A look back at February Yards of the Month

The Spring Lake Garden Club features a yard of the month from September through May every year, but winter winners are often difficult to find. Winter gardening in Central Texas is a toss-up between gray rainy days and enough sun and warmth to support plants and even flowers. So for this February the Spring Lake Garden Club presents a look back at February gardens from the past five years, noting what sets them apart from other local landscapes and maintains interest in a difficult growing season.

Suzi Fields' home was the February 2015 Yard of the month. She used her front yard as an edible garden, complete with citrus trees and rows of cold-hardy vegetable crops.

In February 2015, the garden club featured the landscape of Suzi Fields in Rio Vista, who uses her front yard for edible plants, including citrus trees and vegetables. A thick layer of mulch protects hardy plants from the cold, and in her back yard she had healthy artichoke plants, which grow in cool conditions in the Salinas valley of California.

In February 2016, we featured the home of the Winfields on Quail Creek Road, where a steeply inclined but wellterraced front yard supports decorative grasses and perennials under large shade trees. The sunny side yard is perfect for cacti, sages, a sago palm, and yuccas, all providing varied forms and welcome green during the winter.

 The 2017 February Yard of the Month recipients used structural elements like the bare trunks of crape myrtle to provide interest in winter.

In February 2017, the Thornton home on Sierra Vista also relied on some cacti and green shrubs and gray cenizo (Texas sage) for garden interest, contrasting with the smooth sculptural trunks of a leafless crape myrtle tree. An old wagon in the circle in front of their entry serves as a container for potted plants with colorful leaves.

A striking mermaid figurine on the wooden gate of the Butler's home, the 2018 February Yard of the Month recipients, adds a pop of color and life to the yard.

In February 2018, the Butler home on Franklin Street balanced winter’s bare trees with deep green boxwood (neatly trimmed by deer) along the entry path, and pots of yellow blossoms filling in for the lantana which will grow again in the spring. They also added some striking yard ornaments, like the one on their wooden gate to the backyard, a mermaid figure — one of Butler’s collection of this San Marcos icon — with a “Welcome” sign.

A beautiful arbor provides a point of focus in the 2019 February Yard of the Month recipients landscape. 

In February 2019, the Healey home in Willow Creek featured winter garden heroes such as society garlic lining the rock edged beds around oak trees. Boxwoods near the entry contrast with smooth bare trunks of crape myrtle in the main yard, and sago palms by the street provide reliable greenery.

Thanks to hardy native plants like cacti, grasses, sages and yucca and a few favorite adoptees like boxwood, crape myrtle and sago palm, our landscapes in San Marcos can remain interesting in any kind of weather at any time of year.