David bends over his favorite perennials, pointing out a flowering shrub called Barbados pride and a 'Grace' smoke tree with bronzy foliage.

He knows all the plants' scientific names, origins, and habits. "I kill more than I grow," he smiles. "But I'm a gardener. This is normal to me. You just keep trying."

Austin's premier landscape architect, David is a keen plantsman. But he is also a brilliant garden maker and connoisseur of design, regardless of whether it comes from 17th-century France or 21st-century America.

He may have staked his claim in Austin, but when it comes to collecting the best in garden furniture, ornaments, pots, and oddments, his ear is to the ground of the world.

He selects such things for his own house and garden -- and he sells them at Gardens, his combination nursery, retail shop, and landscape architecture firm that's been part of Austin's creative scene for 24 years.

The garden has been a project ever since David and Gary Peese built their house 27 years ago.

There's also a prolific vegetable garden and a whimsical, living building of espaliered Monterey pear trees. Time, sustained work, and a sense of adventure have given the garden personality, ineffable depth, and a dug-in complexity.

Despite his love of tradition and timeless materials, he would never forsake his own century or create a replica of the past.

"I live today," says David, who keeps contemporary Swedish rubber chairs on the dining terrace and has a modernist, corrugated sheet metal toolshed, designed by Austin architect Mell Lawrence.

He is also quick to insist that his is an American garden, though people often tell him that it evokes southern Europe -- especially the formal lawn that rolls out from the northeast side of the house.

"This was never meant to be a Tuscan villa," David says. "In places, it reminds me of Mexico, northern Africa, Cyprus, northern Italy, Spain, and France, but it doesn't pretend to be any of those things. While it would be foolish to say I didn't have any influences from other places, it really is just a Texas garden, full of what I can grow in Texas."