Provence lavender fields and rosy Roussillon
August 14, 2019 Summer in Provence — what do you think of? Fields of lavender and sunflowers, sun-washed hill towns, buzzing cicadas, hot days and cool nights, a glass of wine at a small table along a cobblestone street? Yes, yes, and yes. Years after falling for the region’s rugged ...
Via Libre, a free-spirited garden along the freeway
July 25, 2019 Moss green doors sparkle with tin milagros — an inviting gateway into a garden courtyard. Many people wouldn’t consider buying a house sandwiched between MoPac expressway, a multi-lane highway with freight trains chugging down the center median, and its neighborhood feeder road. But Cynthia Williams Deegan and ...
An exuberant, upcycled, scrap-art garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 21, 2019 Colorful stucco walls! Upcycled metal garden art! Octopus planters! Agaves (atop caged columns) and alliums and poppies! Amusing vignettes! As soon as we stepped off the bus at Denver Garden Bloggers Fling (June 2019), I knew this garden would be one of my tour favorites. Who could ...
TatTopia garden embraces stonework and sustainability: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 09, 2019 When the construction dust settled at Tatiana Maxwell’s new energy-wise home, studio, and guest house in Boulder, Colorado, in 2010, the yard was just an expanse of bare dirt. Her first thought was to build an English-style cottage garden. But after brainstorming with stonemason artist Thea Alvin ...
Garden retreat under the oaks in San Antonio
May 24, 2019 An invitation to tea — the real deal, with scones, clotted cream, cucumber sandwiches, lemon tarts, and champagne — was treat enough to entice me to the San Antonio home of two sisters I’ve gotten to know through a friendship with their mother. But when I arrived ...
Wildflowers and Succulents: A Texas-English garden, part 2
April 11, 2019 Doorways in chunky stucco walls frame vista after flowery vista in the garden of Jenny Stocker, also known as Rock Rose, the title of her blog. I showed you half of her Austin garden yesterday. Today I’ll lead you through the rest, starting with the sunken garden ...
Foxgloves and cacti: A Texas-English garden, part 1
April 09, 2019 Ah, let us return to the always-stunning garden of Jenny Stocker, aka Rock Rose. Born and raised in England, Jenny and her husband, David, years ago adopted Texas as their home. Jenny’s garden, a series of stucco-walled courtyards surrounding their contemporary house, reflects her English roots but ...
Dia de los Muertos in Lucinda Hutson’s festive home and garden
November 05, 2018 As a native of border city El Paso and a veteran traveler throughout Mexico, Lucinda Hutson has long embraced Mexican culture and traditions like Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. She recently hosted a small gathering in honor of the holiday, which is a ...
Rainy day visit to Jenny Stocker’s garden
October 23, 2018 A visit to Jenny Stocker‘s gorgeous walled garden is always a treat, even on a chilly, rainy day like last Friday (and actually all this month). Jenny kindly opened her garden to me and my friend Susan Morrison, who was in town for a Garden Spark presentation, ...
Sissinghurst Castle Garden, part 2: White Garden, meadow, and tower views
August 04, 2018 Has any garden been more admired, copied, and written about than Vita Sackville-West’s White Garden at Sissinghurst? We visited in mid-June, and I was excited to finally step into this glowing space and see it for myself. Twilight would be better for appreciating the pale effect of ...
Tea in Rosemary Verey’s garden at Barnsley House
July 30, 2018 Elton John worked with her on his garden. Prince Charles too. I’m sure everyone who knows anything about garden design or English gardens knows of the late Rosemary Verey. But I confess I knew nothing of her when I visited the famous designer and author’s former home ...
Cotswolds country charm at Victoria Summerley’s Awkward Hill Cottage
July 19, 2018 It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that my family and I traveled to England last month to see gardens. Particularly, romantic English gardens in the rosy flush of June. And specifically, three gardens I’ve longed to see for years: the famous estate gardens Sissinghurst and Great ...
Roses, swans, and ravens: Rambling in London’s parks and Tower of London
July 08, 2018 We arrived in London in mid-June, where we stayed two nights and spent our days eating fish and chips and Indian food, sightseeing, and rambling in London’s excellent parks. (We also visited the magnificent Kew Gardens, which I’ll share in my next post.) London’s public parks made ...
Hedge fun: The Italian Renaissance garden of Château d’Ambleville
July 05, 2018 So many châteaux (manor houses, mostly, but also palaces and castles) litter the French countryside that today some can be purchased for a relative song. We were not looking to buy, however, but merely to visit a couple of châteaux in mid-June, after our tour of Monet’s ...
The romance of Venice
June 24, 2018 You can hardly believe a city like this really exists, its gelato-hued, wedding-cake buildings perched at the edge of watery streets… …boats zipping past instead of cars… …the ancient house facades and narrow alleys suffused with a romantic decay. Speaking of gelato On June 3rd we flew ...
Kirk Walden’s Hill Country garden atop Lake Austin
May 25, 2018 With this killer view of Lake Austin, many homeowners might have sodded a lawn, plunked a few pots of annuals around the pool, and called it done. But Kirk Walden, whose garden was the final stop on the recent Austin Garden Bloggers Fling tour (I photographed it ...
