February 12, 2025
Garden Love Germinates at Rental House
I’ve known a lot of designers, but Cyrano Carroll stole my heart and admiration. Even though his mom’s a supreme gardener, he wasn’t keen on digging in until a chance opportunity changed his life. In no time flat, he nailed the essence of design with personality.
In May 2023, we met him at his east Austin rental house where he rescues abandoned pavers and plants, along with dear little cats like Noodle. He was working at Tillery Street Plant Company, a career switch for him during the pandemic, and then-greenhouse manager Melissa Hagen-Wilson enthusiastically described his garden to me.
Starting with a few of his mom’s pass-a-longs, he turned an eyesore rental house yard into a fascinating destination of tropical and native plants, herbs, and small ponds from repurposed finds.
In this small space, Cyrano used plants to distinguish each side of the gravel pathway and from the sidewalk. He anchors seasonal color with evergreen succulents, Mexican feather grass and silvery-gray tones. And like us all, it took a few tries to see what worked. “When I first started planting, I would plant full sun plants in full shade. I just built it up one plant at a time in my downtime. I found that it was like a very meditative and fun hobby,” he said.
“I didn’t really have a design in mind, and I didn’t really intend for it to be tiered like it is now and have different sections at different levels. But that’s kind of just how it played out. It was just, well, I’m going to do this corner because I want to look at something pretty there and then kind of like a puzzle, you just keep adding on to that.”
He also “stuck in little treasures and things I’ve found just to add points of interest to the yard, so that when you’re walking by it, small things will catch your eye that you maybe didn’t see there before,” he said.
He framed a hoja santa in an old sink collected from the side of the road.
Cyrano saves scrap pavers from the landfill for pathways.
One pathway winds to a front porch pond, a turquoise shower basin he unearthed from the backyard. Those hostas you see: an experiment that burnt up in the heat!
He bordered a miniature in-ground pond with gray pavers he pulled from a dumpster. He used one to craft an obelisk. The fountain’s an old steel pipe—again a dumpster find—inserted into a plastic nursery pot.
His take on making paths: “You could lay out pavers in a straight line or you could create a pattern and make it prettier to look at,” he noted.
“I think the best way to do it and find that flow is to walk the intended route a few times and see what’s what feels most natural. . . It might be staggered just to create a little bit of fun in that short little movement and that little walk.” Noodle the cat demonstrated.
And then, there’s that creative burst when you’re left with a pile of awkward scraps.
The driveway fence gets the most sun. He fulfilled his love of silvers and silvery blues with woolly butterfly bush, ‘Blue Dune’ lyme grass, artemisia, silver ponyfoot and parrot-beak.
He chose a pink, purple, lavender palette here, punctuated with white and yellow. Here he’s got Salvia leucantha, catmint, mealy blue sage, and Gregg’s mistflower.
He turned a rusty gate from the old house into a trellis.
In January, Cyrano texted me that a wrecking ball had demolished the little house for yet another sky-high cookie cutter house in this sweet little neighborhood. Good news: Cyrano and his plants and the cats are starting a new garden just a few miles away.
Thanks for stopping by! Watch Cyrano’s story.
