Jenny Rose Carey’s playful garden rooms at Northview, part 2
November 06, 2023 In my last post I showed you half of Jenny Rose Carey’s garden, Northview, which I toured during the Philadelphia Area Fling in September. Today I’ll show you the rest. Let’s start with her Fruits and Flowers Garden, where this Tin Man sculpture greeted me with open ...
Autumn meadows and monarchs at Wildflower Center
February 07, 2022 The Center’s iconic lookout tower, which doubles as a water-collecting cistern When Loree of Danger Garden came to Austin last October, we visited the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on her last day. I was happy she got to see it a second time, particularly since her ...
Modern-rustic dining patio at Texas French Bread
December 04, 2019 All you really need for a garden, as Phoenix landscape architect Steve Martino says, are a tree, a chair, a wall, and a little water. The rustic-modern patio at Texas French Bread reminded me of this when I stopped by for lunch yesterday. Designed by Christy Ten ...
Fall xeriscape garden at Rollingwood City Hall
November 25, 2019 ‘Strawberry Fields’ gomphrena blazes with color amid bold agaves and barrel cactus. While driving through West Austin on the Open Day garden tour earlier this month, I had a sixth-sense feeling that a garden was calling my name. Oh yes, I thought, remember the xeriscape garden at ...
Food for people and butterflies in San Antonio Botanical Garden’s culinary and entry gardens
November 06, 2018 San Antonio was calling my name last week, so I hopped in the car with my friend Cat of The Whimsical Gardener, and we road-tripped south to see the new gardens at San Antonio Botanical Garden. Wow, was I impressed with the changes! Zachry Foundation Culinary Garden ...
Sedgey front garden and xeriscape terrace
December 06, 2017 For one West Austin homeowner, this is the view from her front door: an undulating, rhythmic front walk of poured-concrete pavers wending through a meadowy swath of Berkeley sedge, soap aloes, and purple heart, with a scrim of yaupon hollies shielding the view of the street. A ...
Talking waterwise gardens, blogging & more on Still Growing Podcast
January 27, 2017 Have a seat at the kitchen table, and let’s have a chat! At least, that’s how it felt to be interviewed last week by Jennifer Ebeling, host of the popular Still Growing Podcast, for an episode about making water-saving gardens that airs today. Jennifer Ebeling, host of ...
Bugs and butterflies at the Wildflower Center, part 2
October 04, 2016 Continuing our garden stroll through Austin’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (here’s part 1 of my visit), let’s enter the Family Garden, where paving by the restrooms and shade pavilion is softened with rain gardens planted with water-appreciating native plants. A rain garden, Texas-style, planted with mistflower, ...
Passionate about gardening sustainably for the place you live
May 02, 2016 New Jersey gardener and author Mike “The Gardener” Podlesny interviewed me recently for his popular Vegetable Gardening Podcast, and you can listen to it here (scroll to bottom). Despite the veggie-centric podcast title, Mike interviews all kinds of gardeners about any gardening topic you might imagine. I’m ...
Public plaza at San Antonio’s Pearl, an urban re-use neighborhood
January 06, 2016 The old Pearl Brewery in San Antonio might have been razed, once its brewing days were over. Instead its century-old manufacturing buildings have been transformed into restaurants and even a boutique hotel and embraced by walkable streets lined with shops and apartment buildings. Public green spaces throughout ...
Blowsy autumn beauty at Rollingwood Waterwise Garden
November 18, 2015 Last Saturday, a drizzly, cool day, I returned to the West Austin neighborhood of Rollingwood to see how the waterwise garden at city hall had fared over the summer. Designed by Scott Ogden and Lauren Springer Ogden, the garden was installed two years ago. Following an initial ...
Evergreen Brick Works community greenspace: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 30, 2015 For nearly 100 years, Don Valley Brick Works supplied Toronto with masonry bricks and helped the city rebuild and grow after a devastating fire. By 1984, however, the kilns were closed down, and the factory buildings languished. Urban explorers and partying teens found their way in, and ...
Going waterwise at Rollingwood City Hall
April 21, 2015 Putting their money where their mouth is, more and more cities that urge citizens to reduce their water usage are replacing thirsty lawns around courthouses and city halls with xeric landscaping. Rollingwood, a tiny city of around 500 homes just three miles from downtown and surrounded by ...
A blooming good time at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
April 14, 2015 Spring is the Wildflower Center‘s showiest season, and last Saturday I shared the gardens with many other flower-peepers. (Click for part 1 of my Wildflower Center visit.) In this post we’ll revisit the nearly 1-year-old Luci and Ian Family Garden, where Gulf Coast penstemon (Penstemon tenuis) was ...
Gorgeous weeds and walls at the Wildflower Center
March 19, 2015 With a hat tip to Phoenix landscape architect Steve Martino, who coined the phrase “weeds and walls” to describe his design style — planting native plants for toughness and building walls for structure — here are some of the beautiful weeds and walls at Austin’s own native-plant ...
Rain garden in action
March 13, 2007 Water flowing from the gutter into a rain barrel. The overflow spills into the wet-weather stream (dry creek), laid with New Mexico river rock, and is funneled into the rain garden. With all the talk about 10-year droughts at The Throbbing Thumb, Bill Lane’s Victoria, Australia, blog, ...
