A new book called "Texas Public Gardens" celebrates parks and horticultural collections around the state from Hermann Park in Houston to the Bell Park Cacti Garden in Hale Center to the Tyler Rose Garden with its glorious annual Texas Rose Festival, this year Oct. 8-11.
Author Elvin McDonald, currently director of the Des Moines Botanical and Environmental Center in Iowa, grew up in the small Texas Panhandle town of Perryton, where he recalls the public park was filled with tubs of petunias and geraniums, with Chinese elms shading the picnic tables.
He later lived in Houston, where he says the Bayou Bend Gardens is "the quintessential place to see azaleas and magnolias in bloom." Bayou Bend is part of Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, as is the Cullen Sculpture Garden, which McDonald describes as a "green acre in the heart of Houston" and "one of the finest sculpture gardens in the world," designed by Isamu Noguchi.
Other gardens mentioned in "Texas Public Gardens" (Pelican Publishing, $35) include the Bell Park Cacti Garden in Hale Center, north of Lubbock; the Stephen F. Mast Arboretum, with more than 850 types of azaleas, in Nacogdoches; the Forbidden Gardens in Katy, described by McDonald as "a glimpse into ancient China"; and the Dallas Arboretum, which he says "has almost as many tulips as Holland."
The coffee-table style hardcover profiles 33 parks and gardens, from the Amarillo Botanical Gardens to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin to the El Paso Desert Botanical Garden at Keystone Heritage Park.
Copyright 2009  AP Features
