November 02, 2018
Plant This: Butterfly vine
September 09, 2012 Butterfly vine, also known as gallinita (Mascagnia macroptera), brightens up the midsummer garden with lemon-yellow flowers whose petals look as if they were cut out with pinking shears. Flowering best in full sun, this Mexican native is a wonderful addition to the drought-tolerant garden, able to hold …
Livestrong HQ garden a model of green landscaping
September 05, 2012 It’s not about the bike. What it’s about is this—cancer survivor, superstar bicyclist, and Austin resident Lance Armstrong put his fame and influence to good use in the fight against cancer, founding Livestrong (formerly the Lance Armstrong Foundation) in 1997 to improve the lives of those affected …
Stylish xeric garden by Sitio Design
September 04, 2012 My friend Curt Arnette, the talented landscape architect at Sitio Design and plant lover whose personal garden I visited in May, designed this contemporary gravel garden for a Westlake client, and I recently got to take a peek. The lot is wooded and steeply sloped and the …
Stripes and spikes jazz up the late-summer garden
September 02, 2012 I’m so grateful for my stripes and spikes at this time of year. The evergreen (or ever-blue, ever-silver, even ever-yellow) leaves of agaves and yuccas carry my garden through the doldrums of droughty August and September until the fall rains arrive and entice the garden into its …
Plant This: Datura shuns the day, shines at dusk
August 31, 2012 If you brave the West Nile-carrying mosquitoes at dusk, you can enjoy the unfurling of datura’s lightly scented trumpets. Under a full moon last evening, I took these images of one of my datura (Datura wrightii) in full, moon-like bloom. I like the curved “hooks” on the …
Oxblood lilies rise again
August 30, 2012 To the tune of the Thin Lizzy song, let’s sing: The bulbs are back in town! Which bulbs? Those velvety red heralds of fall—oxblood lilies, also known as schoolhouse lilies (Rhodophiala bifida), a name that’s particularly apt this year since school just started. These bulbs have a …
Garden Designers Roundtable: Designing with Native Plants
August 28, 2012 Not that long ago, native plants got little respect. They were considered weeds, inelegant scrub, and surely harbored ticks, chiggers, and rodents. Ahead-of-their-time native-plant enthusiasts faced resistance from neighbors concerned about an unkempt look. And even if you did want to grow these plants, you couldn’t find …
Charming public gardens at Fearrington Village
August 23, 2012 While touring Fearrington Village near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, earlier this month, I was charmed by the lovely landscaping—not just the gardens surrounding Fearrington House Inn but the pocket-sized, colorful gardens found alongside the shops and restaurants in the village center. This toad lily blackberry lily Pardancanda …
Romantic gardens of Fearrington House, North Carolina
August 22, 2012 Lovely strolling gardens wrap all sides of the country inn at Fearrington Village, near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which I visited earlier this month. I spent a happy hour early one morning exploring its grounds, which include an English-style white garden, an herb garden, shrub borders, and …
Oreo cows, goats & gardens at Fearrington Village, Pittsboro, NC
August 21, 2012 My dad lives in Fearrington Village, a planned community of mostly retirees outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It’s a lovely community of 2,000, built on wooded, rolling hills, anchored by an English-style village square with a few shops, an independent bookstore (sadly lacking in garden titles, …
Plant This: Garlic chives
August 20, 2012 As the days grow shorter in late August and early September, garlic chives (Allium tuberosum) burst into bloom, with clusters of starry, white flowers held aloft on long stems, like 4th of July sparklers. They’ll bloom for weeks, giving you at least a month of beauty—more if …
August garden planning & fall anticipation
August 19, 2012 August is a waiting game for central Texas gardeners—waiting for fall rains to arrive, waiting for the muggy blanket of heat to lift and a cool breeze to blow in from the north, waiting for nurseries to fill up with their fall shipments of new plants, waiting …
Beekeeper to the rescue, saving the bees!
August 17, 2012 On Monday I posted about the swarm of honeybees that had moved into our screech owl box over the weekend. Yesterday evening beekeeper (and high school teacher) Jim Hogg of Daddy’s Bees came over and carefully removed them for us. He took them home, transferred them to …
Chirpy succulent dish for Foliage Follow-Up
August 16, 2012 What’s sweeter than a bluebird of happiness for Foliage Follow-Up? Join me in posting about your lovely leaves of August for Foliage Follow-Up, a way to remind ourselves of the importance of foliage in the garden. Leave your link to your Foliage Follow-Up post in a comment …
