Subdivision: La Mesa
Owner/ Designer: Barbara and Bill Lumm
Garden Type or Features: Beautifully planted ¾-acre lot with a 360-degree desert escape pathway that surrounds a courtyard planted with succulents and pollinator plants.
Artist in the Garden: Alfons Schusters
Description: Barbara Lumm calls this location her husband Bill’s “Infinity Garden” because his landscape projects never end. The High Desert Forest he created, with strategically transplanted Cholla and favorably nurtured Piñons growing among One-Seed Junipers, was showcased on the 2018 Placitas Garden Tour.
Since then, Bill has created an extended desert pathway that meanders through the forest and around the home’s exterior courtyard walls, adding discrete areas along the pathway that are planted with pollinator friendly plants, trees, succulents and even a fountain for the wildlife. This exterior pathway has become a home-sized version of a desert botanical garden, providing expansive views of the Sandia Mountains and surrounding ridges of BLM and Albuquerque Open Space land.
Enter the meticulously maintained inner courtyard through a contemporary double steel gate to find the Lumm garden’s “green zone,” responsibly planted with native and native adapted plants. A large rock fountain is the focal point, surrounded by animal sculptures and planted with succulents and ground cover. Continue through the courtyard to experience a relaxing and colorful back patio, surrounded by a variety of shrubs and decorated with wall art.
When not working in his own yard, Bill can be found volunteering at the Las Placitas Memorial Garden.
New Plants – December 2021 through June 2022
Various Locations
- Hicks Yews – 5
- Arizona Rosewood – 2
- Grey leaf Cotoneaster – 3
- Wormwood – 2
- Pencil Plant – 1
- Grey Desert Spoon – 1
- Japanese Maple – Crimson Queen
- Soap Tree Yucca – 4
South/Outside of Courtyard – Grasses
- Little Bluestem
- Fountain grass
- Foerster’s Feather Reed Grass
- Powis Castle
- Fountain grass, Red Head
- Giant Sacaton
- Dwarf Pampas Grass
- Esperanza Gold Star
- Red Bark Dogwood – 2
- Bells of Fire Tecoma
- Wallflower
- Lynwood Gold Forsythia
- Sweet Broom
- Red Yucca
- Tecoma stans – Sundance
- Ocotillo
- Mexican Butterfly Weed – 2
- Red Hot Poker – 2
- Scotch Broom
- Oleander
- Butterfly Bush
Mound
- Shrubby Ice Plant
- Firesticks
- Stone Crop
- Aloe Neon Nic
- Aloe Distans
- Sedum Aurora
Northside
- Red Yucca
- Ocotillo
- Karl Foerster Reed Grass
- Feather Grass
Patio Containers
- Hibiscus
- Bougainvillea
- Gordon Grotto cactus
- Rose bush
- Asst. Succulents in a container
Fountain area
- Lemon Coral Sedum
- Aloe Night Sky
Courtyard Planter
- Artemisia
Inside Courtyard
- Bower Plant (trellis)
