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O ne evening in early June, Robert Bellamy puttered through the gardens, clippers in hand, looking for spent blooms. The delicate climbing roses he had carefully transplanted in winter had begun to migrate across Tower House's dusky pink stucco exterior, only to unexpectedly wither. The vines would need to come out. Nearby, a hardy hibiscus he planted a year ago — and completely forgotten about — had A landscape architect spent 40 years creating a rambling compound with capricious buildings and elegant gardens in Old East Dallas. He's now completed his final folly — Tower House. produced a single ripe bud. Showy red petals unfurled into a dazzling blossom the next morning. "If you are a gardener, you are always taking out and putting in," he says. "A garden evolves." Bellamy, a well-known residential landscape architect, has lived on this rambling property in Old East Dallas and cultivated its park-like gardens for more than 40 years. He was 28 years old, a few years out of SMU, and running his own landscaping company when he bought the first parcel of land — about 100 feet of grassy lawn elevated a few feet above the street and set behind a concrete retaining wall. The lot held two big pecan trees and a crumbling 1930s garage apartment, which by the 1980s was the only structure left on this barren stretch of North Prairie Avenue. In a room added years ago to the original garden house are a 1950s fireplace and '60s-era wood screen from Sputnik Modern. Early 20th-century horsehair devil mask from Mexico. 44