Visit to Biltmore House: Shrub Garden & Frederick Law Olmsted’s trees
June 26, 2011 My favorite part of the extensive Biltmore House gardens, which I visited during a recent vacation in Asheville, North Carolina, was the Shrub Garden—a bit of a misnomer since it also contains a lot of spectacular specimen trees, like this weeping blue atlas cedar. Look at its ...
Visit to Biltmore House: Esplanade, Terrace & Italian Garden
June 25, 2011 Built by George W. Vanderbilt, youthful inheritor of his family’s shipping fortune, Biltmore House is a 250-room, French-style chateau nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Asheville, North Carolina. The home is still owned by the Vanderbilt family but was opened to the public ...
Deer-resistant cottage garden of Freda Cameron
June 23, 2011 During my recent vacation in North Carolina, my dad and I had the pleasure of visiting the garden of Freda Cameron and her husband in Chapel Hill. I’ve long been a reader of Freda’s blog, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel, which is a great source of ...
Visit to Plant Delights Nursery and Juniper Level Botanic Garden: Shade & bog gardens
June 22, 2011 Juniper Level Botanic Garden, a 5-acre display garden at Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, N.C., is roughly divided in two parts: the sunny, newer gardens surrounding owner Tony Avent’s house, and the shady, older gardens surrounding the house in which the business is run. In this post ...
Visit to Plant Delights Nursery and Juniper Level Botanic Garden: Hardy tropicals & pond gardens
June 21, 2011 Not everyone loves agaves as much as I do, I realize (shaking my head in astonishment). For you, then, these flowery images from the Juniper Level Botanic Garden at Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, N.C., which I visited two weeks ago. Pictured above is an orange dahlia, ...
Visit to Plant Delights Nursery and Juniper Level Botanic Garden: Southwestern garden & agave collection
June 20, 2011 Is a southwestern garden what you expect to see when you visit the Raleigh, North Carolina, display gardens of online nursery Plant Delights? Do you expect to see cholla cactus in bloom? Or how about a ghostly ‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave (Agave ovatifolia)? You do if you’ve spent ...
The artful collector’s garden of Helen Yoest
June 19, 2011 While visiting my dad in central North Carolina last week, I was invited to pop over to Raleigh blogger Helen Yoest’s garden after a morning visit to Plant Delights Nursery. My family and I spent several hours at Plant Delights and then had lunch, so by the ...
Dallas Open Days Tour 2011: Munsterman garden
May 25, 2011 I think the Munsterman garden, soon to be sold to some lucky buyer, along with the house, was my favorite on the May 21 Dallas Open Days tour. What can I say? I’m a sucker for garden rooms and colorful, inviting seating areas surrounded by striking foliage ...
Dallas Open Days Tour 2011: Rister-Armstrong garden
May 24, 2011 Our second stop on the Dallas Open Days tour last Saturday was the Anglophile garden of Alan Rister and Greg Armstrong in the Knox/Henderson neighborhood. Beautifully crafted formal hardscaping by landscape architect Susi Tompson is softened by lavish plantings designed and maintained by the owners. Anchoring the ...
Dallas Open Days Tour 2011: Blue Lotus Garden
May 23, 2011 As if there weren’t enough garden tours in Austin this spring, I drove up to Dallas on May 21st for that city’s Open Days tour benefiting the Garden Conservancy, accompanied by my daughter. Undaunted by the 3-hour drive, we arrived first at the exotically named Blue Lotus ...
Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2011: Sheryl Williams garden
May 13, 2011 I was particularly interested to see Sheryl Williams’s garden during our sneak peek on Tuesday because she’s a fairly new Austin garden blogger, and, well, y’all know how I love our garden-blogging group. I’d met Sheryl before, but this was my first time to see her garden ...
Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2011: Sue Nazar garden
May 12, 2011 Sue Nazar’s garden, which you can see Saturday on the Inside Austin Gardens Tour, is a lush, expansive oasis tucked in the hills of west Austin. I got a sneak peek on Tuesday, courtesy of the Travis County Master Gardeners, and I’m sharing it with you. Over ...
Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2011: Wendy Brennan garden
May 11, 2011 Wendy Brennan’s Zen-style garden, which you can see Saturday on the Inside Austin Gardens Tour, is the creation of her neighbor Link Davidson, whose own garden sits just uphill from Wendy’s. At her request, he continued the terracing from his own garden—designed to slow heavy runoff—with inexpensive ...
Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2011: Rebecca Matthews garden
May 11, 2011 Whew, I just finished up a whirlwind of posting about last weekend’s Gardens on Tour 2011, and now I’m giving you a sneak peek into this Saturday’s Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2011, sponsored by the Travis County Master Gardeners Association. Hang onto your hats, and let’s go! ...
Gardens on Tour 2011: Eanes Circle garden
May 10, 2011 Steelwork appealed to me in the final garden on the Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour last Saturday. Take this planter box, for instance. The plants will look better when they fill in, but for now the box is fabulous. I also liked these bent-stake plant labels—clever. And ...
Gardens on Tour 2011: Ridgecrest Drive garden
May 10, 2011 A recent client of mine wanted design ideas for a pretty, xeric, low-water planting on her septic drain field. The Ridgecrest Drive garden on last Saturday’s Wildflower Center-sponored Gardens on Tour is inspirational in that regard. The septic field is front and center on this West Lake ...
