November 02, 2018
Drive-By Gardens: Desert-style garden in Wells Branch
December 19, 2015 In the Wells Branch neighborhood just north of Austin, on the way to my mom’s house, I regularly drive past this desert-style, no-lawn front garden. I’ve watched it evolve from a few tiny plants dotted across an expanse of decomposed granite to its current lusher look, softened …
Grasses and deer-smashes for December Foliage Follow-Up
December 16, 2015 A hard freeze has not yet walloped my garden, but even if it had I’d still be able to enjoy the plants I’m showing today for Foliage Follow-Up. Take pearl millet, aka ‘Vertigo’ grass (Pennisetum purpureum ‘Vertigo’), for example. This was the most-asked-about plant on my garden …
Peak fall color before the wash-out
December 13, 2015 A rainstorm overnight knocked a lot of the leaves down, so I’m especially glad I took these pictures yesterday afternoon. The ‘Wonderful’ pomegranate was glowing golden under gray skies, echoing the yellow stripes on the ‘Color Guard’ yuccas. A golden puddle of leaves at its feet. The …
Drive-By Gardens: Home with the armadillo on South Lamar
December 11, 2015 “All the fun of a real armadillo family with no unpleasant aftertaste,” is how the artist at 20 Digit Design describes his steel creatures. I’ve rubbernecked at these fun armadillo sculptures many a time while driving down South Lamar Boulevard toward Mockingbird Domestics, one of my favorite …
Decked and swinging at the Wildflower Center
December 10, 2015 The weather has been so beautiful lately — Austin’s payoff for making it through another summer. Last Sunday, the whole family joined me for an afternoon stroll at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, one of my very favorite places. Right now it’s a mix of fall …
Smart, water-saving landscaping at UT’s Dealey Center
December 08, 2015 On a chilly, rainy Saturday in mid-November — a quiet traffic day — I headed to the University of Texas campus and actually found street parking at the G. B. Dealey Center for New Media (renamed from the Belo Center in 2021), whose landscaping I’ve wanted to …
Friday fun, a garden gift, and a birth announcement
December 04, 2015 Here’s the fun! This giant steel spider sculpture — it’s friendly, I think; notice the leg wave — can be found at Mueller neighborhood’s Southwest Greenway, my in-laws’ new neighborhood (which means I’ll be doing garden drive-bys in Mueller a lot more often). With a bellyful of …
Autumn color at Barton Creek
December 01, 2015 Fall finally arrives in Austin along with the holiday celebrations. The quiet beauty of Barton Creek overhung with mellow-leaved trees, with Lady Bird Lake in the distance, caught my eye as we walked to the Zilker Tree Lighting yesterday evening. Cedar elms, flameleaf sumacs, and crepe myrtles …
Zilker Holiday Tree lights Austin skyline again
November 30, 2015 Last night Austin officially got into the holiday spirit with the lighting of the Zilker Tree. A spectacle of 3,000 colored lights strung from the moonlight tower at Zilker Park, the tree stands 155 feet tall and will glow every night through New Year’s Eve. Our family …
Looking Up at Laguna Gloria and Austin City Hall
November 23, 2015 Last Saturday, a chilly, blustery day under a brilliant cobalt-blue sky, my dad and I attended two docent-led tours about the landscape architecture at cultural sites in Austin: one at Laguna Gloria, the other at Austin City Hall. Led by landscape architects who’ve restored or designed these …
Modern courtyard garden at South Congress Hotel
November 20, 2015 Last weekend I met a friend for drinks at the beautiful new South Congress Hotel bar. (A word of advice: never, ever order the Pink Flamingo, which tasted exactly like a burning tire. After a few grimace-inducing sips, I deemed it undrinkable — my friend agreed — …
Drive-By Gardens: A new lawn-gone garden in my neighborhood
November 19, 2015 Bravo to my neighbors, who’ve ripped out their front lawn and replaced it with native groundcovers woolly stemodia (Stemodia lanata) and sedge (probably Carex texensis), accented with xeric specimen plants like Agave parryi var. truncata, gopher plant (Euphorbia rigida), Wheeler sotol (Dasylirion wheeleri), squid agave (Agave bracteosa), …
Blowsy autumn beauty at Rollingwood Waterwise Garden
November 18, 2015 Last Saturday, a drizzly, cool day, I returned to the West Austin neighborhood of Rollingwood to see how the waterwise garden at city hall had fared over the summer. Designed by Scott Ogden and Lauren Springer Ogden, the garden was installed two years ago. Following an initial …
Foliage Follow-Up in Zilker's Japanese Garden
November 16, 2015 It’s a little early for fall color, such as we get here in Austin. But this Japanese maple at Zilker Botanical Garden is getting a jump on the season. Red leaves mingle with green Shades of green still predominate in the Taniguchi Japanese Garden. I’ve always liked …
