COVID-19 scuttles Garden Bloggers Fling this year
June 19, 2020 Garden Bloggers Fling, the 13th annual meet-up of garden bloggers from across North America and beyond, was to have been held this weekend in Madison, Wisconsin. The coronavirus scuttled that party. I’m trying to wait patiently for next year, when Madison’s bloggers will try again to host ...
Drive-By Gardens: No-lawn front yards in South Austin
June 05, 2020 Driving through Bouldin and Zilker neighborhoods in South Austin, I cruise slowly to check out the diverse styles of architecture among the many, many remodeled homes. It’s just as interesting to see what people have chosen to plant in their front yards. Many have opted out of ...
Beebalm, skullcap, and more wild creatures
May 27, 2020 The early summer flowers are strutting their stuff, so come along for a virtual tour! Here’s dazzling ‘Peter’s Purple’ monarda (Monarda fistulosa ‘Peter’s Purple’) in the driveway bed. It was a breezy day. Looking toward the neighbors’ house and their fast-growing Yucca rostrata In the shady island bed ...
Urban landscaping along Austin’s 2nd Street
February 18, 2020 While downtown recently for dinner, we walked along 2nd Street and the arched Butterfly Bridge and visited Austin Central Library, first stopping to admire the native-plant landscaping along Shoal Creek. Purple trailing lantana cascades over rock walls to brighten the late-winter garden. More trailing lantana, which blooms ...
Red and yellow autumn foliage in my garden
November 30, 2019 Fall color in Austin was surprisingly good this year, including the show put on by the ornamental trees in my own garden, like the species Japanese maple (Acer palmatum). Most years it goes rusty red in mid-December, coordinating with the red Christmas balls I hang from an ...
Hilltop getaway at Two Coves Garden: Austin Open Day tour
November 21, 2019 The last garden I visited on the Open Day tour sponsored by The Garden Conservancy was designed by B. Jane Gardens, and which B. has continued to maintain for the last three owners. Located off City Park Road, the Two Coves Drive Garden perches atop a hill ...
The happily-ever-after Berger Street Garden: Austin Open Day Tour
November 07, 2019 It’s time to kick off my coverage of last weekend’s Open Day tour in Austin, sponsored by The Garden Conservancy. Six private gardens were open to the public, and I started at the Berger Street Garden, where a homey blue shotgun cottage extends its front porch with ...
Chandor Gardens, née White Shadows, a hidden gem in North Texas, part 1
October 29, 2019 White Shadows — the name evokes romance and mystery — seems wholly appropriate for the dappled-shade garden surrounding a pale-gray house in the small Texas town of Weatherford, 30 miles west of Fort Worth. Here, in a series of alternately elegant and rustic garden rooms, you’ll find ...
A peaceful morning in Cat’s garden
September 28, 2019 A week ago in my friend Cat Jones’s garden, I found my attention divided between her new canyon-side stock-tank pond topped with a glorious flowering crinum and the rolling green canyon vista itself. For a few minutes, the crinum won out, and I exclaimed jealously over the ...
Summer scenes
August 10, 2019 Morning light in the front garden, with Berkeley sedge aglow, a hulking ‘Green Goblet’ agave, and a silvery groundcover of woolly stemodia — this is a summer scene I enjoy before the Death Star gets high in the sky. And here’s another random summer scene, this one ...
New steel planter and meadowy sedge in my garden
July 12, 2019 You might not know it from my all-day-all-night coverage of gardens on the Denver Fling tour, but I’ve been busy in my own garden too. My happiest addition is this new custom steel planter in front of the blue stucco wall by the pool. Tina Strarup of ...
Bowled over by Linda Boley’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 07, 2019 A copper tree, its muscular branches devoid of leaves, stands as an organic sculpture in the Boulder, Colorado, rock garden of Linda Boley. The painted Japanese lilac caught my eye as soon as our bus arrived during the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling tour (June 2019). It signaled ...
Jean Morgan’s garden will make you smile: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
June 30, 2019 As our tour bus of 40+ bloggers arrived at the Louisville, Colorado, home of Jean Morgan, one visitor reached down to pick up a stray piece of trash in Jean’s garden. Only the crumpled Hershey bar wrapper wasn’t trash. It’s part of a cheeky vignette — Happily ...
Hoofed visitor
May 27, 2019 Stepping onto our front porch the other day, we spotted a shy visitor who wasn’t quite prepared to come all the way to the front door, although she was close. A doe was nosing around in the sedge lawnette, seemingly noshing on the cut “hay” from its ...
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 ...
Cactus blooms, round two
May 23, 2019 Summer is here in Texas, and the heat is on, with temps in the 90s all this week. While I’ll miss cooler temps, the collection of cacti on the deck loves it, blooming in unison for the second time this month. Satin flowers of pumpkin orange and ...
