — a fantastic borrowed view for his rock garden.
At one end of the house, a 400-year-old live oak’s expansive canopy shades a tree swing and stone table.
A loose layer of wood mulch — not piled up against the trunk — is better than turf grass at letting rainwater reach the tree roots.
At the other end of the house, ‘Silver Peso’ Texas mountain laurel offers a cool contrast with hot-flowering Pride of Barbados and lantana.
Another peek at the entry garden in all its textural glory
And the sculptural crevice garden
Thanks for the beautiful garden visit, Coleson!
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