Plant romance at Redenta’s Garden and other Dallas shops
February 23, 2015 I made a Dallas dash — a day trip from Austin to Dallas (3 hours each way) — last Saturday to visit my son at college. My mom and daughter joined me, and we hit a few unique Big D shops just before and after lunch, knowing ...
Pretty goods at Austin nurseries
February 05, 2015 By Monday morning, which was my deadline for turning in my new book manuscript, I hadn’t showered in three days, changed out of my sweats in two, or slept more than 4 hours a night for about a week, give or take a few coma-like naps. Yesterday, ...
Golden pomegranate is pretty wonderful for fall color
December 05, 2014 I know many of you have mentally moved on to Christmas. But Austin’s fall color comes late, and the golden leaves of my ‘Wonderful’ pomegranate keep catching my eye through the window while I try to work. So naturally, instead of closing the blind so as to ...
Drive-By Gardens: South Congress Avenue in Austin
November 24, 2014 This drive-by is really a walk-by. I was on South Congress Avenue on Sunday afternoon, the center of the funky-hip Austin universe, enjoying a blue-sky, 80-degree day with my family. Fall, winter, and spring days like this are what sustain me through Austin’s broiling summers. When my ...
Summer never ends thanks to flower and hummingbird sculpture
November 19, 2014 At a recent garden blogger get-together, metal craftsman Bob Pool of Gardening at Draco (who made my ocotillo bottle tree) brought this lovely flower-and-hummingbird piece he’d made as a random giveaway for our group. And I won it! Thanks, Bob, for the generous gift! It looks right ...
Coyotes, succulents, and squids
November 03, 2014 Can you ever have too much color, too much art, or too many succulents, even painted ones? No way! This corner of my living room perks me up every time I see it: a Cathy Carey painting called Coyote Wonderland, a couple of fun candle holders, and ...
Heather’s Xericstyle garden in San Antonio
October 27, 2014 Last week I roadtripped south with a few friends to see the gardens of our San Antonio blogger friends, Heather Ginsburg of Xericstyle and Shirley Fox of Rock-Oak-Deer, plus Shirley’s neighbor and gardening friend Melody. I posted about Shirley’s garden here. Today I’ll show you Heather’s garden ...
Visiting a San Antonio garden with rocks, oaks, and deer
October 25, 2014 Ahh, I’m back and enjoying our mellow Texas fall after a garden-visiting weekend in New York City, and guess what I’ve been doing since I got back? Yep! Visiting more gardens. Last Friday a few friends and I headed south to San Antonio to visit the gardens ...
The High Line park in NYC, a skyline promenade, part 2
October 19, 2014 At the end of Part 1 of my post about visiting the High Line in New York City last weekend, we’d just entered Chelsea Market Passage. After the dimness of the passageway, you exit into bright sunlight on the aptly named Sun Deck. Wooden lounge chairs resembling ...
Up on the High Line, a skyline promenade
October 19, 2014 Have you ever flown across the country to see one garden? I did last weekend. Rapturous articles and blog posts about the High Line, New York City’s garden-park conversion of an abandoned elevated rail line through the city’s old Meatpacking District, had seduced me for 5 years ...
Nonirrigated native plant garden of Lee Clippard is a foliage lover’s dream
October 16, 2014 Earlier this month I visited the East Austin garden of Lee Clippard, blogger at The Grackle, and his partner, John. The first fall rains had just arrived, following a relatively mild summer, so their foliage-centric garden of native plants was looking lush and green. I’d never have ...
Monarchs flutter into Dallas Arboretum on fall migration
October 09, 2014 We weren’t the only visitors to the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden last Sunday. Aside from all the human visitors, hundreds of monarch butterflies arrived on the north wind blowing into Texas and settled into the garden for a rest stop. I understand their fall migration is ...
Pumpkin extravaganza at the Dallas Arboretum
October 08, 2014 The Dallas Arboretum goes pumpkin crazy each fall. Last Sunday we visited to see their over-the-top Pumpkin Village, in which a whopping 65,000 pumpkins, gourds, and squash are used to create play houses, line paths, and fill a pumpkin patch that would make Linus proud. The pumpkin ...
Dark-fantasy woodland, Asian teahouse and more at Bedrock Gardens, part 2
September 22, 2014 In my last post I introduced you to Bedrock Gardens, created by Jill Nooney and Bob Munger in Lee, New Hampshire, on a former dairy farm. It’s a place of thoughtful design, beautiful views, eye-catching plant combinations, and fanciful found-object sculpture created by Jill. Continuing our tour, ...
A fanciful journey through art-filled Bedrock Gardens, part 1
September 19, 2014 Acres of poison ivy and scrub brush had overrun the old dairy farm in Lee, New Hampshire, when Jill Nooney and her husband, Bob Munger, purchased it in 1980. Undaunted, the couple began a decades-long process of clearing weeds and making planting beds, eventually creating a 20-acre ...
My article about garden art is in Garden Design magazine
September 18, 2014 Placing art in the garden is, well, an art in itself, as I learned when visiting Bedrock Gardens in New Hampshire this summer. I wrote about the garden and its art for an online piece in Garden Design, called “Placing Art in the Garden”. Whether you’re a ...
