James Golden’s Federal Twist garden is like Fight Club, except we do talk about it
January 22, 2022 At the garden gate, towering grasses make you feel about 3 feet tall Plants duke it out for space and sunlight in every garden. But at Federal Twist, a wet-meadow garden in a clearing in the woods near Stockton, New Jersey, you witness the brawling fistfight from ...
A Texas-style crevice garden – and neighborly collaboration – brings midcentury Austin home to vibrant life
January 18, 2022 At the end of October, when Loree of Danger Garden was in town for her Garden Spark talk, we finagled an invitation to the tropicalesque garden of John Ignacio. John in turn introduced us to his friend and neighbor Coleson Bruce, who kindly allowed a couple of ...
Anemones and autumn memories in Cat’s garden
January 12, 2022 Back in late October, when Loree of Danger Garden was visiting, Cat Jones invited us over for a garden visit. Her lipstick-pink anemones, a passalong from Rock Rose‘s Jenny Stocker (who’s since departed Austin for Arizona), were blooming. We both adore these fall flowers, which Jenny kindly ...
LongHouse Reserve ramble, Part 3: Pond, zodiac amphitheater, and grass garden
January 09, 2022 You wouldn’t believe how long I studied these stone-like spheres at LongHouse Reserve when I visited the East Hampton, New York, garden back in October. The openness of the gravel under a grove of trees, with lush greenery all around, and those great, lumpy, gray and brown ...
LongHouse Reserve ramble, Part 2: Woodland garden, Yoko Ono sculpture, and Red Garden
January 06, 2022 When textile-artist Jack Lenor Larsen created his garden at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, New York, one of his goals, according to online interviews, was to encourage people to be nonconformist. He wanted to show that more can be done with a suburban backyard than the typical ...
LongHouse Reserve weaves gardens and sculpture: Dune path, pavilion, and tropical rill
January 06, 2022 My visit to LongHouse Reserve on October 10, a cool, drizzly afternoon, was almost an afterthought. I’d detoured through the Hamptons on my Northeastern road trip largely to visit Madoo, garden of the late artist Robert Dash. With two days to fill in the Hamptons I did ...
Mad about Madoo, part 2: Formal garden and iconic Chinese bridge
December 23, 2021 Continuing with my visit to Madoo, an artist’s garden in Sagaponack, New York, let’s head to the rear of the 2-acre property. A long rectangular section extends out from the main gardens, reaching toward agricultural fields beyond the fence line. An ornate blue gate opens to an ...
Mad about Madoo: The secret garden, potager, and ginkgo grove
December 22, 2021 I’d driven out to the Hamptons — a Long Island, NY, detour on my October road trip from Maine to Virginia — mainly to see one garden: Madoo. The name itself is an endearment, taken from a Scottish dialect in which ma doo means my dove or ...
Yucca and palm fantasyland at John Fairey Garden
December 17, 2021 I’d been to The John Fairey Garden (formerly Peckerwood Garden) a half-dozen times before my late-October visit with Loree Bohl of Danger Garden, who was in town to give a Garden Spark talk. Frustratingly, I’d never toured the dry garden, though I’d glimpse its bristling yuccas and ...
A plant-collector’s jungle garden of palms, sotol, and more
December 14, 2021 Like a Mayan ruin — except not crumbling and with a fresh coat of white paint — John Ignacio’s house near Bull Creek in northwest Austin stands amid a jungle-evoking garden of palms, bamboo, and other bold foliage. I’d been introduced to John by a mutual friend, ...
Looking inward at Innisfree Garden, part 2
December 10, 2021 Today I’m continuing with part 2 of my tour of Innisfree, a public garden in New York’s Hudson Valley. Inspired by Chinese strolling gardens, the naturalistic garden rambles around a glacial lake, with small “cup gardens” to discover along the way. Click here to read part 1 ...
Fill up your cup at Innisfree Garden, part 1
December 08, 2021 “Pam, I hope you are planning a visit to Innisfree, the world’s greatest underrated and too little known garden.” So messaged James Golden of Federal Twist after I’d asked if I might visit his own increasingly well-known garden while on my Northeast road trip in October. As ...
A collected home with heart at Via Libre garden
December 03, 2021 Known in Abilene for their extensive gardens, designer and artist Cynthia Williams Deegan and her husband, Bobby, picked up and moved to Austin in 2013 to be near their children and grandchildren. Austin has grown more enchanting as a result. As I’ve written previously, Cynthia and Bobby ...
Autumn asters, garden rooms in Michael Gordon’s New Hampshire garden
November 29, 2021 Michael Gordon’s garden in early October is aster-licious Through phone interviews for magazine assignments, I’ve gotten to “know” many interesting gardeners around the country. One of these is Michael Gordon of Peterborough, New Hampshire, whose garden I wrote about for Country Gardens in 2019. An optometrist by ...
At Juniper Hill Farm, a country garden gets structure from formal design
November 23, 2021 Connections to gardeners I’ve made as a writer often lead, like beads on a string, to new introductions and far-flung garden visits. In such a roundabout way I had the pleasure last month of meeting photographer Joe Valentine and his wife, Paula, for a personal tour of ...
At Bedrock Gardens, the land is an artist’s canvas, part 2
November 19, 2021 During our early October road trip through New Hampshire, we made time for a return visit to Bedrock Gardens in Lee, New Hampshire. This is part 2 of my exploration of the 20-acre garden of artist-gardener Jill Nooney and her “problem-solver” husband, Bob Munger. Click here to ...
