84The Night Garden
Botanical mural in flat, hard-edged colour along the long side wall of a black-painted bungalow · artist and year unknown — know who painted it? Tell us. · E Live Oak St near Rose St, East Waco · a private home, seen from the public sidewalk · a small multicolour block-letter tag at the bottom right corner is hidden behind the downspout and the fence · no record says who commissioned itMURAL
A little black bungalow with a garden growing down its whole side: sky-blue daisies, pink blooms and red-orange leaves, the biggest of them larger than the windows.
Paint a house black and every colour you put on it afterwards looks lit from the inside. That is the whole trick here, and it works. This little hip-roofed bungalow near the corner of E Live Oak St and Rose St is black from the eaves down: siding, downspouts, even the box under the electric meter. And along its whole long side, from the porch to the back fence, a garden has come up.
Nothing in it is shaded. Every shape is flat and hard-edged, cut from a short list of colours (sky blue, sunflower yellow, red-orange, bubblegum pink, green and cream), like a paper-cut garden blown up to house size. A sky-blue daisy with a yellow-and-green bullseye sits just right of centre, bigger than the window beside it. Low down, a pink bloom lies on its side holding four red-tipped stamens, like matches in a box. Up top, a red-orange flower spreads its petals like fingers, yellow berries sit at the ends of grey-blue twigs, and cream leaves with red veins drift between the windows. At the far end a blue bell of a flower points three red stamens at the downspout, over two pink blooms with saw-tooth edges. The four white window frames were left alone, and the thick green stems swerve around them as if the garden grew up past the glass.
There is no plaque, no listing we could find, and the only signature-like mark is half hidden behind a downspout and a fence post. So for now: artist and year unknown — know who painted it? Tell us. And one favour: this is somebody's home. The public sidewalk gives you the whole wall, so enjoy it from there and leave the yard and the porch to the people who live here.
The street has a long memory of its own. A short walk up E Live Oak, at number 1030, is the G.L. Wiley Opportunity Center. Waco ISD's own history tells it this way: in 1958 “there was a majority of Black families living in East Waco,” the school at 1030 Live Oak Street was called East Waco Junior High School, and a new name was sought. The one chosen was G.L. Wiley Junior High School, for General Lawrence Wiley, principal and math instructor at A.J. Moore, who taught school for 47 years.
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