2022 #3 The “Infinity” Garden

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.