Pioneer Information
Catlow’s career included many significant works of landscape architecture throughout Houston. After receiving a B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1955, he worked with Douglas Herbert Pickworth in 1970 on Rice University’s Mary Ellen Hale Lovett Memorial Garden, which contains a fountain created by sculptor Carl Milles. Five years later, Catlow collaborated with Pickworth again to develop the landscape of the Thomas J. and Mary Donoghue House in Houston’s historic Courtlandt Place neighborhood. The design, meant to complement the home, involved the installation of a swimming pool, a lattice wall, an evergreen privacy screen, and brick terracing, as well as the rearranging of fences. From 1975 to 1976, Catlow designed a topiary garden at Bayou Bend in Houston. The garden, the last to be created at Bayou Bend, was a gift from the River Oaks Garden Club in celebration of the nation’s Bicentennial. Catlow worked on a landscape-development plan for Pan American University (now the University of Texas-Pan American) in 1976. Following Ralph Gunn’s death that same year, Catlow continued the work that Gunn had started at the Bishop’s Courtyard at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston, adding plantings and installing a memorial fountain at the center of the garden. In 1978, he worked on the garden at John Sweeney Mellinger house (designed in 1930 by John Staub) in Houston’s River Oaks subdivision. Among his civic activities, Catlow served as chairman of Houston’s Municipal Arts Commission. He passed away in 1984 and is buried in Houston’s Memorial Oaks Cemetery.
