- We knew we didn't want grass.

We didn't want a lawn to mow.

I had the idea to put all the limestone gravel, almost like some of the beer gardens around town, essentially making the yard an extension of the house, a hangout area.

And it has definitely evolved.

The beds were more perimeter, very narrow.

And over the last few years, they've expanded and expanded and expanded for more planting area.

And so now we've got specific places for different activities.

I'm Sarah Nemec, and we ended up here in 2014 actually.

We moved into a little tiny bungalow and lived in that for five years.

We had to tear it down, unfortunately, because it was beyond repair.

It was just deferred maintenance, disrepair.

So we completed the new house in 2020, and that's when the yard and garden really took off.

- My name is Roice Nelson, I'm Sarah's husband, and she's the queen bee and I'm the worker bee.

(Roice laughs) And it's just been really cool watching how much this backyard has changed over the last few years and what she's done with it.

And I love sitting back here too.

And just enjoying the time out here is my favorite thing about it.

- The pergola area: initially we had a stock tank pool because, you know, it's nice to have an area to stay cool in the summer.

But decided we didn't wanna keep up with the care of the stock tank pool, wanted an area that was still a place where we could gather.

And so I came up with the pergola idea and employed Roice to help me execute it.

- [Roice] Worker bee.

- Yep, worker bee.

And some neighbors and some friends.

It's really ended up being a lovely hangout spot.

The table bases came from a overstock yard sale from a local restaurant company.

And then I found a stone remnant of a really exotic, striking piece of stone so that I'd have a gorgeous focal point.

The fence actually was a chain link for years and years.

We added the privacy fence a couple years ago, and I knew that I wanted to paint it black because I knew that the plants would be very striking against the black, that they would pop off of the black and the fence would recede.

And I think that that's been effective.

Separating the pergola area from the fire pit area so you really do have these separate moments was unintentional plan.

The bed between them used to be just a little strip, but we widened it.

The prickly pear was actually here when we bought the house, and now this year it's huge and it's just gonna keep growing.

- She's really, yeah, sculptured that.

She shaped it.

Surprisingly, yeah.

- Yeah, I didn't realize that, you know, this is something that you could do, and I can't remember how I figured it out or if someone told me.

And so, yeah, now I've just been snapping the limbs off, and then I have stuff to share with friends, which is really fun.

Well, I'll let you talk about the fire pit because we've actually had the fire pit... - [Roice] For 10 years.

- [Sarah] For 10 years.

- It was our ninth anniversary, which was 10 years ago 'cause next year is our 20th.

It has nine sides, and the welder, the constructor that made it for us, he was enjoying the math aspect of this, and so he wanted to make the bottom part of it in the golden ratio to the top.

Well, it turns out there's different mathematical ratios associated with each polygon and there's a different one for a nonagon than there is for a pentagon.

So there is the analog of the golden ratio of this fire pit is the ratio of the bottom to the top, associated with a nonagon.

- And then the area around the fire pit, again, like we started with smaller beds.

We actually were on a trip in Marfa, and we were in a fire pit yard at a bar that we were enjoying one evening, and were surrounded by plants.

And we both were like, "We wanna duplicate this feeling.

"We wanna feel like you're lost in the plants."

And so it's been a journey adding more plants, bringing the beds in to the area and finding the right plants.

So I still am working towards getting the height that I want, and it's getting there, but I've got a few more years on some of the plants that are in.

- I want to call that out too because my phone the other day did, you know, the For You photos showed up, and a photo from that inspiration spot in Marfa sitting around the fire pit showed up again.

And I was sitting out here and looking around, and I actually like what Sarah's ended up creating here even better than that inspiration stuff too as well.

So even though she always wants more, it's beautiful, and it has even already surpassed the inspiration that we saw in Marfa, you know, five years ago.

- The look is different because it's definitely desert plants there.

I started out wanting a tropical paradise.

I like tropical trips.

I wanted to feel like I was in a tropical paradise at home.

There have been lessons learned about what will work and what won't.

So that's an evolution trying to find things that will give that look and approximate a tropical paradise but can handle our freezes and can handle our summers.

I wanted to put in plants that would be evergreen so that it's bright or something cheerful to look at in the winter.

But also there's a lot of fun with color, and the color in the different blooms also helps contribute to that tropical feel.

- The bamboo has been really cool to watch 'cause it was just four clumps and they were little.

And I didn't have the vision.

Sarah had the vision.

So like what it's turned into now kind of blows me away.

And it really did.

After year three, it really took off this past year.

I wanted to talk about Sarah's mom too, because it's been cool.

So Sarah and I have been together for over 20 years, and watching Sarah in the house she grew up in when we first started dating, watching her mom garden there and now watching Sarah just like next generation of it has been... - [Sarah] It's true.

- [Roice] Really, really neat.

- I didn't identify as a gardener until the last few years, but she was definitely an example.

She was a teacher, and in the summers she was off from work.

She would be out there in the yard before we even woke up, and that's where she would spend a lot of her days.

So yeah.

Hi, Paulette.

- Yeah, when we built the house, well, a lot of what we talked about and how we were gonna do it was with the cats in mind.

- We had a catio.

It was like a kit on the little house that was here before.

And then when we were designing and building this house, we figured that we could use the screened-in porch for our use.

And we do, we love it.

We use it all the time.

But, yeah, it's a catio also.

- We work hard so our cats can have a better life.

(Roice laughs) - I wanted to be able to see out to the yard, so I picked trees that were gonna have open structure that you can see through.

The Sweet Bubba is lovely because it gives me beautiful flowers and I love the way it smells.

And then the Palo Verde was the most recent addition to bring height to that side.

One of the other things that I considered was: how could you stimulate all the senses in a space?

So sight is obvious, you've got the plants, but distinction in texture, color, I'm a sucker for anything variegated.

And then for taste, we've got... Well, we've got edibles, and then of course the herbs.

And sound?

Well, the birds go crazy.

And I see the hummingbirds flit from the sage to the cannas.

It's really fun to watch what they do.

The plants have been an evolution figuring out what works in the heat, what works in the cold, and what doesn't.

And it's gonna keep changing.

(light upbeat music)