A Landscape Designer's 40-Year Garden Oasis in Dallas | Garden Tour #GardenTour #TexasGarden

You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. So here we go, opening up to the outside. One of my other favorite things, and they seem to always be fountains, is this of these transistors that would be on an electrical station. I've always wanted to do that. I finally found somebody that had these old colored, I mean the old brown ones, and did this faucet on it. It makes me very happy, and it makes the birds really happy too, because they like just a little bit of water on their back, which is heavenly. Through the windows, I stare at this a lot, like a zombie stare, sort of. Once again, lots of architectural stuff, can't stop it, and you can move it all around, which I love. You know, he sits here sometimes, sometimes he's like that, sometimes there's another flower up there. It's really fun. It's rearranging outdoor furniture, when it's not too heavy. So you walk out, and then you kind of walk into the yard, which is interesting. Makes the house kind of more benign, and sit down, and the yard has sort of rolling areas in it, which makes it, it makes it engaging. So really, still the main entrance to my yard is here, because everybody's used to coming in garden first. That's the way it always was. Parking is right out here, and this is the main garden gate. So people come in through here, open this up, and you're outside where the parking is, but you really enter into the whole reality of the garden, and the compound as such, and you don't focus on house, because house is kind of hidden on the corner. But you walk in, and what everybody saw for 30 plus years, and my outside area, and it really flows well. So it's more fun to kind of start a party this way, than them coming in to my front door, knocking on that small tiny space, to me. And it, it functions well. It functions really well. This is a large LED light box, that I got from a building downtown, that they were doing for their, kind of their model unit, and at night it goes through about five different colors, and it's on a small rotation, and it's incredible. I can't believe I own it. It wasn't meant to last this long, so I'm always redoing it, I feel like. And the yard kind of, I had an old sort of gazebo here, but it was falling by the wayside, so this got modernized by lifting up this art piece here, and the yard just kind of rolls. You know, once again, it's an old yard. I've got an incredible fountain here, that I like a lot too. Water everywhere is good energy, I feel. So right in here is probably the first fountain I put in my yard. Also to help distinguish noise, because it's right on the street, to kind of, and you can see it all through the yard. It's lit up at night, and it's, it's its own environment, and it's an architectural pot that I found somewhere, and hadn't worn away by the water on it forever, and now with these trees, it's really stuck away, but very much so. I kind of go around here, and recently I had been to someplace in Newport, Rhode Island, where they had built outdoor rooms, which was one of the most incredible gardens I've ever been to, and this becomes an outdoor room. We might approach it later as I come this way, and gets a little brighter in there, but this is going to be a wall of green. I just put this in about two years ago, and it was a good stuck away area of the yard. I could make, I could make the room happen, I feel like, and as we go in, I kind of did an entrance away. Once again, like I'm always doing something out of funky pieces, and here's this kind of off-kilter stuff that I like to do that's a little crazier. The outdoor room that I've got here is fun, because there's a piece that a client had in their backyard that I get, got to get, because they were moving, and I always loved it, and she's a beautiful shrine here. I've got a little funky outdoor mirror, which I like a lot, and this interesting bench I found, but it is like a contemplative little room, and I really love the fact that I could put a room in and testament to these people, and it's kind of fun to sit in here by yourself, especially in the early mornings in the summer, a whole lot. No, I love it here. We're right on the corner of my lot too, which is amazing, so it'll grow in. So here we go. So now when I come out of my new little garden room, I can walk out into the yard, which is really expansive. My house is all the way on the other side, but then we have a lot garden that's been here a long, long time, and places where I can do architectural pieces. The round boxwoods I dig a whole lot. It seems like there are a lot of round things in my yard lately, but I love that, and little spots of trees and lights and architectural pieces here and there, which I enjoy. So when you, when you're looking around, you see the fact that planted these trees in the middle. They're kind of a little knoll of trees, which really works well, and then we come over here, and here you get to the place, which is what I call the garden house now, which was my original house for like 37 years, all the way at the end of the property, and when I first lived here, I had to come in through a gate this way and park on the street, so that was quite a different story, but I built this facade wall with, once again, the glass window from like scraps, and my friend that did the window was incredible, and there were two warehouse windows. We did one on top of each other, and now it's kind of turned into a garden around it because because it's gotten so much shadier and so much cooler, and I'm not in and out of this house as much, so I've kind of gardened the outside of it a little bit more, and it rolls into the place where was a patio off of this garden, where I would often entertain and just sit outside when I just first had my lot here, and I've been planting extra trees because we really had hot summers to give us some shade and relief during the summertime, so same thing, you know, architectural pieces, you know, petrified wood, something that I bought from different people, this thing too, petrified wood, it's all fun. When I built the house, I was really into early the broken tile stuff, so I molded this around the door as sort of a frame and put in the broken tile and even did the funny thing with the little sailboats and did a motif, young and a little hokey at that point, but still fun, and it works. Well, for outdoor living here, what really happened, my original house that I lived in for so long was so small that I started building structures on the outside with just residue of landscape material and stones and other kind of found objects, and I built an outdoor dining space, then a covered space where I did kind of the tile work, and then sort of a studio, and now that studio's evolved into being an outdoor kitchen because I'm not doing the tile work anymore, so my living is really outside, and it's outside with these structures, and the house folds to the outside very well visually, and people come in and out, but when I've got a lot of people over, we're sort of outside oriented where you can sit outside, be in undercover, and wander in these rooms that I've built out of all, frankly, just broken stone materials and other architectural pieces I've collected. From the history of time, having my small house, wanting to be outside, this was the outside patio, here's the outside fountain, this is where I always hung out and talked. Then after 10 years, I bought the piece of property that I'm walking up to and built an outdoor structure because I'd been to Guatemala, and I'd been to the south of France, and realized how people have open-air seating. My house inside was too small for a big dining area, so I built this open-air dining area, which I've used forever, and it's really a great gathering place. When you talked about hosting and thinking about that, this is where people walk in and come to. It's a great place to gather, cozy, sit down. We'll walk into another little room where I have a bar. I've got the outdoor tile fireplace that I'm very proud of having, one of the first outdoor fireplaces I'd seen around Dallas. And it's sunken in, too. I like building things that are sort of sunken in. It wraps around us. So from that room came this small room that stopped right here, and it was really kind of my little tile workshop for a while, because behind here I had stuff I used for my business. But this turned out to be a great place, and eventually it's worked out to where it's really, it's the bar. If somebody comes in, they can come in here, liquor set up, this full of ice, wine, an old chopping block I got from an old, what do you call it, a grocery store in Dallas. Doors I got when I went to India. Lots of things migrated into this room because of the nature of the beast. And once again, it's all built out of, you know, just fragmented stone material. And even funny things like this on the wall is something that I made when it was cold and my guys were here and we didn't have anything to do. I had them put the rock in and do tile stuff, because I couldn't get enough of it. Plus it freaks people out because of the doll's head, hands, which is what I love. So now we walk into another room, which is an outdoor kitchen now. When I got this other piece of property, I cut this out and put in a door here. And then I built this into what was a studio space to use for outdoor dining and for tile work. Just recently, in the past year, I cut a wall out here. I got these windows from a house that was from an architect, a really good friend of my brother's. They were tearing part of it down and reoriented the skylight because this old room kind of leaked a little bit because it only had a metal ceiling. So now it's airtight. And I've turned it into really an outdoor dining area, which I use a lot starting now is when it all kind of comes together. And a lot of this has been pieced together by old casement windows, things pulled together. Over here is where my washer dryer used to be from the old house. So I realized, huh, I've got I've got a little heater on demand. I've got cold water. So this works out as a kitchen, obviously. There was an old armoire I had that was made out of this neat green material. We cut it up and built a kitchen counter. All that kind of morphed out. Then I was lucky enough to put in an outdoor wood burning oven, which I'm just learning on how to use. And friends come over and help me with that because it's a it's a tight one. But you can see the little mosaic pieces that were all over this room that were here. This room has been here twenty five years. It's I opened up this window so I can crank up and you can service from a patio outside. This has turned out to be a really good entertaining space. A niece of mine just got married here like two and a half weeks ago. And she and her husband are 25. And it was perfect. It worked out great, perfect for entertaining. They didn't cook in here. It was too hot, but they did use they did use this as a bar instead. And this room kind of flows into how it all functions, where it used to be sort of a dead end. Now I put a door here that goes to where I work from, where my crew comes in and out of. But sitting here, I can put an extension on this table. There can be 12 people eating in here, which is really pretty great. And the new, the new windows and the light and knocking this door out has made it a totally different space, which I love. And it also kind of funny. It showed up the little things I had in corners that were tile pieces. So it's all kind of flanks. It gets a little grotto like I think as you go. And this door I go in and out of all the time. Because it's fun. I can store plants and stuff in here. And this is a big giant plant room that I put in also about 20 years ago and added on, cutting out some windows here and coming in and finally putting in a heater and even a water weathering thing to cool off the room or get moisture and turn it actually into kind of like a small, a small little greenhouse, which is working pretty well. Because before it got really hot in here. And I've got birds everywhere. There's some canaries here. But this room's neat. It's neat at night and it has a good feeling. And the energy of this being open and that whole space being open, much more airtight because I put on a better roof. And I put it I made it into really an outdoor room. So now I can have my stone back. I can entertain out here in the in the stone kind of kitchen here and not have to worry about it being necessarily inside my house, which is fine too. It's all about wandering the wandering the space here and there. Another neat piece that somebody gave me from Marfa and it was just this round wooden piece of just kind of thing with holes and I built it sideways so I can store wine in here. I haven't brought it back. So everything that hangs around kind of ends up with a purpose, which is really kind of wonderful. And the light is really nice in here too. So it's pretty special. It's great for me. It's really great. This has become a really cool outdoor living working space. And I just need to get the wood burning stove down better. I have friends come over. I haven't quite gotten it down to my own satisfaction. I cook some stuff in it, but it's getting better all the time. It's only been a year and a half that I've gotten that in there. So it's a new deal. This will be the telling time. Otherwise summer, it's just too hot, obviously. So it's it's it's a cool place. It's a very cool place. Really lucky to have this. Thanks for watching. Go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content and shopping guides.