Tropical conservatory and origami sculpture at San Antonio Botanical Garden
December 09, 2020 Rising Peace I’m not much for conservatories, as regular readers know. They give me mall vibes. But maybe I’m starting to come around a little, thanks to the Origami in the Garden exhibit of Kevin Box‘s sculptures at San Antonio Botanical Garden. This is Part 2 of ...
Native Texas Park: Rediscovering a lost prairie at George W. Bush Presidential Library
October 23, 2020 Blackland prairie, a sash of Texas grassland across the center of the state, running southwest from the Oklahoma border to San Antonio, is the most endangered ecosystem in the U.S., with less than 1% remaining, according to Austin environmental designer John Hart Asher in a Wildflower article ...
The garden of Redenta’s Garden owner Ruth Kinler
October 12, 2020 It was the colorful, modern Fermob furniture that first lured me into Redenta’s Garden, a beloved Dallas nursery “for the modern gardener.” (Click for my tour.) So when I visited the home garden of owner Ruth Kinler, I was happily unsurprised to see more of that fabulous ...
She made her garden dreams come true
September 28, 2020 Mandevilla vine I’ve known Amy since I was 17 years old. We met as freshmen at Rice University and became good friends. She was a bridesmaid at my tiny wedding in South Carolina, and I was there for her when she and husband Gary tied the knot ...
Tropicalesque Tanglewild, where bananas and palms grow big and bold
September 17, 2020 With the arrival of cooler weather it’s garden visiting season, and I’ve started calling on gardening friends who are willing to have me over for a socially distanced, masked, outdoor visit. How I love touring gardens! This week’s tour is at Tanglewild Gardens, a 1.7-acre garden in ...
Drive-By Gardens: Lushly spiky gardens of Tarrytown
August 13, 2020 Forgetting about the closure of city parks in Austin due to Covid-19, my daughter and I tried to visit Mayfield Park in west Austin a couple of weeks ago. Finding the gates locked, we decided to make the best of it and drove around tony Tarrytown neighborhood ...
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 ...
Hilltop pollinator garden of Ruthie Burrus: Austin Open Day tour
November 20, 2019 Having visited Ruthie Burrus’s garden before (including at Austin Garden Bloggers Fling), I knew it would be one of my favorites on the Austin Open Days tour in November, sponsored by The Garden Conservancy. Let’s start with the entry garden, where a concrete trough softened by ferns ...
Planting for a drier future at Nuevo Santander Garden: Austin Open Day tour
November 19, 2019 The Nuevo Santander Garden on the Austin Open Day tour, sponsored by The Garden Conservancy earlier this month, reminded me of native-plant gardens from the old Wildflower Center tour that used to be held Mother’s Day weekend. With its wild and woolly design using Texas natives, it ...
Water-saving Greenway Street Garden: Austin Open Day Tour
November 11, 2019 As Austin gardeners scramble today to get tender plants under cover ahead of an expected hard freeze (seems too early!), let’s continue with coverage of the recent Open Day tour sponsored by The Garden Conservancy. Green House on Greenway, the 2nd garden I visited, reminded me of ...
A city park floating on air: Klyde Warren Park in Dallas
November 03, 2019 A remarkable green space floats overhead, literally flashing before your eyes as you commute or pass through downtown Dallas. Built above 3 blocks of the Woodall Rodgers Freeway, Klyde Warren Park is a remarkable green roof that has become a beloved public park. Traffic flows beneath the ...
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 ...
Steppe garden evangelist Panayoti Kelaidis’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 18, 2019 Despite its Mile High City moniker, Denver is not a mountain town. True, the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies loom on its western horizon, but Denver sits on a relatively flat, semi-arid, grassy plain — aka a steppe, one of the 4 vast steppe ecosystems in the ...
Party under the willow tree in Judy Seaborn’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 13, 2019 Grandmother Willow offers sage advice in Pocahontas. Old Man Willow terrorizes the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. The Whomping Willow bashes the unwary and guards a secret passageway in the Harry Potter series. Why does the willow figure so prominently in our cultural mythology? Perhaps ...
TatTopia garden embraces stonework and sustainability: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 09, 2019 When the construction dust settled at Tatiana Maxwell’s new energy-wise home, studio, and guest house in Boulder, Colorado, in 2010, the yard was just an expanse of bare dirt. Her first thought was to build an English-style cottage garden. But after brainstorming with stonemason artist Thea Alvin ...
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 ...
