It’s that time of year where spring has arrived, bringing with it the luminous green shades of tender new leaves and the Turtle Creek Azaleas are in full bloom.
When Dallas turns pink and photographers jockey for position all along Turtle Creek Blvd, remember Joe Lambert of Lambert Landscaping Company. He brought azaleas to Dallas. Joe had already planted them at the Lloyd home when his father received a commission to plant more at the corner of Armstrong and Lakeside. Eventually everyone wanted them. His secret for growing azaleas in Dallas was soil preparation. ” I had long imagined azaleas requiring a complex mix of mulches and ingredients transported in unlabeled jugs. “Joe used to say, ‘All you have to do is remove the top 15 inches of topsoil and replace it with peat moss.
Joe Lambert had a love affair with Dallas. And Dallas loved him back. “He admired the courage of it. He loved the fact that there was no reason for it to be where it is.” Once, when the city was going to widen Turtle Creek Boulevard, Joe learned that the road expansion was going to result in the clearing of a great many mature trees. He decided to do something about it. He loved Turtle Creek. Joe’s first office had been in a service station near the Katy Trail trestle, down the slope from the Mansion Hotel. “Joe pulled together a group of ladies who called themselves the fashion group,” she says. “They all hung purple draperies on all the trees that were going to be lost.” Turtle Creek was ultimately widened, but less so after Joe marshaled his purple army. Today, the fountain that shoots green water high into the air across from Lee Park is dedicated to him.
TURTLE CREEK flows southwest five miles, through Highland Park and University Park, to its mouth on the Trinity River. The creek was named either by early settler James J. Beeman in 1842 or by some Texas survivors of an ill-fated Indian scouting expedition who camped on the creek in 1837. The stream has been “the most notable waterway in Dallas” throughout most of the city’s history and runs through some of its most fashionable real estate. Fed by springs, it has never run dry, and it has long provided the city with both useful and pleasurable services. Early beautification by Henry Exall took the form of Exall Lake, which became the biggest resort in Dallas in the 1890s. In 1909 the city’s original water pump station was built on the creek, and the city park board acquired a 17½-acre private park (now Lee Park). In 1959 the Dallas Theater Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was constructed in the woods on the creek.
When: Now
Where: Turtle Creek Dallas
Website : Map
Price : Free
