Color-saturated homes on 2023 Tribeza Interiors Tour, Part 1
January 25, 2023 A pink front door and chromatic rug make a cheerful entry at Genie Norris’s house The quiet season for gardening makes the perfect season to focus on interiors — and to attend Austin’s annual Tribeza Interiors Tour. After a two-year pandemic hiatus, the tour resumed last Sunday, ...
Hotel Magdalena courtyard evokes Hill Country canyon
October 06, 2022 After an all-day meeting on South Congress recently, I strolled down Music Lane to Hotel Magdalena, a boutique hotel that opened in 2020. I’d been wanting to see the place since learning that Ten Eyck Landscape Architects did the landscaping and Lake|Flato Architects designed the hotel itself ...
Heart of stone: Tait Moring’s garden
May 18, 2022 Amid the flurry of gardens I had the pleasure of visiting in late April, landscape architect Tait Moring‘s garden stands out, as always, for its evocative stonework and a magpie collection of found objects, boyhood collections, and castoffs from clients’ gardens, which Tait assembles into art for ...
Gathering spaces in Ruthie Burrus Garden, part 2
May 02, 2022 In my last post I hope I wowed you — as I was wowed — by the colorful wildflower meadow and textural spiky-soft shade garden of Ruthie Burrus. If you missed it, check out Part 1 of my visit to Ruthie’s West Austin garden. Today we’ll explore ...
Flowery meadow instead of lawn at Chanticleer’s house garden
February 26, 2022 You’d expect a garden surrounding an estate house to be formal, restrained, with neat lawns and containers that serve to frame the grand structure. The house garden at Chanticleer, a Pennsylvania “pleasure garden” I visited during my East Coast road trip last October, upends this convention through ...
The yellow glow of late fall
December 02, 2021 Cool, blue-sky weather has me spending more time in the garden, having friends over, and tinkering with planting beds. It’s kind of glowing out there. Why? Yellow is the color of fall in my garden, starting with the wonderful forsythia sage (Salvia madrensis), which lights up the ...
Cooling off at Wimberley’s Blue Hole
August 27, 2021 Austin is blessed with an abundance of spring-fed swimming holes, including crown jewel Barton Springs Pool. But just an hour away, the small town of Wimberley, Texas, has two spectacular natural swimming holes of its own: Jacob’s Well (which I saw earlier this summer) and Blue Hole, ...
The mysterious allure of Jacob’s Well
July 31, 2021 For years I’ve heard about Jacob’s Well, a cylindrical underwater cavern filled over its brim with chilly (68 F) artesian spring water. Extending beyond the 30-foot-deep well, the cavern’s chambers reach a depth of 137 feet, with narrow passages and silty floors that can cloud the water ...
Abundance tiled artwork near Deep Eddy Pool welcomes visitors
July 22, 2021 Finding a new piece of public art always brightens my day, and Austin adds more and more artworks to its public spaces all the time. This tiled arch gateway to newly renovated Eiler’s Park, next to Deep Eddy Pool, went up in 2020. Created by Ryah Christensen ...
Swimming at Barton Springs Pool, the ultimate summer cool-down
July 16, 2021 You wouldn’t think I’d have a hard time finding someone to go swimming with me in July in Texas. But when I proposed an excursion to Barton Springs Pool recently, most of my family and friends said no way. Why? After all, Barton Springs Pool is considered ...
Wildflowers, water features, and flying pigs add charm to no-lawn garden in Cedar Park
June 10, 2021 Whenever I see a no-lawn, front-yard garden in suburbia, I know a daring and enthusiastic gardener lives there. Such is the case with Cedar Park homeowner Frances Fortanely, whose garden I had the pleasure of seeing last week. Pulling up to the curb, I was greeted by ...
Heart eyes for heartleaf skullcap and more
May 26, 2021 A blue haze has settled over the driveway-island bed, the silvery blue flowers of heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata). I find myself stopping to admire them every time I step outside. It fills in nicely around a ‘Vanzie’ whale’s tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia), ‘Vertigo’ pennisetum grass, Mexican oregano ...
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 ...
Cowboy pool, colorful outdoor living: Lorie and Michael Kinler’s Fort Worth Garden
March 05, 2021 Last fall, during a weekend trip to Dallas, I was invited to visit the Fort Worth garden of Lorie and Michael Kinler. The Kinlers are the design duo behind Redenta’s Landscape Design Kinler Landscape Architecture (renamed in 2022), formerly affiliated with Redenta’s Garden nursery in Dallas. A ...
After the beautiful, terrible Texas snowpocalypse
February 25, 2021 A 6-inch snowfall blanketed our street in northwest Austin. Not a footprint had marked it when I took photos that morning. You might have heard about a little snowstorm that happened in Texas last week. If you experienced it, you might still be reeling a little — ...
Twilight in the garden as wicked cold arrives
February 11, 2021 As I look out the window, it’s hard to believe this beautiful, warm twilight by the pool was just two evenings ago. Today a cold rain is freezing to tree limbs and encasing ready-for-spring plants in heavy ice. Shrubs are bent low. Bamboo is nearly prostrate. As ...
