A tradition of faux bois, or trabajo rustico, in San Antonio
April 22, 2024 Faux bois palapa at Landa Library Last week I roadtripped to San Antonio to explore the city’s faux bois tradition, or trabajo rústico as it’s known locally. These functional works of art — mostly garden furniture but also planters, shade structures, bridges, and even bus stops — ...
Christy Ten Eyck-led tour of San Antonio garden
October 16, 2023 On Saturday I headed down San Antonio way for a Garden Dialogues event led by Christy Ten Eyck, principal of Ten Eyck Landscape Architects in Austin, at a private garden she designed in San Antonio’s Hill Country Village. Christy has long been an inspiration for her design ...
Michael Eason’s desert garden retreat
August 14, 2023 While in West Texas a couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting designer and author Michael Eason‘s garden in Alpine. Michael had lined up some wonderful gardens for me to visit there, ones that he’d designed, but it was nice to see his own personal ...
Meeting artist Julie Speed at her Marfa studio
August 10, 2023 Marfa is an oasis for minimalist art in West Texas, despite the town’s tiny size (population 1,750) and remoteness from, well, just about anywhere. A friend and I road-tripped there two weeks ago, and instead of pilgrimaging to see Donald Judd’s minimalist concrete boxes (maybe next time), ...
Blue trees in Austin’s Pease Park spotlight tree loss around the world
April 11, 2022 If you’ve visited Kingsbury Commons at Austin’s Pease Park lately, you may have encountered a startling and surprisingly beautiful sight: clusters of trees with Majorelle blue trunks and limbs. The Blue Trees is a temporary environmental art installation by New Zealand artist Konstantin Dimopoulos. It brings our ...
Totemic sculpture by Dustin Gimbel evokes desert flora
March 04, 2022 The next best thing to a cool sculptural plant is a cool sculpture that looks like a plant. Such a fusion of manmade art and the natural world has been perfected by Los Angeles-based ceramist and garden designer Dustin Gimbel. His segmented ceramic totems echo the striking ...
Meeting up with “Gays Who Garden” Andrew and Jared
November 15, 2021 I can’t remember when I started following @gayswhogarden on Instagram, but their alliterative, cheeky, and decidedly out username caught my eye, as did their beautiful images of soft-petaled roses, colorful Texas wildflowers, and glowing dahlias (in Austin — how??). We started chatting online, and in due course ...
A passion for purple in Lucinda Hutson’s garden
April 22, 2021 Reveling in the flowery, herb-scented beauty of Lucinda Hutson‘s garden is always a delight, but especially this spring, after the devastating February freeze that set back every Texas garden. Lucinda’s garden was hit hard too, but thanks to her own nonstop cleanup and replanting, twice-weekly gardener assistance, ...
New owners of Barton Springs Nursery plan to add learning, community spaces and inspire local gardeners
January 21, 2021 Barton Springs Nursery’s new owners, Amy Hovis and Willy Glenn. Photo courtesy of Amy Hovis. After 35 years, ownership of beloved Austin nursery Barton Springs Nursery changed hands on January 1, 2021. I’ve been buying plants and pots from BSN for 20 years (and blogging about it ...
Read This: The Earth in Her Hands
May 05, 2020 Women’s contributions have been long overlooked in the gardening world, particularly at recognized levels of design and horticulture. So too with the contributions of women of color and those whose work doesn’t cater to the 1% (or even 10%) whose gardens have traditionally filled the pages of ...
Plant a tree for Tom Spencer
April 29, 2020 Were it not for Tom Spencer, longtime host of Austin-based PBS television show Central Texas Gardener, public speaker, and environmental advocate, I may never have fallen in love with agaves, planted my first whale’s tongue agave, or known and shared the joy of Moby. Tom planted lots ...
Watch Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf
April 25, 2020 My heart broke open with happiness, while streaming a film about celebrated garden designer Piet Oudolf, when the Dutch designer was suddenly cruising down a Texas highway, exclaiming over azure bluebonnets, coral-red Indian paintbrush, and crepe-petaled white prickly poppies splashed along the roadside like spilled paint. “This ...
Peckerwood Garden renamed for founder John Fairey, who passed away this week
March 19, 2020 The Hempstead, Texas, garden of plant explorer and collector John Fairey has long been known by the titter-inducing name Peckerwood, but last week it was renamed in honor of its founder. Just a few days later, John G. Fairey passed away, and The John Fairey Garden now ...
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 ...
Read This: The Grumpy Gardener by Steve Bender
July 12, 2018 Here in the South for the next several months, the Death Star is set on high beam, so it’s time to quit trying so hard. Drop your shovel and pruners, grab a cold one, and plop down with an entertaining book. And have I got a good ...
Bloggers soaked up Austin at Garden Bloggers Fling
May 11, 2018 For 11 years I’ve traveled to cities around North America to attend Garden Bloggers Fling, and I’ve helped organize two Flings held in Austin — in and again last weekend. Normally I take hundreds of pictures of the gardens I visit. (Go to Categories in my sidebar ...
