familygarden

12 SUMMer 2014 • WiLDFLOWer

Free SpiritWritten by CHRIStIna PROCOPIOU

Luci and Ian Family GardenProvides Imaginative Nature Play

1402_FamGarden_Feature_Layout 1 5/5/14 10:26 AM Page 12

WiLDFLOWer • SUMMer 2014 13

Something captures Eve Hawkins’ attention

at the entrance to the Hill Country Grotto, a

key feature of the Wildflower Center’s new

Luci and ian Family Garden. the nearly 5-acre

garden is designed to provide children and

families opportunities to connect with the

natural world in an environment that encour-

ages unstructured play.

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TO B

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I SENT MY OLDER SON, LUKAS, to two differentnature-themed day camps the summer after he finished kinder-garten. In one, he and fellow campers dissected a squid fromthe bay and made nature journals bound by sticks. In the other,he dredged through muddy water and got stung by a bee whilehiking through the woods.

Lukas is eager to return for the third summer this year tothe latter informal camp for more muddy pants and potentialbee stings earned during unhurried time in natural areas.Campers are free to trade found bottle caps and take an interest– or not – in bird-watching. My younger son will join themwhen he is old enough to keep up with the group.

Author Richard Louv hypothesizes that kids who lack thesedirect experiences in nature could suffer from a host of behav-ioral problems he’s coined Nature Deficit Disorder. TheWildflower Center opened its answer to Nature DeficitDisorder on May 4 – the Luci and Ian Family Garden, a nearly5-acre play space that provides children and adults the opportu-nity to connect with the natural world in an environment thatencourages unstructured play. The garden is also a model forsustainable landscape design and creation – having participatedin the pilot project study of the Sustainable Sites InitiativeTMprogram that was developed by a partnership among theWildflower Center, the American Society of LandscapeArchitects and the United States Botanic Garden.

W. Gary Smith is the landscape architect and artist whodesigned the Luci and Ian Family Garden with staff and edu-cators at the Wildflower Center, under the guiding principlethat the new space evoke imaginative nature play among visi-tors. “If they don’t have a children’s garden already, most publicgardens now have one in the works,” says Smith. “And most aredriven by educational standards, designed for example to corre-late with school environmental education curriculums.”

What’s different, Smith says, about the Luci and Ian FamilyGarden is that – while there are opportunities for kids to learn– there will be little direct teaching going on.

Like many adults, when Smith was a child, he had the free-dom to ride his bike unescorted to play in the woods near hishome in northern Delaware. Long gone is the chance for mostkids today to do the same, but it is clear when visiting theFamily Garden that it was created with that spirit of freedomin mind. There’s even the Dinosaur Creek running through thenew garden – a direct translation of a creek in those woods nearSmith’s home where he marveled at organisms beneath rocks.

“There was nobody telling me anything or teaching meanything in those woods. We’ve tried to create a place like that– where there’s minimal interpretive signage with which parentscan bore disinterested kids. And if no one is there directlyteaching them anything, kids get the opportunity to get theirhands and feet wet in that Dinosaur Creek and create their

WitH SO Many COOL FeatUreS in this newWildflower Center attraction, the plants don’t take centerstage as much as they do in the adjacent Mollie StevesZachry texas arboretum, for example. but they areimpressive nonetheless.

Family Garden head gardener Samantha elkintonsays, “the gardened areas within the Luci and ian FamilyGarden were designed to not only show the beauty ofnative plants and natural habitat but also the playful andeducational qualities of native plants.

My daughter Charis, for example, loved studyingthe plants that we chose for the Mays Family natureSpiral to find the spiral in the leaves, seeds or flowersof the plants.”

the new space features:

• a nectar garden designed to attract pollinators withchocolate flower chosen so passersby can catch a whiffof chocolate;

• a giant play lawn and surrounding gardens designedfor kids to move about on;

• the maze featuring six species of native trees includingmountain laurel, cenizo, yaupon holly, barbados cherry,Wax myrtle and eastern red cedar that can be shorn andtrained into a thick, formal hedge;

• the grotto where spiky sotols sit on top – visible butout of reach of small hands and bodies;

• Creek gardens designed with riparian and creek-edgeplants;

• Xeric-edge gardens planted with Candellia andWheeleri sotol to enclose the garden in place of a fence;

• Spiral gardens that feature plants that have a spiralpattern, such as Datura wrightii or river fern; and

• the Woodland Edge garden, which borders the annand O.J. Weber butterfly Garden and features butterfly-friendly plants that naturally occur on a woodland edge.

GaRDEn HIGHLIGHtS

The Plants!

Head Family Garden Gardener SamElkinton’s daughter Charis enjoyingthe Family Garden.



CLOCKWISE Paul Odom hangs out in the Stumpery, an

assortment of tree trunks and parts inspired by a popular

Victorian-era garden feature. Corrina nafziger puts the

rest of the Luci and ian Family Garden in focus from its dry

creek overlook. Josephine Pitts hurries alongside the Hill

Country Grotto, a garden tradition made texas-centric.



own stories like I – and so many adults – once did,” says Smith.Once kids make those memories, Smith and Wildflower

Center staff reason, they’ll want to come back for more, andthey’ll learn even in the absence of formal teaching. They couldlearn about the groundwater recharge message behind the JeffWilson Memorial Watering Holes or about the importance ofnative plants to wildlife by peering through the Wildlife Blind.

And what about risk? Child development experts now ques-tion how today’s overprotected kids will fare making judgmentcalls about things that really are potentially dangerous whenfinally they emerge from the proverbial bubble wrap of modernchildhood – with no helicopter parent or padded playground insight.

Within the Family Garden’s Alice C. Tyler Stumpery, atfirst I bristled when I saw that the wood of its teepee-shapedtrees made for a ferocious splinter waiting to happen. Then Irecalled Lukas and his bee sting camp and exhaled.

A lot goes in to building a place where the main mission isfeeding kids’ individual imaginations with a goal of helpingchildren and families become more comfortable in naturethrough play. Wildflower Center Senior Director and SeniorBotanist Damon Waitt, Ph.D., played a key role in facilitatingthe project, which began six years ago with Smith’s originaldesigns.

Waitt looks back on 34 three-hour construction meetingsfor the project each year between Center staff and Spaw GlassConstruction – as well as on the lessons that no amount ofplanning could predict.

“Giant Birds’ Nests, for example, don’t come with aninstruction manual,” says Waitt. “For one, they are 8 feet acrossand 5 to 6 feet tall. We gathered all the grape vines from our270-acre site and still had to go out to staffer Philip Schulze’sfarm for more.

“Grape vines are as thick as your wrist, so bending andweaving them into a nest-like structure is no simple task. Each

DOn’t HaVe rOOM in your yard or patio for an 8-foot birds’ nest? no problem. you can create nature les-sons at home similar to those at the Center’s new Luciand ian Family Garden. the bette and nash Castro Giantbirds’ nests and Mays Family nature Spiral, for example,could be interesting topics for at-home discovery.

Discuss with the children in your life the differenttypes of birds’ nests. the more common include the cupnest – made mostly of grass and twine – and the moreobscure pendant nest that hangs from a tree branch.Make your own nest by collecting enough twigs, sticks,leaves, dry grass, small rocks, moss and pine needles tobe shaped into a round nest. Landscape architect andartist W. Gary Smith hopes children will let their imagi-nations soar in the Family Garden’s giant birds’ nests –after all, they could be space ships or rockets too!

the Mays Family nature Spiral allows children to seethe Fibonacci sequence – a pattern that can be observedacross flowers, plants, trees, fruits, insects and even ani-mals. the Fibonacci sequence starts with the numbers 1and 1 or 0 and 1. then depending on where you begin,each preceding number is the sum of the previous twonumbers. For example, if you start with 1 and 0, the nextnumber would be 1 and 1, which would make 2, and then1 and 2 would make 3, and 2 and 3 would make 5, and 3and 5 would make 8. you can choose to take your chil-dren outdoors, or – if it is a rainy day – allow your chil-dren to use any fruits or vegetables you have in yourkitchen to observe the sequence.

Visit www.wildflower.org/familygarden for fun sci-ence facts and ideas for self-guided exploration at theLuci and ian Family Garden.

FUn PROJECtS FOR KIDS

Home, WorktipS COMpiLeD by rOOHi r. MareDia

tHIS PaGE: Corrina nafziger and Clyde Cowan in front of the May’s Family

nature Spiral. aCROSS: Left To Right From Top To Bottom: Finn Gent dips

into the Dinosaur Creek; Eve Hawkins extending butterfly net into waterfall

at Hill Country Grotto; ariana Ochoa and Emmett McCaw in the Stumpery;

Victor Villalobos fills up; Zoe Yo touches mosaics inside the grotto; Leo Ivey

gets his footing on a limestone boulder made for pouring water through its

holes; Kevin Chen takes an up-close look at some discovery; Kids size up

their feet in the Dinosaur tracks; Olive Denbina makes her way down

Hopskotch Way.




birds’ nest took a week to weave.”Center arborist Andrew McNeil-Marshall took ownership

of this lesson in basket-weaving on a grand scale, owning theproject and learning fast that the thicker the piece of vine, theless pliable.

There were other challenges that come from making a builtplace look natural; to “make it look like God put it there” – asLady Bird Johnson once said to the architects of the currentWildflower Center. The Hill Country Grotto, for instance, is afeature visitors can walk inside to stay cool from the hot sum-mer Texas sun as a waterfall cascades from the top of the grot-to.

Both Waitt and Smith were surprised by its appearancebefore the exterior stones were set. Because the grotto had orig-inally been imagined six years ago as mounds of soil that youcould burrow into, Smith was a bit taken aback by the “concretebunker” that evolved into a house straight out of “The Hobbit.”

As a public garden with Texas native plant displays at itscore, the Wildflower Center has always emphasized the senseof place that native, locally sourced plants and materials givethe gardens. The plants are, of course, native to Texas, but thebuildings evoke distinct cultural influences on Texan architec-ture: the Spanish mission-style architecture of San Antonio, thenative white limestone used by German settlers and the typesof galvanized tin roofs you would see on mid-century ranchstyle Texas homes.

The Family Garden is similar in that it makes the English-garden style grotto right at home in Central Texas. “The natu-ral stone harvested from the construction site makes it so itwould be out of place virtually anywhere else,” says Smith. Thematerials are not only local, but the grotto was crafted by acareer stone mason – Steve Edwards – who had grown up nearthe Wildflower Center and come out of retirement to build it.

Kids are unlikely to appreciate the handwork involved inmaking tile in the May’s Family Nature Spiral or the nativeplants such as Texas wax myrtle shorn into a hedge in the Annand Roy Butler Metamorphosis Maze, but adult visitors may.

That may be Wildflower Center Executive Director SusanRieff ’s favorite thing about the Family Garden – that there issomething for all ages to enjoy. Kids can literally run wild onthe Ellen Clark Temple Play Lawn, or families can gather onthe elevated boardwalk in the Diana Poteat Hobby Dry CreekOverlook to gain a new perspective on trees. Adults may ormay not hopscotch on Hopscotch Way but will appreciate thatthere are hopscotch stones that are hidden math lessons in thetraditional, octagonal-shaped and rectangular hopscotch courts.

Rieff says, “We struggled with the name before Luci cameup with the concept of a family garden – a garden not just forkids but for parents and other adults too. In a world wherethere are so many don’ts for kids, I like to think of the Luci andIan Family Garden as a ‘garden of yes.’” a




aBOVE LEFt Emmy Shade takes a seat on one of the whimsical metal benches

shaped like a butterfly in the Family Garden. Other benches are shaped like-

dragonflies, hummingbirds, sunflowers or trees. aBOVE RIGHt From where

Kelinda Chen rests, native oak and mesquite trees make up the background.

BELOW Heather (right) and Harper (left) Wolle gaze at the sky from a seat in

one of three Giant birds’ nests. OPPOSItE PaGE Mark Odom (right) and Olive

Denbina dig in at the Luci and ian Family Garden, where kids are encouraged to

get dirty and otherwise explore the natural world in a safe environment.


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