My shrubs and woody perennials: Alive, dead or in-between? Evaluating plants 2 months after Texas freeze
April 14, 2021 ‘Winter Gem’ boxwoods shrugged off the freeze with no damage, as did ‘Micron’ yaupon hollies (center circle) Texas gardeners are feverishly comparing notes about plant survivors and croakers after February’s Big Freeze. I’m doing the same and documenting how every plant in my garden fared. Please see ...
My trees: Alive, dead or in-between? Evaluating plants 2 months after Texas freeze
April 12, 2021 Getting closer to a state of acceptance It’s been two months since the Big Freeze of mid-February, and my garden, which thankfully has many thrivers, is still revealing struggling survivors and dead-as-doornails. During those two months, temperatures have ranged from a low of 5 F to an ...
Still cleaning up after the freeze but making progress
March 16, 2021 In the 3 weeks since the Big Freeze, there’s been much gnashing of teeth and grim side-eye given to the cold-toasted garden. There’s been escape. But mostly there’s been a slow acceptance of the changed garden and daily efforts at cutting it all back, removing plants that ...
Yalamurra, a “garden of survivors” in South Australia offers Texas inspiration
January 14, 2021 Yalamurra garden, the creation of Australian gardener Kurt Wilkinson. Photo by Kurt Wilkinson. Want to know what’s inspiring me this week? It’s the South Australian garden of Kurt Wilkinson, a professional gardener and topiarist in the Adelaide area. Kurt’s work came to my attention via a Danger ...
Grow a hedge using native Texas plants
November 30, 2020 I want to share a little more Wildflower Center inspiration, this time from the maze in the Family Garden. Traditionally mazes are defined by clipped boxwood or yew hedges that grow at least to head-height — about 6 feet tall. Here at Austin’s native-plant botanical garden, the ...
Revamping the Circle Garden, again
July 29, 2020 The summer doldrums, I call it. When it feels like a sauna outside, and it won’t rain, and yet the plants and especially the weeds grow like Jack’s magical beanstalk until the garden feels suffocated by vegetation. That’s where I was a couple weeks ago, with tree ...
Summertime plant whacking
June 04, 2020 Whacking — it’s what I do in summer as plants grow bushy or tall or lean where they shouldn’t. I had to whack back the Verbena bonariensis in the Circle Garden so that I could walk, not sidle, along the path. The ‘Winter Gem’ boxwoods also got ...
How to prune a crape myrtle
February 27, 2019 Guest post by Allen Owings, senior horticulturist at Bracy’s Nursery, a wholesale nursery in Louisiana. This article appeared on Bracy’s Nursery’s Facebook page and is republished here (with light editing) with permission. A mature, properly pruned allee of crape myrtles at Dallas Arboretum Crape myrtles are among ...
Time to cut back the winter garden
February 18, 2019 Mid-February, right around Valentine’s Day, marks cut-back time for Texas gardeners. Dormant grasses and perennials are getting their annual haircut as I clear away last season’s growth (which I leave standing through the winter for wildlife habitat and its own quiet beauty) in preparation for the fresh ...
Topiary meadow and sunken pond garden at Great Dixter, part 2
August 14, 2018 In part 1 of my recap of my tour of Great Dixter in England earlier this summer, I confessed that I didn’t like the overplanted, claustrophobic feeling of the Peacock Garden and surrounding hedged gardens. But I found breathing room and the longer views I’d craved along ...
Hedge fun: The Italian Renaissance garden of Château d’Ambleville
July 05, 2018 So many châteaux (manor houses, mostly, but also palaces and castles) litter the French countryside that today some can be purchased for a relative song. We were not looking to buy, however, but merely to visit a couple of châteaux in mid-June, after our tour of Monet’s ...
Paris parks, pigeons, and masterpieces
June 28, 2018 After Venice earlier this June, we spent 5 nights in Paris, a city I hadn’t seen in 29 years. It is as beautiful and vibrant as I remembered. My husband took these twilight images from the top of the Arc de Triomphe, looking out over the city ...
Mowing the sedge, and other expressions of hope for spring
January 30, 2018 Central Texas gardens got walloped by Old Man Winter this year, and a lot of plants that normally contribute to Austin’s evergreen palette — bamboo muhly, sago palm, flax lily, even ‘Alphonse Karr’ bamboo — are sporting sad shades of tan or brown. With a garden tour ...
European formality with relaxed Texas style in Ware Garden: San Antonio Open Days Tour
October 18, 2017 Last Saturday I road-tripped to San Antonio for the Open Days garden tour, sponsored by the Garden Conservancy. Shirley Fox of Rock-Oak-Deer was one of the organizers this year, and I was eager to see the gardens that she’d chosen for the tour. The Ware Garden is ...
Cottage garden meets Zen garden: Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2017
May 03, 2017 Ever get the hankering to have two different styles of gardens at once? Daphne Jeffers — whose east Austin garden will be on the Inside Austin Gardens Tour this Saturday, May 6 — made it happen, with a flowery cottage garden out front and, in a surprising ...
How to prune clumping bamboo
April 24, 2017 I’ve known many people who are afraid to plant any kind of bamboo, even a clumping type, for fear it will take over their yard — and with good reason. Here in Austin, many a back yard is clogged with running bamboo, which is often planted for ...
