Dallas Open Day (part 4) - the Nichols garden

The fourth garden I visited last Saturday on the Garden Conservancy's Open Day tour in Dallas was at the home of Matthew Nichols (who was kind enough to show me all around).

This is another garden that I hope will be entered in my front yard photo contest next month, because it was really good.

(here's the link to the first one, if you want to start from the beginning)


The first photo I have here is of his driveway, which had a row of citrus trees going along it to screen the side of the home. I imagine that this cools off the house considerably.

 

 Around to the left was the front door, which had a bay tree beside the steps up to it:

This was about when I ran across Matthew, and he showed me this over on the side of his other house (he owns the one next door, too), which to my surprise was a variegated tangerine! This would make a great edible hedge:

Then he showed me his backyard, which was in two parts. This is the back of his other house:

The one on the left is of course a yucca and the right photo is of a sago variety that is endangered ... he had several there. 

This was the back of his main home (click the photos to make them larger):

  

Another yucca

Tapioca plant

Really nice deck with all sorts of edibles around it

Several fruit trees

If you go down some steps, you come to another little courtyard, with this off to your left: 

This is a loquat tree (Eriobotrya japonica), also known as the Asian plum. Matthew told everyone to try one, so I did ... it's a bit like an apricot in taste, but fuzzy on the outside like a peach is. The stone is almost perfectly round, not at all like a plum stone.

I went out front to look at his impressive collection of agaves before I left to see the last garden. Here are a few of them: