Beautification
The Beautification Committe works year round to keep Oakhurst looking great. The committee oversees all of the trees and plantings in our neighborhood park and common areas. The committee also organizes a volunteer clean up in the spring and fall to keep our streets and surrounding streets tidy. Each month the Beautification Committee selects a Yard of the Month to promote the upkeep of our homes and gardens. To join the Beautification Comittee e-mail ONA for more information.
Yard of the Month
Yard of the Month is a recognition of Oakhurst residents' yards by fellow Oakhurst residents. Anyone can nominate a homeowner for this award. Nominations should be submitted to the Beautification Committee by the 10th of each month. All nominations will be considered, and the Beautification Committee (including at least one Master Gardener living in the neighborhood) will make all final decisions. Yards that do not win one month may be nominated any following month.
Criteria for Yard of the Month include, but are not limited to, neatness, consistency in keeping the yard well-groomed, beauty, landscaping, and so on (a block of particularly well-kept yards may also be honored). The Beautification Comittee will select an honoree for a write-up in the monthly Oak Leaflet newsletter.
If you are interested in nominating an Oakhurst resident for Yard of the Month please type or write the nominee's name and address on an 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheet of paper. Include a brief statement, 100 words or less, explaining the reasons the nominee should be chosen for the Yard of the Month designation. Also include your name, address, and email address (if applicapble) at the bottom of the submission. The Beautification Committee asks that all nominations be signed and sent to the Beautifucation Chairperson.
July 2010 - Yard of the Month
By Fran Burns, Beautification Chair
The Oakhurst Neighborhood Yard of the Month for July belongs to Charles and Carol Witt at 2317 Aster Ave.
The couple has lived in Oakhurst for four years, and Charles said they continue to make improvements to their property. They first rehabbed the inside of the home and have recently completed the front yard landscape.
Charles and Carol, who moved to Oakhurst from Keller, have always had a garden. Charles said that Carol is the one with the green thumb…he just tries to facilitate. In fact, Carol can be seen weeding the Oakhurst property on a daily basis.
The front yard design is the creation of their son, David Witt, a landscape architect whose business is in Dallas. Charles said their son got an early start on his career while walking behind a tiller in their garden in Keller when he was only six. The couple owned a two-acre piece of property there that Charles maintained.
With the front yard looking good, Charles said their next project will be finishing the backyard.
August 2010 - Yard of the Month
By Fran Burns, Beautification Chair
Shirley Martin takes a very practical approach when it comes to gardening. She and her husband Wayne own the Oakhurst Yard of the Month for August at 2517 Marigold Ave. The yard is filled with plants that Shirley has chosen based on their practicality. They include those that come back each year, those that can take
the Texas heat and those that provide food.
The Martins have lived in their home on Marigold for almost 11 years, the first and only house the family has owned. Shirley said they were glad to own a home with a yard that they could work on and make pretty. But she points out that she likes the fact that she can grow some of the family’s food. Her favorite plant, as a
matter of fact, is a fig tree in the front yard. When she gets hungry while working in the yard, she helps herself to a fig. She also grows, among other things, plums, peaches, squash and tomatoes; pretty impressive considering she had not had an interest in gardening before moving to Oakhurst. She said she feels that making the yard look nice has been worth the investment of time and money.
A recovery nurse at Cook Children’s Hospital, Shirley is working on her doctorate in nursing at UT Arlington. Wayne, who also works at Cook, is a psycho- physiologist who works with patients on pain management. They have two daughters, one who is a senior at A & M and another who is beginning her second year of college, studying nursing at UT Arlington. Shirley said she likes the neighborhood because people know each other. “You see them out walking their dogs, they’re friendly and they help each other…there
is a real sense of community here,” she added.
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Tracing Oakhurst’s link to America’s top landscape architects
By Susan Allen Kline, Historian (adapted from Oakhurst’s National Register of Historic Places Nomination)
The Oakhurst Historic District is significant at the local level of significance as an example of the work of the landscape architecture firm of Hare and Hare of Kansas City, Missouri. Hare and are was a prolific, nationally known firm headed by father-son team of Sidney J. Hare (1860-1938) and S. Herbert Hare (1888-1960). Their work included designs for private residents, residential development, institutional, commercial, and civic projects. The firm practiced extensively in the central and south central part of the United States but their work could be found across the country. In Fort Worth alone, the firm had over 200 public and private commissions.
Sidney J. Hare was born in Kentucky and moved with his family to Kansas City, Missouri in 1868. He had no formal training in landscape design but while in high school, he studied horticulture, civil engineering, geology, surveying and photography. He was employed in the city engineer’s office in Kansas City from 1881-1896 where he gained much practical experience. It was through this job that he met George Kessler, who was then a landscape engineer for the city and would become well known for his parks and boulevard plan for the city. It was through Kessler that the elder Hare developed an interest in landscape design.
The elder Hare served as superintendent of Forest Hill Cemetery, also in Kansas City from 1896-1902. During his tenure there, he became interested in the concept of a cemetery serving park-like functions such as botanical garden, arboretum, and bird sanctuary. In 1902, Hare established his own landscape design practice where he "incorporated velvet lawns, groups of ornamental trees and shrubs, mirror lakes, curving roads and walks, and long vistas into cemetery designs." Besides cemeteries, Hare’s early commissions included Cunningham Park in Joplin, Missouri (1907) and Waterway Park and Park Wood Subdivision in Kansas City, Kansas (1907). He had completed or initiated over 25 projects in six states by 1910.
In 1910, his son, S. Herbert Hare joined the practice after studying landscape design at Harvard University under Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. The younger Hare was one of the first six students in the country to be formally trained in the emerging field of landscape architecture. He was admitted to the master’s degree program as a special student but was not awarded a degree because he had not completed prerequisite courses. Harvard’s program was the nation’s first landscape architecture curriculum and the university produced most of the country’s leading landscape architects during the first half of the 20th century.
During their collaboration, Sidney Hare preferred park and cemetery projects and S. Herbert Hare took those commissions specializing in community planning and design. Early projects included Warner Place, Jefferson City, Missouri (1913); Point Defiance Park, Tacoma Washington (1914), the park and boulevard system for Kansas City, Kansas (1915); and the campus of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas (1913-1918). Also included were several cemetery and smaller public and private projects. Perhaps their best known project during this time was the Country Club District and Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri (1913), a 2,500-acre commercial and exclusive residential development. Regarding their work during this period, historian Cydney Millstein has noted "Their trademark—winding roads contoured to natural topography, preservation of trees and valleys, and an eye for the scenic vista—became well established." These qualities are still evident in their design for the West Oakhurst Addition.
In 1922, in collaboration with George Kessler and J. C. Nichols, the developer of the Country Club District in Kansas City, the firm of Hare and Hare created an entirely new town with a central business district, residential areas, suburban acreage and a manufacturing district with two large mills. Known as Longview, Washington, this project helped establish Hare and Hare’s reputation for city planning. After Kessler death in 1923, the firm took over His Kansas City, Missouri commissions. By the end of the decade, Hare and Hare had a wide array of projects in 28 states.
In 1925, Hare and Hare was hired as park consultant by the Board of Park Commissioners in Fort Worth. Mostly under the direction of S. Herbert Hare, the firm completed a park master plan in 1930 and created designs for numerous parks across the city. These included the Fort Worth Botanic Garden (National Register 2009), Forest Park Zoo, Burnett Park, Rockwood Golf Course and Lake Worth. The firm also had numerous private commissions for residential, commercial and institutional designs.
John P. King hired Hare and Hare to design several landscape projects associated with his personal and business interests. In 1927, the firm developed a landscape design for King’s home at 4926 Crestline Drive on Fort Worth’s west side. Also in the 1920s, the firm created the design for King’s Monticello Addition, also on the city’s west side. The Monticello Addition was laid out with graceful, curvilinear streets with a large greenbelt in the center of the development. In 1938, Hare and Hare devised a revised plat for Block 28 of King’s Oakhurst Addition. This revision included a realignment of Smilax Avenue so that it had a slight curve and terminated with a cul-de-sac. In 1939, the firm developed a complete plan for West Oakhurst Addition located immediately west of the Oakhurst Addition as suggested by its name. The design for West Oakhurst preserved existing clusters of trees and its curvilinear streets took advantage of the sloping topography. Inclines provided dramatic vistas and distinctive entrances into the neighborhood from Oakhurst Scenic Drive.
Prior to working with King on designs for the Oakhurst and West Oakhurst Additions, S. Herbert Hare had become familiar with the area’s topography and plant material through the firm’s work on other projects within the immediate area. The company completed several designs for Mount Olivet Cemetery located directly north of the district. The cemetery was founded in 1907 on C. M. Daggett’s original homestead. The company’s archives contain records associated with the cemetery from 1907, 1929-1930, 1933-37 and 1939-1940. As the city’s park consultant, S. Herbert Hare oversaw the design and construction of Oakhurst Scenic Drive in 1936-37. The completion of this road made it easier for King to develop the West Oakhurst Addition. Other nearby Hare and Hare designs included the grounds landscaping of Oakhurst Elementary School (located just east of the intersection of Yucca Avenue and North Sylvania Avenue) and the new Riverside High School (now Amon Carter-Riverside High School), also located to the east of Oakhurst. Both of these projects were part of a larger school grounds landscaping program sponsored by the Park Department and the Fort Worth Independent School District and constructed by the WPA.
Numerous Hare and Hare-designed residential subdivisions are found across Fort Worth. One of their better known projects is the Park Hill Addition in southwest Fort Worth. Opened in 1926, Park Hill primarily consists of two concentric U-shaped streets that encircle a crown of a hill above Forest Park and the Fort Worth Zoo. However, Park Hill was developed for a more exclusive clientele with large Period Revival houses lining the streets. From a landscape perspective, Park Hill sits on top of a hill and the hillside is used (often to dramatic effect) for backyards that generally are not visible to the public. In contrast, the hillside in West Oakhurst becomes a very prominent and visible landscape feature. The Oakhurst Historic District is an excellent example of a designed residential landscape in the Riverside area of Fort Worth, Texas. In particular, West Oakhurst showcases the traits for which the landscape architecture firm of Hare and Hare was known—namely preservation of trees, scenic vistas, and winding roads.
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Improve Your Curb Appeal
By: Claudia Cimma
Mid to upper 90s is what my thermometer, that’s in the shade, has announced since the beginning of June. But in the last day or so we’ve been blessed with two and half inches of rain. Yes!
My neighbor calls it, "Money from the sky." Of course he’s absolutely correct. Whether you harvest the rainwater or turn off your sprinklers, there’s nothing like an inch or two from the heavens to help your water bill. For me, the real joy of summer rain comes from its almost instant impact on our front yard gardens.
I just got back from an Oakhurst walk in the rain with my Lucky dog. The St. Augustine lawns look like carpets of emerald green moss. Now, I know this is a temporary, rain-induced condition, but why not enjoy the moment!
Sun-loving bloomers
In Oakhurst we’ve got old-fashioned, Texas hardy summer bulbs blooming everywhere- cannas, daylilies, crinums, tiger lilies, and crocosmia. I even spotted an old heirloom Southern bulb, a tropical spiderlily, called 'Tropical Giant,' just starting to show off its white spidery blooms.
Other sun-loving perennials that look beautiful were the black-eyed susans, purple coneflowers, and whirling butterflies. ‘Sometimes-perennial’ lantana in the multi-colors or Texas gold yellow were stunning spilling out of containers or matched with a few orange tiger lilies and red cannas in my neighbor’s sunny side yard.
Oakhurst boasts a great assortment of hardy hibiscus and rose-of-sharons both in tree and shrub varieties. These need sun to get lots of blooms, but the rose-of-sharon can get by with some shade.
One of the best summer bloomers for our part of the world is the crape myrtle (or crepe myrtle). The ones on the Yucca-Oakhurst Scenic Drive triangle bed look particularly good.
Shade-loving choices
In the more shaded Oakhurst front yards, I spotted lots of perennial garden phlox in bloom. A few yards had caladiums (annual), coleus (annual) and elephant ears (sometimes perennial) mixed in with woodland ferns (definitely perennial). On Marigold, one yard has containers in the full shade of English ivy, elephant ears and white-leaved caladiums- they literally glowed in the rain this morning.
I didn’t see any Turk’s Cap (perennial) this morning; mine’s still not blooming, but it will give you red, white or even pink-peach flowers in the shade. It blooms even better with a little sun.
Use Annuals Now
I love annuals for the instant color they bring to the garden. I can’t afford to use dozens of flats, but a dozen 4 inch pots of annuals planted correctly can get a lot of inexpensive color. Spacing them too far apart in a straight row is not the way. For a small but vibrant mass of color try five or six 4 inch zinnias (sun) or begonias (shade) planted 4-6 inches apart in a staggered pattern.
If you’re a little more adventurous try planting zinnia seeds. You must follow the instructions but for $1.99 you’ll get weeks of flowers if you regularly cut them for bouquets. If you can find firm caladium bulbs, these can be planted through mid-July for very inexpensive color.
It’s better to plant perennials in the spring or fall, but you can plant warm season annuals right through Labor Day. You must provide a regular source of water until established and then not let them get too dry. A water-soluble fertilizer, such as Miracle Gro, every few weeks helps keep them healthy and blooming but it’s not absolutely necessary. A 2 cubic foot bag of mulch costs $3.00 at Walmart and it will save you more than that in water! Or get it free at the City’s Rolling Hills Tree Farm or at any of the three City Dumps (aka Drop-Off Stations).
You can start containers at any time also. Bigger containers with good potting soil and mulch will help keep your containers from drying out and dying quickly. In the heat of a Texas summer, especially those placed in the sun, containers require daily watering.
The plants that grow well in your neighbor’s yard should do well in yours, too. For complete lists of Texas summer and fall blooming perennials and seasonal annual color check www.aggie-horticulture.edu or call me (817-239-9433) to pick up lists.
Low/No Cost
I know I promised you curb appeal improvement at NO cost, but that’s hard to do when it comes to adding plants to your front yard. If you have a neighbor with lots of summer-blooming perennials you can ask for a few when she divides them in the fall. Or propose a trade- a dozen homemade cupcakes or a couple hours of babysitting- should work just fine. Same goes for seed collection. I have some Mexican Cosmos seed (annual) just for the asking. You can still plant these for a spectacular autumn display.
You can always cut back the long shoots on your crepe myrtles for a free curb appeal improvement. Mowing your lawn helps too, but I did promise not to nag…..
Best of all, just keep your fingers crossed for a little more of that summertime free rainfall.