Evening photo shoot at The Huntington Gardens: GWA Pasadena
October 29, 2015 The Huntington gardens near Los Angeles have, for years, been on my wish list of botanical gardens to visit. So I was thrilled to see an afternoon visit and after-hours photoshoot offered on the itinerary of the Garden Writers Association symposium on September 20. Unfortunately, it was ...
Dividing and conquering in the Volk Garden: GWA Pasadena
October 23, 2015 A long, shallow back yard sloping away from the house isn’t easy to turn into an inviting garden (I should know), but terracing and space-dividing hedges did the trick in this San Marino, California, garden. Owned by Robert and Caroline Volk and designed by Mark Bartos, this ...
Formal axes, xeric plants in the Barrett Garden: GWA Pasadena
October 22, 2015 The second private garden I toured during the Garden Writers Association symposium in Pasadena, California, last month turned out to be my favorite. Owned by Ann and Olin Barrett, the garden’s formal layout with cross axes and focal points is made California friendly and contemporary with bold, ...
Tropical blooms in the Conlon Garden at GWA Pasadena
October 15, 2015 I traveled to Los Angeles last month for the Garden Writers Association Symposium in Pasadena, which included an afternoon of three private garden visits. The first one we saw was Don and Marilyn Conlon’s, a formally designed garden filled with bold tropical blooms, like this hot-pink bougainvillea ...
Digging receives two Garden Writers Association awards!
July 02, 2015 I’m really excited to announce that I’ve received two Silver Awards of Achievement for garden writing in the 2015 Garden Writers Association Media Awards Program (GWA is now GardenComm). One award is for the category Blog-Writing. The judges, in making their decision, specifically considered three of my ...
My article about John Fairey wins GWA Gold Award!
August 28, 2013 They might have heard me whooping all the way up in Quebec City last Monday when I learned that I’d won the 2013 Gold Award from Garden Writers Association (now GardenComm) for Best Magazine Writing. I couldn’t make it to the GWA symposium, held in Canada this ...
My article about John Fairey's Peckerwood Garden wins award
April 15, 2013 Last year I wrote an article for Garden Design magazine about Texas plantsman John Fairey and Peckerwood Garden, his decades-in-the-making collector’s garden in Hempstead. “The Plant Man” appeared in the June 2012 issue of Garden Design (now, sadly, out of business). I’m surprised and happy to tell ...
My article about John Fairey’s Peckerwood Garden wins award
April 15, 2013 Last year I wrote an article for Garden Design magazine about Texas plantsman John Fairey and Peckerwood Garden, his decades-in-the-making collector’s garden in Hempstead. “The Plant Man” appeared in the June 2012 issue of Garden Design (now, sadly, out of business). I’m surprised and happy to tell ...
An evening visit to Scott Calhoun’s Zona Gardens studio
October 31, 2012 I don’t remember how I acquired Yard Full of Sun, Scott Calhoun’s 2005 memoir about making a garden that honors its desert setting. As soon as I read the first pages, his story, told with humor, crisp writing, and enticing photos, hooked me. Since then I’ve read ...
Visit to Tucson Botanical Gardens, part 2
October 30, 2012 Tucson Botanical Gardens, which I visited as part of the recent Garden Writers Association symposium, is a surprisingly eclectic place. As I wrote in part 1 of my visit to TBG, the gardens house a wonderful collection of desert plants from all over the world, are home ...
Visit to Tucson Botanical Gardens, part 1
October 29, 2012 An early morning photo shoot at Tucson Botanical Gardens, one of the events at the recent Garden Writers Association symposium, gave me (and about 60 other garden writers and photographers) a chance to see the gardens relatively uncrowded and illuminated by the rising sun. I expected a ...
Artful desert garden of Keith and Helga Zwickl
October 28, 2012 Morning light gilds the cactus and succulent garden Keith and Helga Zwickl welcomed us to their Tucson, Arizona, garden during the Garden Writers Association symposium a couple of weeks ago. I really enjoyed this garden, not only for its stunning collection of cacti and succulents, but also ...
The DreamFlower desert garden of Lorien Tersey
October 26, 2012 Arizona adobe When you have to jackhammer the “soil” to plant anything, when your garden gets only 12 inches of rainfall a year, when you live in a desert, you just know gardening isn’t going to be easy. And yet, despite these conditions in Tucson, Arizona, which ...
Colored walls in a desert oasis: Garden of Alan Richards
October 25, 2012 Rhapsody in blue What do you expect to see when you visit a desert garden? Cactus, of course, in all its architectural, spiny splendor. I recently attended the annual Garden Writers Association Symposium, held this year in Tucson, Arizona. We were bused to three private gardens, along ...
Garden writers convene in the desert for Tucson GWA Symposium
October 21, 2012 A few short years ago I didn’t think of myself as a garden writer. I was a garden blogger, plain and simple. But then I started getting offered, and learned to pursue, paid writing assignments, and now I have a book coming out, a fact that still ...