Installation in Austin Texas for the Sustain Center

A few months ago my co-worker Gary Henderson and I traveled to Austin Texas to build a dry stone installation. We built this display for my friend Tracen Gardner who owns Sustain Center. It is a demonstration/teaching setting of a wide variety of professionals who are building with sustainable services. There are compostable toilets, windmills, green roofs, solar, rain water harvesting, reclaimed material modular homes, and many other systems on display. We installed 15 tons of of new and reclaimed limestone to build a 30' long dry stone wall on an angle that is 2' tall, and a 20" tall by 12' long bench above the wall.

Our foundation for our dry stone rain garden wall.

Gary processing ideas...

The foundation for our bench and wall end. This stone is 48" tall and sits on the foundation of the lower wall.

Bankers and cutting stone to shape for our wall.

Starting the wall

Gary and I sweating bullets in 70 degree heat.

Our finished installation with a few plants! 5 days of construction, 2 masons, and one full time assistant.

One of the many thing I love about a relationship with stone as a dry stone mason is working in a new environment with local materials. These bone colored stones would look very out of place here in the Pacific North West, but they fit in so well with right where they are from in context to the heat, Texas Hill Country, and landscape colors.

Here are some images of other installations in the 3 acres setting. I think we all felt very lucky to have our work in context to other sustainable systems that will help educate the public.

Tracen's other company makes these beautiful structures, Reclaimed Spaces.

The main entry gate is very cool as it pivots, and is made of beautiful reclaimed wood and steel.

Opening day here.

April Bellingham project image update....

In this image of the front entry I installed a beautiful piece of red cedar old growth  burl from Lake Quinault Washington. It is amazing. It is in near perfect condition with all sorts of plants growing on it. 

Here is the view of where the arch is going in from both directions.  Slow going getting all these stones up on the hill. A few times we have had machinery help us, but lately we are carrying and rolling them up hill.

Here are the stairs we built on the lower part of the property. 15 treads cantilevered, maybe 12" above grade so the plantings will be intimate with the stone.

'Stone Project' video by my friend Josh Bradley