Canyon-side garden of Tait Moring: Austin Open Days Tour 2017
November 25, 2017 The final garden from the Austin Open Days Tour earlier this month is landscape architect Tait Moring‘s personal garden, which perches on a canyon’s rim just off Bee Caves Road. His entry garden is an appealing mix of formality (boxwood hedging, geometric raised pond, fig ivy neatly ...
Garden rooms and green roof at Cloverleaf Drive Garden: Austin Open Days Tour 2017
November 13, 2017 This year’s Garden Conservancy-sponsored Open Days tour in Austin featured gardens in a variety of styles and a variety of neighborhoods (not just West Austin). I especially enjoyed exploring the Cloverleaf Drive garden, which, along with Jackson Broussard’s, is located east of I-35 in a “regular-folks” neighborhood ...
Garden of Jackson Broussard: Austin Open Days Tour 2017
November 10, 2017 For landscape architect Jackson Broussard, you really can go home again. He was raised in this modest ranch house in east-central Austin, and after he took ownership he freshened up the house and leased it out and built himself a detached, two-story addition in the back yard ...
Festive color and a little Dia de los Muertos in Lucinda Hutson’s garden
October 30, 2017 A visit to Lucinda Hutson‘s home and garden always feels like being at a party. Brightly colored walls and accessories, garden rooms with playful themes (like the mermaid garden pictured here), and Lucinda’s own excitement at showing you what’s flowering or fruiting create a feeling of festivity ...
Garden of Gary Ratway and Deborah Whigham and their Digging Dog Nursery
August 23, 2017 Stepping through a dark-leaved doorway in a beech hedge into the display gardens at Digging Dog Nursery, located in Albion, California, you feel a bit like Alice falling into the rabbit hole. What awaits on the other side? A potted boxwood draws you through the hedge… …and ...
Garden Dialogues with John Fairey at Peckerwood
May 08, 2017 Heading east through pine country toward Hempstead, Texas, I arrived after a couple of hours on the road at Peckerwood Garden last Saturday. The draw, aside from a chance to see this beautiful 45-year-old garden again, was to hear its creator, John Fairey, talk about it in ...
Zilker Botanical Garden Conservancy created to revitalize Austin’s botanical garden
March 17, 2017 For 23 years I’ve been a regular visitor at Zilker Botanical Garden, strolling its paths, picking my way across the Japanese garden’s moon bridge, watching the prehistoric garden grow into maturity. My children had a blast exploring its trails when they were younger, and I’ve enjoyed witnessing ...
Zilker Botanical Garden Conservancy created to revitalize Austin's botanical garden
March 17, 2017 For 23 years I’ve been a regular visitor at Zilker Botanical Garden, strolling its paths, picking my way across the Japanese garden’s moon bridge, watching the prehistoric garden grow into maturity. My children had a blast exploring its trails when they were younger, and I’ve enjoyed witnessing ...
Read my article in Country Gardens about East Austin Succulents
March 12, 2017 If you like Austin’s thrift-store, anything-goes, fun-loving style, especially in gardening, check out my article about Eric Pedley’s nursery East Austin Succulents in the current issue of Country Gardens magazine (Spring 2017, pages 70-75). You can read all about Eric’s unique junk-store finds, LP-cooking adventures, and how ...
Garden Spark talks kick off with Scott Ogden, and you’re invited!
January 05, 2017 Inspired by the idea of house concerts — performances in private homes, which support musicians and give a small audience an up-close and personal musical experience — I’ve decided to host a series of garden talks by well-known design speakers out of my home, and I’m calling ...
Read This: The Bold Dry Garden
October 10, 2016 Our gardens tell our stories. The plants we choose, the features we create, the very layout is an autobiography of our passions, fancies, and personality. That’s why the most inspiring gardens spring from impassioned and artistic minds. The Ruth Bancroft Garden near San Francisco is a perfect ...
Inside out: My article about Ted Flato of Lake Flato is in Garden Design
September 17, 2016 Have you gotten the new issue of Garden Design magazine (Autumn 2016)? I’m pleased to say I have an article in it: a profile of Ted Flato of the visionary architectural firm Lake Flato and a 16-page spread of their gorgeous residential projects, each of which is ...
Playful plant-lover’s garden of LA designer Dustin Gimbel
September 28, 2015 Concrete orb shish-kabobs in Dustin’s garden The Death Star was blasting mercilessly when I visited designer Dustin Gimbel’s garden in Long Beach, CA, last week — not at all in the mellow, sunny-L.A. way I’d been led to expect. But perhaps Diana and I are fated to ...
Floral design demo with urban farmer Sarah Nixon: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 21, 2015 Floral designer and urban farmer Sarah Nixon welcomed approximately 70 bloggers (in two shifts) into her tiny back garden during our first day at Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling earlier this month. Sarah, a gardener and floral designer who operates My Luscious Backyard, explained her business to us ...
Westwind Farm Studio: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 23, 2014 Both buses filled with 80 hot, tired bloggers bumped into a lavender field at the end of the first touring day of the Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland, Oregon, in mid-July. I tiredly thought, “How nice, a lovely field of lavender.” But what I didn’t realize was ...
Interview with Luci Baines Johnson about Wildflower Center's new Family Garden
March 19, 2014 Water feature with streams, pond, rocks, and grotto in the new children’s garden Some of you already know this story. In early 2000, while visiting the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center with my baby daughter and 3-year-old son, I unexpectedly met Lady Bird and her daughter Luci ...
