Ralph Duesing, who was raised in West Texas, comes from a lineage of artists which influenced him to sketch and paint when he was young. That love of sketching would later lead him to become a residential architect.

But he didn't end his career there--as his love of gardening and birding--opened the door for him to become a garden designer. 

Duesing is not an ordinary garden designer as he incorporates gardens to the architecture of the house, and he also takes into account many components while designing. His gardens are also designed to attract wildlife, which he believes is an important aspect.

Duesing was propelled into garden designing in 2007, when he was consulting on a 1928 Tudor Revival house on a bluff in Fort Worth overlooking the Trinity River Valley, that was having water issues, as reported by Period Homes. Duesing recommended building a conservatory overlooking the backyard.

The garden in the backyard though was overgrown and in need of improvement.

While it took two years to complete, the result was magnificent. 

“I wanted the garden to be very much a part of the home’s original design, both in scale and materials,” Duesing told Period Homes. “The scale of the house is something that Fooshee and Cheek were very successful at – it works great with the garden. We didn’t want to produce some type of garden that looked like something other than belonging to this house. We accomplished that through material, scale and directly through the Tudor style.”

Duesing, in a phone interview, described that Tudor home garden project, his own garden, and what he tries to achieve in all his garden designs.

Q: Can you tell me about your journey from a residential architecture professional to landscape architecture architect?

A: Sure. Let me tell you first, I'm still in architecture. It is in support of gardens with garden structures and things like that, but I am not a landscape architect, I am a garden designer....I am a licensed architect, but I'm not a licensed landscape architect.

I could tell you how I got there in that, is it working on a project in Fort Worth. These clients very nice house built in the '20s that overlooks a bluff in Fort Worth, and they had a problem with a second-story balcony that was taking on too much water every time it rained. So what I did is, I designed a glass conservatory to fit over this balcony--it was a medium-sized one. So we built this conservatory area, which diverted all the water. The room had a spectacular view out towards the over the garden, and the garden was very disappointing. The wife said, "Oh, what would you do to the garden?" I said, "Well, I can draw something up for you."

And that's how it started. That got things rolling as far as garden design. That's something that I've always tried to do and say with every project is plugging in the garden to the residence and so many projects. What I like to do is integrate the two where they relate to each other.

So I think a lot of times, when you just look at homes, the architecture doesn't integrate with the style of a home. There are certain groups inside, if you look to the outside and what you'd expect to want to see or expect to see from the inside and then vice versa. The garden should be different... that compels you to move through it. 

I remember years ago there was an architect named Alberti...who said there were seven parts to a garden. If you look at the parts of the garden he talks about...those seven parts give you structure. So I try to incorporate those seven parts in every design. And I think it's very important if this carries over into the native gardens, too, because I don't think you could lose that aspect. 

[The seven parts of the garden are the gate, alleé, pergola, bosket, exterior rooms, vignettes and fountains.]

...Seven parts help with the structure. But I always believe that it is something to introduce a structure or unifies it, pulls it together, all of it together. I feel like it's what keeps you moving through gardens to look at it, and it creates these beautiful views as you walk around.

Q: What is fascinating about landscapes and gardens to you?

A: It's the dynamics. The first one - every landscape has the seasons that makes the color, the change of colors. So you get different looks, pretty much four times a year. That's forever cycling and changing, so it is the garden. The second thing is the thing which most people don't take advantage of in that aspect of it. If you work at it, it can be in your garden too. It's especially noticeable with birds.

Q: So when you do gardens, do you do plantings that attract birds and butterflies?

A: Yes, that's right. In my own yard, it is a garden. It's forever changing. It proved to me that if you planned to attract, the wildlife it will happen. 

Q: How do you keep certain wildlife away like deer that may eat the plants?

A: Well, I have to tell you, we don't live in an area where we get deer here. We do have a place in Fredericksburg and there are deer. It is. It's a big deal. But and the people around that area, they literally have to build a high fence ... When you see when you have wildlife in your yard, when you see the insects and you see the birds and you see the reptiles, all those working in the garden, you have a healthy garden and you're doing things right. 

Q: So you come from a family of artists. How did that have an impact on you?

A: My grandfather had an architecture practice in St. Louis. (He) studied at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. My grandfather liked to take my dad. It was my mother's father, but my dad loved to take to it, so he encouraged all of us--four brothers--to sketch and paint. A painting, the composition, was what strengthened the painting and held it together. That's the structure and....which works great with architecture carried over in the gardens. I'm good with color, with painting too...with working colors on a project and the architecture or colors in the garden too. So I studied art in college as well.

Q: And who or what has been your great influence?

A: The person who led me to native materials was a job for an architecture project. And he started telling me about going birding and he would talk about it when I could go with him sometime. But he would talk about the native plants and birds and he was very versed in what the materials were, what the birds were. It was just very interesting, and so he was the major influence. His name is Keith Williams. He would show me the plant materials as we walked past them. Oh, so he's the one who got me started. 

When I look at people who are very influential in landscape architecture or our garden design, Russell Page--he's a monument. And I just think all of his work is worth looking at. Edward James, who worked with a garden designer named Gertrude Jekyll. I really appreciate their work, the way they conducted garden to house and house to garden. 

So many people will put in native plant materials, but it is just disappointing because it doesn't look good all four seasons. They say a lot of people equate native gardens with low maintenance, but that's not true either. And so consequently, a lot of Texas [gardens] don't look so good. But what I'm trying to do is with the gardens that I work on is to keep interest with the structure and maintain that structure throughout all four seasons. 

Q: So that obviously involves bringing in non-native plants?

A: Sometimes, yes, and I'm not against it. Like hollies are great and there are native hollies around here, which I really like, but there are some non-native Hollies. I like using boxwood, it is not a native here, but boxwood stays green, it has great structure, but I just use those to support the garden as a primary part of the garden. Oaks support species of birds. The American elm, which is hard to grow for us, is so very attractive to species [of birds]. 

The pecan trees are hugely important for birds here in Texas that they support the migration through Texas. And it's not because of anything they have, it's because there's a worm that grows into the flowers...the flowers being a tassel, there's a little worm that goes in there. As the migration comes through this area, the birds are looking for those worms. Like the American elm, too. It will get invaded with different types of insects, but the birds are there to clean it up. 

Q: So how would someone know whether a pest is going to injure the the tree or the bush that's planted, if it's a healthy thing?

A: If it's localized, I think it's not big--it's great. But if you get into a situation where the entire tree is covered or if covering large portions of your garden, that's a totally different deal. It's probably the lack of something else in your garden. 

Q: And can you tell us about your own garden? Can you tell us a little bit about your residential transformation?

A: Yes. Already in the garden were red oaks which were mature; all these big, mature hackberry. And I introduced hollies, magnolias. We had the hackberry and it was a very big storm that brought it down. But the hackberries are great attractors of bird species and inspect species here in Texas.

I also introduced the dogwoods, both flower and rough leaf, a Carolina buckthorn...and some sweet gum trees. I kept some of the existing plant materials but I wanted to see if it does indeed attract specific bird species. But I notice that the inspect population got more complex and larger in the yard, which was good. I noticed we had snakes, we had toads, we had rabbits. This is within the city of Dallas, and we're not close to any park any great building---it is block after block of houses. So I noticed that the yard was getting healthier and I got [a lot] of bird species.

After two years, 50 species. But in the next 12 years, it took another 12 years to get another 50 species--so [I have] about 100 species of birds.

Q: So the results in your garden---you're very happy with?

A: Yes, except it's more of an experiment, and I have taken the garden and overhauled it again with different materials, so it's kind of an ongoing process and it helps me with other projects, what works, what doesn't work and why. You know, and then it gets into the mix of the seasons and what do they look like?

Q: And what types of birds do you see in your yard now?

A: Well, there's four types of woodpeckers, seeing three types of owls, several types of sparrows, warblers. 

Q: What advice would you give someone who would like to make the change from traditional landscape to like an environmental one, like a one where you know the wildlife is attracted to?

A: Earlier I said kind of the building blocks of the garden were hollies, oaks, dogwoods. I would make sure that you put those into your garden. By doing that, you're going to provide structure. It's something else that's really important for wildlife and birds--it provides cover in that cover is crucial for attracting birds. If you see a garden with a large yard of grass, there's not much wildlife, because there's no cover for them to hide in or to get away, to hide in, and for when they sleep.

But if you use those basic building blocks, you're going to provide structure. They're going to provide cover. And I say it's pretty much imperative. But also, if you go back to the parts of the garden, those seven parts, the fountains are huge.