I’m on Cultivating Place talking about growing community, coping with climate change, and my fave plants
September 04, 2022 This week I’m on the acclaimed podcast Cultivating Place: Natural History & the Human Impulse to Garden, talking with host Jennifer Jewell about building a gardening community, how I got into gardening, my Garden Spark speaker series, gardening in the challenging conditions of Central Texas, coping with ...
Garden Spark kicks off 6th season with exciting new speakers
August 10, 2022 Garden Spark returns for its 6th season on September 22, kicking off a new series of entertaining speakers — garden designers, authors, landscape architects — who’ll be sharing their expertise and ideas at in-person events here in Austin. This season we’ll be inspired to reclaim our front ...
At the Wildflower Center with Jennifer Jewell
June 04, 2022 When Jennifer Jewell of Cultivating Place came to Austin a month ago, we visited the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center together. I enjoy showing visitors around our state botanical garden, planted exclusively with native Texas plants. In early May, the late-spring wildflowers were in party mode. Wildflowers ...
Come hear Garden Spark talk by Jennifer Jewell
April 21, 2022 Austin-area readers, you’re invited to my next Garden Spark talk on Thursday, May 5th! Jennifer Jewell of the award-winning podcast Cultivating Place will present “Cultivating Place: How a Place-Based Garden Culture of Care Strengthens Places and Their People.” Jennifer is also author of two excellent books, The ...
Wisteria-scented Garden Spark at Barton Springs Nursery
April 16, 2022 Last week I hosted one of my Garden Spark talks at Barton Springs Nursery, and their beautiful outdoor classroom was made even more beautiful by a wisteria in full bloom. If you know anything about Chinese wisteria, you know it’s a monster of a vine. But its ...
Blue trees in Austin’s Pease Park spotlight tree loss around the world
April 11, 2022 If you’ve visited Kingsbury Commons at Austin’s Pease Park lately, you may have encountered a startling and surprisingly beautiful sight: clusters of trees with Majorelle blue trunks and limbs. The Blue Trees is a temporary environmental art installation by New Zealand artist Konstantin Dimopoulos. It brings our ...
Come hear a talk about using art to enhance a garden, plus all about Garden Spark
March 23, 2022 Five years ago I started a speaker series about garden design, asking designers and landscape architects I admired, garden authors I found interesting, and other design thinkers to come share their ideas. I called it Garden Spark, with the tagline “garden design talks for thinking gardeners.” It ...
Garden Spark talk held under the stars at Barton Springs Nursery
September 26, 2021 Photo: Barton Springs Nursery After a hiatus of a year and a half, my Garden Spark speaker series returned last Thursday with a presentation by always-inspiring landscape architect Tait Moring, in a beautiful new outdoor classroom at Barton Springs Nursery. I’ve been trying to get Tait for ...
Garden Spark returns for 5th season at new location
August 11, 2021 A few months ago I was finalizing an exciting lineup of speakers for the 2021-22 Garden Spark season, as optimism was high for getting back to normal after a year of social distancing and deferred plans. Today the mood is more somber. The pandemic is clearly not ...
What makes garden art effective?
February 25, 2020 Portals at Bella Madrona, Portland, Oregon If you like garden art but aren’t sure how to use it to greatest effect, you’ll want to attend my next Garden Spark talk. On Thursday, April 9th, Pat Webster, an artist and garden writer at Site & Insight, will present ...
Announcing 2020 Garden Spark speaker lineup
December 11, 2019 Season 4 of Garden Spark kicks off in January and brings 3 exciting speakers to design enthusiasts and keen gardeners in the Austin area. Local readers, will you be attending one of the talks this year? I hope so! Talks are held on Thursday evenings in Northwest ...
Thomas Rainer comes to Austin for Garden Spark
September 23, 2019 Thomas Rainer, a Washington, D.C.-based landscape architect and author of Planting in a Post-Wild World, came to Austin last week to give a terrific presentation for Garden Spark, the design-based speaker series I started 3 years ago. Sixty attendees — home gardeners, designers, horticulturists, landscape architects, and ...
Thomas Rainer to speak in Austin – tickets available
August 12, 2019 Photo by Rob Cardillo Garden design aficionados, take note! My second Garden Spark speaker of 2019 will be Thomas Rainer on Thursday, September 19, presenting “Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for More Resilient Landscapes.” Thomas is an internationally known speaker on ecological landscape design, and I’m thrilled ...
The Texas Wildflower interviews me about Garden Spark design talks
April 04, 2019 Are you into garden design or keen on learning more about it from the experts? Me too! That’s why I started the garden design speaker series Garden Spark. The April issue of e-magazine The Texas Wildflower shines a spotlight on the series and how it got started, ...
Join my class and tour my garden on May 4
January 23, 2019 Did you ever wish you could tour a designer’s garden with her or him and learn why they made the design choices they did, or how they solved commonplace problems? Do you long to know more about the plants they grow: how much water they need, how ...
Announcing 2019 Garden Spark speaker lineup
January 01, 2019 Season 3 of Garden Spark kicks off in 2019 with 3 terrific speakers and a change of location, due to high demand, that will allow more people to attend! The new location is an event space in northwest Austin at Hwy 183 and MoPac, just minutes from ...
