Fall garden stroll at the Wildflower Center
November 18, 2024 Being able to visit a garden at the golden hour — just after sunrise or before sunset, when the light is soft and warm — is a garden photographer’s fervent wish. So I am grateful when a botanical garden offers early or late visiting hours. Austin’s Lady ...
Tiki-style pond and lush courtyard at the Galicic Garden
September 12, 2024 If you feel you’ve seen a lot of coverage of Washington gardens lately, it’s true. This is my 26th post about the Puget Sound Fling tour in July. While I have a few more posts about places I saw on my own, including Gillian Mathews’ garden, Seattle ...
More exuberance at the Sparler-Schouten Garden, part 2
September 01, 2024 There was too much garden goodness and exuberance to contain in one post about Daniel Sparler and Jeff Schouten’s Garden of Exuberant Refuge, which I visited on the Puget Sound Fling. Here’s Part 1, if you missed it. Today, Part 2 starts on the back patio of ...
Exploring the Garden of Exuberant Refuge, part 1
August 30, 2024 If there was one garden that really spoke to my own sensibilities at the Puget Sound Fling last month, it was the Garden of Exuberant Refuge, the happy creation of Daniel Sparler and Jeff Schouten in Seattle. Colorful, quirky, irreverent, playful, and rewarding to the observant visitor, ...
Hanging on in the late summer garden
August 28, 2024 August can’t end soon enough for my crispy Texas garden and my own crispy self. But we had a little reprieve in the form of a cloudburst that dropped a quarter inch of rain a couple days ago. Temps have dropped below 100 F too. What is ...
Exploring Dan Hinkley’s Windcliff, part 2
August 27, 2024 Agapanthus and grasses When you’ve read about a garden and then visit in person for the first time, it can feel both strangely familiar and a little disorienting. As you walk around, you recognize certain features — plants, art, viewpoints — but you also don’t really know ...
Winding my way through Windcliff, part 1
August 25, 2024 Seeing Windcliff, the private garden of plantsman Dan Hinkley and architect Robert Jones, was a huge draw on the Puget Sound Fling tour. I read and reviewed Dan’s book Windcliff a couple years ago and hoped I might be able to visit the garden one day. And ...
Nancy Heckler’s hydrangea-colorful woodland garden
August 15, 2024 The acclaimed gardens Heronswood and Windcliff were on the agenda for Day 3 of the Puget Sound Fling, and I was excited to see them. But first we split up onto smaller buses that could manage the narrow road to Windcliff, and my bus headed to Nancy ...
Camille Paulsen’s Tahoma-flora garden
August 11, 2024 One of my favorite gardens on the Fling tour last month was that of Camille and Dirk Paulsen. As one of the co-planners of the Puget Sound Fling, Camille not only devoted a year of volunteer effort to bring Flingers to her region, but she managed to ...
Evening stroll around the garden
July 18, 2024 Last week we had a surprise rain shower — what joy! Afterward I walked through the garden, imagining the plants were feeling the joy too. In the side garden, the string lights on the fence came on as daylight faded away. Golden thryallis makes a bushy, flowering ...
Early summer garden scenes in Austin
June 17, 2024 On my walks around the neighborhood, I’m admiring Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima), the star of Austin’s summer gardens. It’s so beautiful, both leaves and flowers. For whatever reason, I haven’t been able to get it established in my own garden, darn it. It loves heat and ...
Tanglewild Gardens merges passion for daylilies with tropical wow factor
May 23, 2024 Every time I visit Tanglewild Gardens, an Asian-influenced, daylily-hybridizing, future-wedding-venue garden in North Austin, I’m impressed by the energy and ambition of its owners. Skottie O’Mahony and Jeff Breitenstein, 13 years into the making of Tanglewild, continue to expand on its garden rooms and are in the ...
A no-fuss, downsized garden that still brings joy
May 14, 2024 I adored Colleen Jamison’s former garden, with its inviting patios, winding paths, charming decor, and custom gates and arbors built by her husband, Bruce. I blogged about that garden 11 years ago, as well as the median of her street that Colleen transformed into a community park ...
Drive-By Gardens: Colorful in Tarrytown
April 18, 2024 While driving through the tony Tarrytown neighborhood in West Austin, I spotted two moments of happy color that had me hitting the brakes for a photo. Exhibit A: this sunny charmer of a bungalow with a curvy stone path, pruned-up prickly pear shrub, and smattering of pink ...
Digging is 18 years old, and new book news!
February 20, 2024 Last week I celebrated two milestones. Digging turned 18 years old on Valentine’s Day, which means the blog is a full-fledged adult now. Still can’t drink though. I’m amazed by how long blogging has continued to interest me, even as so many other blogs that started around ...
Chanticleer’s dreamy House Garden
January 01, 2024 Happy New Year! Let’s kick off 2024 with another post about glorious Chanticleer Garden, which I visited in late September during the Philadelphia Area Fling. Today I’ll show you the House Garden. Gravel Circle A rooster statue — the symbol of Chanticleer — greets you at the ...
