Weekend Garden: Native Wisdom

Drawing inspiration from a nearby lakeshore, a Dallas landscaper converted a barren lot into an indigenous garden

Written by Diane Carroll • Photographed by Jack Thompson

A solitary cedar elm was the last tree standing on the once-wooded lot that Chip and Nancy Northrup purchased as the site for their new Dallas home. Years earlier the land had been parceled off from a neighboring house and cleared, eventually lying fallow as the previous owner’s construction plans stalled. While the land had few features to recommend it, the location has plenty. It’s a corner lot in an established neighborhood, fronting a park alongside Dallas’s popular White Rock Lake. The Northrups presented the challenge of blending their new home into the bare lot to landscape architect David Hocker, who found a simple source of design inspiration: He walked across the street and looked around the lakeshore.

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