Cindy Bolz’s Asian-style garden of Japanese maples

Cindy Bolz loves Japanese maples and is growing sixty — sixty! — in her serene, Asian-style garden in Farmers Branch, Texas.… Read More

The post Cindy Bolz’s Asian-style garden of Japanese maples appeared first on Digging.

June 06, 2024

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I have exactly one Japanese maple in my garden, inherited with the house. But I’ve enjoyed the graceful beauty of its foliage and form for many years. So imagine my delight when I visited collector Cindy Bolz‘s garden in Farmers Branch, an inner suburb of Dallas, where she’s growing sixty Japanese maples on an average-sized lot. Sixty! And that doesn’t include her canopy trees that provide the shade Japanese maples need in a Texas summer.

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Acer palmatum ‘Shishigashira’

Many of Cindy’s trees are small and slow growing, and some she grows in containers. Others are big enough to shade a garden bench. And despite the increasing number — 60, remember — Cindy can instantly rattle off the name of each one when asked.

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Cindy purchased her first tree in 2000 and brought it with her when she moved to her current home in 2001. It was the beginning of a Japanese maple obsession.

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Acer palmatum ‘Garnet’ (front) and ‘Bloodgood’ (back left)

Her collection eventually gave rise to her entire garden. As she brought home each new maple, she created a little garden around it with complementary plants. Every time she acquired another one, she carved out more lawn and built out the garden. And so on and so on, until she had a serene, Asian-style garden with multiple seating areas and paths to explore.

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Acer palmatum ‘Butterfly’ (foreground)

Often, a collector’s garden can look like, well, a collection, with little thought given to design. But Cindy has a discerning eye for contrasting shapes and textures, showing off the unique forms of her maples, drawing visitors through the garden, and creating vignettes to enjoy along the way. She’s also handy with tools and isn’t afraid to try making whatever she needs, as I’ll show you.

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And now let’s stroll.

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I’d hardly stepped into the garden when a small, potted Japanese maple, displayed on a pedestal and illuminated in a shaft of sunlight, caught my eye. I headed straight for it but got sidetracked by a Cousin Itt of a plant: a weeping Japanese maple, Acer palmatum ‘Ryusen’.

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Here’s that ‘Ryusen’ with Cindy for scale.

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Just beyond is a flagstone-and-gravel patio with the little maple on a stacked-paver pedestal. (Cindy built her pedestal after I posted about making one; click for instructions.) The pride-of-place maple is a new variety, as yet unnamed, purchased from Scott Hubble, the owner of specialty nursery Metro Maples in Fort Worth, which I visited last spring. Cindy says it’s “one of only six in the world.” Along the fence grows variegated privet, which Cindy has pruned up like small trees.

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A pedestal is a great way to display a treasured potted plant.

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A large ‘Bloodgood’ Japanese maple shelters this small patio. Beyond, another patio with a shoji-style backdrop beckons.

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Cindy added Asian style to her garden with this DIY project on a blank shed wall. “I wanted to turn my shed wall into a shoji wall of sorts,” she told me. “I bought 1×2 lumber, measured, sawed, painted, and nailed it to the wall.” She found the brass Asian characters at an estate sale and fixed them to the wall too.

An 18-year-old ‘Tama Hime’ dwarf Japanese maple is displayed in a pot at the end of a ribbon of clipped boxwood. ‘Viridis’ (green) and ‘Dragon Tears’ (red) maples add more leafy texture.

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On one side of the patio, coralberry cascades from a container — a smart idea for containing this pretty runner of a plant.

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On the other side, a copper-tube fountai