Create A Cowboy Garden

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Visions of the Old West are filled with cowboys and cattle drives, wood frame farmhouses and log cabins. We who love all that is western surround ourselves with the art, artifact and architecture that has epitomized this golden era of America’s youth. Yet rarely is that romance taken into the garden to extend this ambiance.

The western style garden responds to two influences, that of native plants and the antiques of early America. The plants are those found from Montana south to Texas and west to California. Their names come up time and again in cowboy songs and poems.

The Texas bluebonnet is the lupine of California. Oklahoma redbuds and osage orange, mesquite and cottonwood are familiar to anyone who has read the classics. Even the prickly pear and jumping cholla are entrenched in our folklore and belong in this garden as well.

If you look closely at the blossom of lupine wildflowers, you’ll notice they are shaped just like those of redbud. It’s because they both fall into the pea family of legumes. These plants don’t require soil nitrogen because they obtain it from the atmosphere — a most unique characteristic. As a result, they thrive in less than ideal soils of the arid West where other nitrogen-needy plants don’t stand a chance.

Prickly pear cactus, (Opuntia) is about as western as you can get. With hundreds of different varieties, it’s difficult to tell them apart. But some native to North America can range north into Utah, proving their cold-hardiness. The best way to collect prickly pear is to take cuttings of those growing close to you. These have proved their adaptability. When these cacti bloom they are incredibly beautiful and the fruit that ripens in summer is delectable. To harvest the fruit use a pair of barbecue tongs to break it off, then hold over a stove flame to burn off the thorns and painful microscopic glochids.

The cowboy garden enjoys art just as any other style. The quintessential decoration is an old wagon wheel, which can still be found at antique dealers. Stout buckboard wheels and delicate buggy wheels each contribute a slightly different look. Even hubs of very large wheels make super stools or pedestals for potted plants.