'Reduce, reuse & regrow?'

Renovating a house and yard at the same time is too much for most homeowners, but Dr. Diana Escamilla took on both tasks when in March 2015 she settled in her home on Smith Lane in San Marcos, the Spring Lake Garden Club’s yard of the month for October.

Having spent over 20 years in the U.S. Army, Escamilla knows how to define and manage projects and get things done, including earning a doctorate in school psychology for her second career. As a bilingual school psychologist now in full-time post-graduate studies at Texas State University, she has become an expert in managing her professional time and resources while transforming her house into a beautiful home, both indoors and out.

Bronze and yellow chrysanthemums plus pink and red vinca are well mulched in bed by front walkway, with lantana and asparagus fern in adjoining beds.

When Escamilla moved in, she described the yard as “all weeds” with a few old sick trees. Removing the trees and bringing in several truckloads of fill dirt was the first step in landscaping, followed by liberal use of mulch obtained from the city of San Marcos. Unfortunately the first of a series of floods in May 2015 washed away the mulch and cinder block used to terrace the yard, and even swept away colorful talavera pottery collected for container plants such as hibiscus and plumeria. Escamilla rented a room in Kyle to live in while she cleaned up the house and yard after the deluge. Damage from rising water pointed to a need for stabilizing the house foundation with piers in addition to installing new wallboard and siding and closed cell insulation in all outside walls. Escamilla took this opportunity to add a new front porch and entry steps, while friends helped replace edging for planting areas with more free cinder blocks.

Plantings by the new front steps include blue sage, yellow lantana, flowering monkey grass and asparagus fern surrounding an Oklahoma redbud tree.

“I like to do everything as natural as I can,” Escamilla, who has used mostly recycled materials for her home renovation, said. Likewise, plantings for the post-flood landscape have been acquired mostly from cuttings, provided (and often planted) by friends or suggested by owners of plant nurseries. The mix of native and decorative plants makes a colorful and sustainable landscape on a corner lot in the Blanco Gardens neighborhood.

Curbside plantings in front of the Escamilla home begin with pink blossoms of Mexican petunias separated by cinder blocks from a line of agaves and yuccas, with a few other plants such as tropical milkweed added to the mix. Beyond the spiny green specimens and bordering the front walkway are planting beds with yellow flowered lantana and pink and red vinca, set next to the feathery fronds of asparagus fern. In honor of autumn, a few bronze and yellow chrysanthemums share the bed, extending the color spectrum and suggesting some of the colors in a narrow planting bed along the side street.

Sweet potato vine, purple tradescantia and red sage fill a long narrow bed by the street.

Escamilla constructed a tall fence along the side street for privacy in rooms facing this direction, and the fence also serves as a backdrop for curbside plants, including lime green sweet potato vine, purple tradescantia (also known as wandering jew), and brilliant red sage. More pale green sweet potato vine lines the far edge of the driveway in front. Although ornamental sweet potato plant (Ipomoea balatas) does produce edible tubers, it is especially bred for its striking foliage which may be lime green, purple, or almost black.

Now that both house renovation and landscape are almost perfected, Escamilla has another project in the works. She bought the vacant lot next door – “a pile of rocks and dirt” according to her description – and will move a small house purchased in Buda to this new location soon. Once the building is set in place, renovation can begin, and another new landscape can take shape. As with her own home, Escamilla has a handson approach to this new project: when a contractor brought his Bobcat to clear debris from the property, Escamilla asked him to show her how to use the machine so she could finish the job while he was away on another site. Clearly, a future visit to this block of Smith Lane will be needed to update the continuing story of remaking and reusing “as natural as possible.”