Houston Botanic Garden’s surprising cactus garden and more – part 2
September 25, 2020 During my inaugural visit to the brand-new Houston Botanic Garden last weekend, my eyes widened when I rounded a bend and saw this — a rocky garden of agave, yucca, and cactus. After all, this is Houston, city of sauna-like summers and 50 inches of annual rainfall ...
Potted succulents don’t ask for much (and that’s the way I like it)
August 10, 2020 Potted plants green up my patio, deck, and porch, and I often plunk them into garden beds as focal points. But being in Texas, mine aren’t packed with flowering annuals or perennials that require daily or twice-daily watering. Instead they showcase water-thrifty plants like succulents, cacti, even ...
Chinoiserie enchantment at Chandor Gardens, part 2
October 31, 2019 Given 3-1/2 acres of cow pasture in North Texas, it turns out you can do quite a lot with it. Continuing with my mid-October visit to Weatherford’s Chandor Gardens (click for part 1 of my visit), here’s more of the romantic English-Chinese garden that portraitist Douglas Chandor ...
Plant pictures for your home at Articulture
August 27, 2019 It’s peace, love, and plants at Articulture, a creative-cool boutique in far-south Austin that sells living wall art and one-of-a-kind succulent and tillandsia arrangements, as well as fun accent pieces and home goods. In addition, Articulture’s design team creates incredible green-wall installations, the store hosts regular workshops ...
Cat’s pollinator garden with a canyon view
May 16, 2019 Three years ago my friend Cat Jones (check out her IG and blog) and her husband, Derrick, newly empty nesters, sold their house and Cat’s lovely garden and moved to a different home in their Steiner Ranch neighborhood, not to downsize but — fellow gardeners, can you ...
Spring is abloom in shades of pink and turquoise
May 01, 2019 I haven’t done a photo tour of my own garden in a while, so let’s go, starting with a new planting of Gulf Coast penstemon (Penstemon tenuis) and winecup (Callirhoe involucrata), both Texas natives. Along with an artichoke — I’ve always wanted to try one — they’re ...
Spring flowers and foliage at Dallas Arboretum
April 25, 2019 At Dallas Arboretum last week, masses of foxgloves were blooming throughout the gardens. Hot pink is lovely… …but I like even better these lilac and mauve foxgloves planted under gnarled vitex trees. Pretty from any angle Honeybees enjoy the freckled flowers too. We stopped in A Woman’s ...
Strolling into danger — Danger Garden, that is
September 22, 2017 Every three years I manage a trip to Portland, and each time ( and ) I’ve been fortunate to visit the garden of my friend Loree Bohl — fellow spiky plant lover, the prolific blogger of Danger Garden, and a collector-gardener with an incredibly artistic and meticulous ...
Log slices, twig spheres, and other natural art in garden of Debbie Friedman: Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling
July 09, 2017 Though she lives and gardens in Maryland, Bethesda designer Debbie Friedman told us that she uses log slices, granite stones, and other natural accents to evoke the spirit of Mount Desert Island, Maine, where she enjoys vacationing. I visited her suburban garden during the recent Capital Region ...
New shade sails and other garden goodness
May 05, 2017 We’ve always wanted shade for our deck, which is one of the few spots in our yard not overhung by live oaks. Facing south, it gets blasted by the Death Star all day long, and even our kitchen table overlooking the deck gets unpleasantly toasty by midafternoon ...
Easter Sunday Foliage Follow-Up
April 16, 2017 I’m imagining my blog feed filling up with pictures of pastel Easter eggs and white lilies. But here at Digging, in spite of a flurry of kitchen activity (I’m making Tex-Mex deviled eggs and a lemon cake), it’s still Foliage Follow-Up. Let’s start with the stock-tank pond ...
Zinging through the end of summer
September 01, 2016 Although I was gone for half of it, which no doubt helped, August was one of the most pleasant Augusts I’ve experienced since moving to Austin 22 years ago. It just hasn’t been all that hot (in the low to mid-90s F, and even some days in ...
Hot child in the city: August Foliage Follow-Up
August 16, 2016 Surely August will be our last worst month here in central Texas. It can’t possibly remain blisteringly hot and humid through September, can it? Yes, it can, and it probably will, but that’s why I love agaves, yuccas, prickly pear, and other tough plants. They breeze through ...
Garden marries home at destination nursery/garden shop Terrain
June 20, 2016 Anthropologie meets Flora Grubb Gardens? Yes, please! While in the Brandywine Valley outside of Philadelphia earlier this month, I was eager to visit Terrain, a nursery, home and garden shop, and restaurant located in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. (There’s a second location in Westport, Connecticut.) Founded by the ...
Articulture turns plants into art
May 11, 2016 Manchaca Road in South Austin may as well be on the other side of the planet for this northwest Austinite, or so it seems most days while parked on our city’s interminably clogged highways and streets. But the stars aligned yesterday for a cross-town jaunt, and I ...
Garden decor lust sparks desperate question: where is Austin’s Potted?
October 11, 2015 I first visited Potted, the stylishly playful Los Angeles garden shop co-owned by Mary Gray and Annette Gutierrez, two years ago, while passing through town on the way to Santa Barbara and Lotusland. Since that first visit, I’ve ordered from their online store and received gifts from ...
