Texas Hill Country is beautiful, but the summers of 100°F heat and caliche soil make gardening a challenge. Residents of West Austin and Dripping Springs often face huge water bills from thirsty lawns and brownouts in August.
There’s another choice: Modern Hill Country Landscape Design. Think less “pile of rocks.” When done properly, native xeriscaping can be lush, colorful, and planned to flourish in your conditions while adding real value to your property. Blazek Landscapes has been perfecting our hill country designs for 20 years. Here, we give you the insider knowledge you should have before breaking ground.
Know Your “Hill Country Toolkit”
Soil & Drainage: Use What You Have
If there’s one thing you should know about Hill Country soil, it’s that it’s not really “soil” at all. Over most of the Hill Country, you have a thin veneer of topsoil resting atop solid limestone rock, or else a deep bed of caliche. Caliche is calcium-rich hardpan that drains poorly and prohibits deep planting. Where the ground dips slightly, puddles form after heavy rains. On slopes, water runs off before your plants have a chance to absorb it.
Successful Hill Country xeriscaping in Dripping Springs and West Austin often begins with combating these drainage issues before breaking ground. Amending caliche beds with expanded shale or compost can help. Sometimes, French drains or dry creek beds can divert unwanted runoff. Raised planting beds may be necessary where shallow rock prohibits normal root development. Correct the drainage problems first, and most drought-tolerant Hill Country plants will do the rest.
The Deer Factor
“Drought-tolerant” and “deer-resistant” pretty much go hand in hand here in the Hill Country. White-tailed deer are ubiquitous and will nibble a new landscape if given the chance. Choosing plants for this area means designing with deer pressure in mind from the get-go. Luckily, many of our favorite Hill Country natives (Texas Sage, Agarita, Red Yucca, Agave) possess inherent deer resistance thanks to their texture, smell, or taste.
Smart Hardscaping
When it comes to Hill Country landscaping, one of the strongest tools we have isn’t alive. Stone. Local stone, such as Lueders limestone and Texas flagstone, is beautiful, durable, and uniquely suited to Hill Country landscaping. When used creatively, hardscaping elements like patios, walkways, retaining walls, outdoor kitchens, and fire pit areas reduce your overall turf footprint while increasing livable space.
One of our goals with hardscaping is always to blend it with your planting beds to create a seamless design. Think gravel paths, decomposed granite mulched beds, or even dry creek beds. These elements help you to slash water usage while adding interest and texture that grass just can’t provide.
Do Your Landscape in Phases – You Don’t Have to Do it All at Once
A complete xeriscape conversion is one of the best things you can do for a Hill Country property, but it doesn’t have to be done all at once. We often suggest to clients that they take a phased approach. Pick one change that will have a big impact. Measure your water usage and see how much you save. Then do the next phase.
The two most popular Phase 1 projects are: installing a flagstone or decomposed granite patio in place of a high-water-use turf area near the home. This instantly lowers your irrigated square footage and creates a usable outdoor room for you to enjoy. Or, eliminate that section of your front yard that seems to need the most water. Replacing a thirsty lawn with a native planting bed will cut your water use and exponentially improve your curb appeal. Each phase you complete will lower your water bill and upkeep costs and bring you closer to your dream landscape. Many clients find themselves surprised by how much change one well-planned phase can create.
Top Drought-Tolerant Plants for Central Texas
These are the main plants you will find in almost every Blazek Landscapes xeriscape design. Design in layers. Trees for structure, shrubs for mass/screening, perennials for seasonal color, and groundcovers for filler along the edges.
Texas Mountain Laurel (Sophora secundiflora)
Admittedly slow-growing but plenty long-lived, it bursts into bloom with deep purple clusters in late winter and early spring, with a grape fragrance. Evergreen, drought-tolerant once established, and generally deer resistant, you’ll find this native used often in Bee Cave and Lakeway landscapes.
Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis)
Native to southern Texas and Mexico, Desert Willow is a fast-growing tree that can survive cold winters and offers months of blooms. Its flowers resemble trumpets and bloom in colors ranging from pink to lavender to white. It grows well in rocky, well-drained Hill Country soil and attracts hummingbirds and bees. But as its name implies, this tree does well in dry climates and requires very little water once established.
Cedar Elm (Ulmus crassifolia)
The Cedar Elm is the only elm tree native to Texas, and one of our most underused shade trees for Central Texas landscapes. It tolerates rocky soil, drought, heat, and even clay pretty well, which doesn’t hurt. It produces great shade in summer and gracefully drops its leaves in fall to allow the warming sun to shine through in the winter.
Hardy Shrubs & Subshrubs
Texas Sage / Cenizo (Leucophyllum frutescens)
Texas Sage is one of the most dependable flowering shrubs in the Hill Country. Adored for its silvery grey foliage that looks beautiful year-round, it really puts on a show after summer rainfall: suddenly you’ll have what looks like a cloud of lavender-purple blooms all over the plant – hence the common name “barometer bush.” Exceptionally drought-tolerant and deer-resistant, it loves the alkaline soils prevalent throughout most of the Hill Country and is in nearly every Dripping Springs landscaping palette we create.
Agarita (Mahonia trifoliolata)
As tough as they come, Agarita is a native evergreen shrub with adorable deer-resistant holly-like leaves, fragrant yellow flowers in spring, and bright red berries that are a favorite with wildlife. It makes an excellent security planting or natural barrier shrub, works beautifully in naturalistic planting designs, and requires almost no supplemental watering once it’s established.
Red Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora)
Red Yucca is a graceful clumping accent plant with fine-textured leaves that arch and sweep upward, culminating in tall stalks of coral-red flowers that hummingbirds flock to. It blooms for months from late spring into fall, needs practically zero upkeep after it’s established, and looks amazing massed on walls and driveways or as part of a mixed border.
Perennials That Will Attract Pollinators
Autumn Sage / Salvia Greggii
Autumn Sage blooms heavily in red, pink, coral, and white from spring until frost. It bounces back quickly from the heat and drought we Texans experience each year and responds well to mid-season pruning, re-blooming abundantly. Hummingbirds and butterflies adore Autumn Sage.
Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta)
Cheerful, tough, and quintessentially Texan, Black-eyed Susans add warm golden-yellow color to your Hill Country garden landscape from late spring through summer. They grow and naturalize easily, self-seeding in areas with good drainage, preferring full sun and little water. These beautiful flowers look stunning when planted next to native grasses and blue salvias, and their seed heads provide winter nutrition for birds.
Mexican Bush Sage (Salvia leucantha)
Mexican Bush Sage seems to come alive in late summer, when most of your other flowers are beginning to fade. Its graceful stems of purple-and-white flowers boast a velvet texture, and bloom from late summer until first frost. Mexican Bush Sage provides important late-season color for pollinators, and will attract migrating butterflies and hummingbirds to your landscape. It’s a must-have plant to mix in with ornamental grasses for outstanding color in the fall.
Groundcovers & Accents
Silver Ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea)
Silver Ponyfoot is a native trailing groundcover with tiny silver-dollar-shaped leaves that glitter in the sun. It beautifully fills out rocky, bare areas with thin soil, spills over walls and edges gracefully, and happily tolerates full sun and drought. Use it as a lawn replacement in small areas or as a textural groundcover between flagstones and boulders.
Whale’s Tongue Agave (Agave ovatifolia)
With fat rosettes up to two feet wide with brilliant blue-grey leaves, this beauty creates instant focal interest in any garden design. It’s cold-hardy to at least 0°F, needs next to no water once established, and requires almost no maintenance. Highly deer-resistant, this sculptural beauty shines year-round and looks even more amazing with landscape lighting.
Gulf Muhly Grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris)
Native to Texas and Mexico, Gulf Muhly is one of the showiest native grasses you can put in your yard. In October and November, fluffy clouds of deep pink-magenta blooms transform entire hillsides into a haze of pastel pink. It’s tough, drought-tolerant, deer-resistant, and adds great movement and texture to the landscape year-round. Nothing says Texas like a mass planting of this grass along a roadside, berm, or slope in the fall.
Design Principles for a Water-Wise Landscape
Hydrozoning: Right Plant, Right Zone
Place drought-tolerant natives next to thirsty tropical plants, then water them like the tropicals need, and you will over-water the natives (which can hurt them) and waste a lot of water in the process.
An efficiently designed Hill Country xeriscape will probably have three irrigation zones. A high-water-use zone near the house for containers or maybe a small plot of annuals if you want more pops of color; a moderate-use zone for established shrubs and Perennials that will benefit from occasional deep watering; and finally a true xeric natives zone and hardscape areas that get nearly all of their water from rainfall after the first year. Plan your irrigation layout around these zones, and you’ll cut your water usage considerably.
Mulch
Exposed soil around your plant roots is the enemy in a Hill Country summer. Hot soil bakes roots at damaging temperatures; it loses water quickly and forms a hard crust on the surface that sheds light rain rather than absorbing it. A 2–3″ blanket of mulch, hardwood mulch, cedar mulch, or decomposed granite for those super dry areas– keeps soil temperature and moisture levels where plants will thrive.
Pull mulch back a few inches from stems to avoid rot. Replenish mulch every year as it decomposes, and choose local or regional materials when available. Decomposed granite and crushed limestone both look right at home in the Hill Country.
Cut Back on Turf Grass
Traditional grass lawns are already frustratingly sparse in most Central Texas yards because conventional St. Augustine grass is among the thirstiest plants you can put in your landscape. It’s also prone to failures from our thin, rocky soils here in the Hill Country. turfgrass where you really need it for play areas, dog runs, or that prime slice of real estate visible from the front street, replace St. Augustine with Native Buffalo Grass or a drought-tolerant alternative like Zoysia. You can cut your water usage in half or more just by switching grass varieties.
A dry creek bed lined with native stone and gravel is a lovely way to manage seasonal stormwater, and it doesn’t need any irrigation at all. Gravel walkways, flagstone patios, and planted beds full of natives above are beautiful, provide more wildlife benefit than a lawn ever will, and require far less maintenance than mowing.
Maintenance Tips: Beyond Survival Yard Care Guide
Planting new landscaping can be exciting, but don’t forget that maintenance is key to keeping your new yard healthy and happy for years to come. Follow these tips for caring for your landscaping beyond just making sure it survives.
The “First Year” Rule
Contrary to popular belief, drought-tolerant plants are not immune to the heat during their first year in the ground. Proper watering during establishment is critical to helping your newest plants grow deep roots, so they’ll be able to access water on their own in the coming years. Without deep roots, your plants will scorch no matter how “drought-tolerant” they are once mature.
The rule of thumb is to water new plants two to three times a week for the first month after planting. Then taper off to watering once a week until the end of the first growing season. After their first year, many Texas Native plants can easily go year-round on just rainwater, save for supplemental watering during severe drought. A little patience in year one can ensure your plants thrive for years to come.
Best Times To Prune Perennials
Many perennial flowers and plants actually bloom better with some thoughtful pruning! For many Salvias, like Autumn Sage and Mexican Bush Sage, cut back roughly one-third of the plant’s length in mid-summer months (usually late June or early July). This will stimulate new growth that will bloom heavily in the fall. Plants like Black-Eyed Susans can also be deadheaded to help prolong bloom times throughout the season.
Woody shrubs like Texas Sage and Desert Willow should really only be pruned into natural shape; they tend to do best when left alone rather than cut into tight formal shapes. Light pruning after bloom season is fine for most Hill Country shrubs, but wait until late winter or early spring to do major pruning so you don’t accidentally cut off next year’s flower buds.
Choose Drip Irrigation Over Spray Heads
There’s really only one scenario where spray irrigation is better than drip systems: if you’re watering grass. Native plants and xeriscapes don’t need the waste from water spray heads thrown onto their foliage. Not only is most of the water lost to evaporation during the summer months, when plants need it most, but watering from above can also promote fungal diseases in some plant species.
Native plant roots also grow deep and wide, so they don’t need surface water that seeps into the soil. Slow drip irrigation puts water where roots can’t reach it otherwise. Fit a smart irrigation controller to adjust watering schedules based on rainfall and evapotranspiration rates, and you’ll have an irrigation system that only runs when the plants need it. An efficiently designed watering system can be a game-changer if you live in Spicewood or Westlake and are subject to city water restrictions during droughts.
How To Best Prepare For Water Restrictions
OK, so you live in an area with water restrictions, whether it’s the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, Lower Colorado River Authority, City of Dripping Springs, or City of Austin utility service area? Rainwater is nice, but drought conditions like Stage 2, Stage 3, and Stage 4 water restrictions are a reality here in Central Texas.
Stage 2 and Stage 3 water restrictions typically restrict outdoor watering to certain days and times. Stage 4 restrictions pretty much prohibit all outdoor watering for homeowners with established landscaping. Having a properly designed xeriscape is one of the best ways you can rest easy during drought conditions and water restrictions. A landscape that’s designed around deep-rooted Hill Country natives, efficient drip irrigation zones, and layered mulching can typically survive periods of water restriction with little damage while everyone else’s lawn dies off.
Your New Sustainable Hill Country Yard
If done right, drought-tolerant landscaping is better than the alternative. It means a yard that actually looks great in July. It means attracting hummingbirds to your Red Yucca. It means smelling Mountain Laurel in February. It means waves of Gulf Muhly pink every fall. It means having a landscape that feels as if it were meant to be here.
When done right, a thoughtful xeriscape in West Austin, Dripping Springs, or anywhere in the Hill Country is one of the best investments you can make in terms of curb appeal and property value. It tells anyone who drives by that this homeowner hired someone who knows that this yard isn’t just like any other. They designed a landscape with intention and care.
That’s the promise we’ve been fulfilling for our clients for over 20 years. Every landscape we design starts with your soil, your sun and shade, your deer pressure, your hopes and dreams of how you want to spend time outdoors.
Ready to transform your rocky yard into a thriving Hill Country retreat?
Work directly with Shawn to design a landscape that’s built for Texas heat. One that’s beautiful, water-wise, and built to last. Check out our portfolio, and let’s get started.
