Garden clean-up in progress for Foliage Follow-Up
February 16, 2017 The pond patio garden is mostly evergreen, so the big cleanup here occurs later, in March, when I muck out the pond and divide the water plants. With our brief winter segueing right into spring, February is a transitional month here in Central Texas. We may yet ...
Hello, winter — you’ve zapped my garden
January 16, 2017 Hello, winter! We’re not used to seeing you here in Central Texas. Despite predictions of a mild winter, with the warming influence of a La Niña, we’ve already had two multi-day stretches of hard freezes, with a couple of nights dropping into the upper teens. The result? ...
Dry-garden lushness: Linda Peterson’s San Antonio garden
April 18, 2016 Rooftop view of the walled courtyard and front garden. Not a blade of lawn grass anywhere, nor is it missed. Seeing one of my new favorite gardens requires an hour-and-a-half road trip to San Antonio, but it’s worth every trafficky mile. Linda Peterson, whose dreamy garden I ...
Formal axes, xeric plants in the Barrett Garden: GWA Pasadena
October 22, 2015 The second private garden I toured during the Garden Writers Association symposium in Pasadena, California, last month turned out to be my favorite. Owned by Ann and Olin Barrett, the garden’s formal layout with cross axes and focal points is made California friendly and contemporary with bold, ...
Dreamy green courtyard and water-saving garden in San Antonio
September 15, 2015 My friend Shirley of Rock-Oak-Deer in San Antonio recently uttered the magic words: Come see a few gardens! So last Friday I hopped in my car, drove south to the Alamo City, and met Shirley to tour three gardens. Two of the gardens will be on this ...
Farewell visit to James David’s Austin garden, part 2
May 20, 2015 A grand limestone staircase bisected by a rill leads from the back of the house to a large pond in the lower garden. Yesterday I showed you around the upper level of James David’s magnificent garden, which I visited in late March and which is currently for ...
Farewell visit to James David’s Austin garden, part 1
May 19, 2015 James and Gary’s entry garden, a gravel garden featuring agaves, aloes, succulents, and other dry-adapted plants from around the world After 36 years devoted to creating an extravagantly plant-rich, terraced, one-of-a-kind garden on two acres in Austin’s Rollingwood neighborhood, landscape architect James David and his partner Gary ...
Drive-By Gardens: Grape Kool-Aid trees in northwest Austin
March 27, 2015 Can you detect a scent of grape Kool-Aid through your screen? I wouldn’t be surprised if you could. Austin’s enjoying a banner year for the fragrant, wisteria-like blooms of our native Texas mountain laurel (Sophora secundiflora). This is the tree that helped sell me on Austin, as ...
Plant This: Chinese fringeflower
February 25, 2015 As winter and spring duke it out in late February, Chinese fringeflower (Loropetalum chinense) starts strutting its stuff, flashing hot-pink, strappy-petaled flowers amid its dusky-purple, evergreen leaves. Dark foliage is kind of rare in central Texas — our native and adapted plants tend to have gray-green and ...
Puff balls and the virtue of laziness
January 23, 2015 I love seasonal changes, don’t you? Even winter has its own beauty, if you look closely. These tawny puffballs are the seedheads of silver ironweed (Vernonia lindheimeri var. leucophylla)… …which in summer looks like this. I think it may be more eye-catching at this time of year, ...
Drive-By Gardens: No-lawn front yard with sedge groundcover
December 07, 2014 Driving through Austin’s North University neighborhood yesterday I spotted this charming Spanish-style bungalow. Instead of lawn, its postage stamp-sized front garden is filled with drought-tolerant ornamental grasses, golden barrel cactus, silver ponyfoot, and agave. A few red roses add pops of vivid color. Most eye-catching of all, ...
Not voting these survivors off the island garden
June 10, 2014 Summer’s heat entices chaste lilac, or vitex (Vitex agnus-castus), to send up an explosion of purple spires, adding a dash of rich color to the xericsaped island bed in the circular driveway. This bermed garden bed, shaded all morning by live oaks and hit with late-afternoon sun, ...
Houston Open Days Tour 2014: Jungle safari at Del Monte Drive Garden
April 09, 2014 Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! On March 29, my friend Diana and I traveled to Houston for the Garden Conservancy-sponsored Open Days tour. Del Monte Drive in the posh River Oaks neighborhood was home to two of the gardens, starting with a surprising “safari garden” ...
Water-saving, no-lawn garden of Cyndi Kohfield
June 21, 2013 When Cyndi Kohfield and her husband bought their northwest Austin home in late 2010, they inherited a tidy front yard of lawn accented by swaths of Asian jasmine and a couple of large sago palms. As she noted in a before-and-after post on her garden blog, Growing ...
Visit to Lotusland, part 4: Rear terrace, parterre & lemon arbor
June 08, 2013 Around back of the main house at Santa Barbara’s Lotusland, you find a Spanish-style courtyard with curlicue wrought-iron gates, pink stuccoed walls, and verdigris cafe seating. A Moorish tiled fountain and rill, on axis with the gate, make a cooling focal point. The tile work makes me ...
Garden Designers Roundtable: Designing with Native Plants
August 28, 2012 Not that long ago, native plants got little respect. They were considered weeds, inelegant scrub, and surely harbored ticks, chiggers, and rodents. Ahead-of-their-time native-plant enthusiasts faced resistance from neighbors concerned about an unkempt look. And even if you did want to grow these plants, you couldn’t find ...
