Next-door gardening neighbors at Puget Sound Fling
August 10, 2024 As we rolled into co-planner Camille Paulsen‘s Puyallup, Washington, neighborhood at the Puget Sound Fling last month, my bus was invited to tour a couple of her neighbors’ gardens while the other busload of Flingers worked their way into Camille’s garden first. I was charmed that Camille’s ...
A taste of Italy in a Puget Sound garden
August 07, 2024 The first two private gardens on Day 2 of the Puget Sound Fling last month were neighbors, each gardening intensively but in very different styles. It was fun to explore the two gardens side-by-side and imagine the owners bonding over a shared love of plants. Let’s start ...
Amid the trees at Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden and Pacific Bonsai Museum
August 06, 2024 The Puget Sound Fling last month started its second full day of touring in a forest of towering trees. Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden At the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden in Federal Way, Washington, I sought out the Victorian Stumpery, “the world’s largest public stumpery, with ferns spilling ...
Toad-henge sculpture is king of the hill in garden made for entertaining
August 05, 2024 Steep lots, rocks, lush plantings, and mountain views were a running theme at the Puget Sound Fling last month. The garden of Meagan Foley and Mac Gray fit right in thematically, but it also had us exclaiming wow as we walked around the house and spotted this ...
Hopping around Froggsong Gardens
August 03, 2024 Lunch on the first day of the Puget Sound Fling was held on beautiful Vashon Island at Froggsong Gardens, a private home with a 5-acre estate garden that can be rented out as a wedding/event venue. Needless to say, they were well set up to host 100 ...
A woodland art collector’s garden on Vashon Island
August 02, 2024 While touring the Carhart Garden at the Puget Sound Fling last month, I met one of the owners, Mary Carhart, who upon learning I was from Texas enthusiastically told me that she is from Texas too. Decades ago, she and husband Whit moved to Washington for work ...
Love letter to Puget Sound Fling, starting with Halstead-Robinson Garden
July 28, 2024 Every year since 2008, I’ve been lucky enough to attend the annual Garden Fling, a gathering of bloggers, Instagrammers, YouTubers, and other gardeners on social media, held in a different city each year, where for 3-1/2 days we tour gardens, socialize, get a flavor for a new ...
Evening stroll around the garden
July 18, 2024 Last week we had a surprise rain shower — what joy! Afterward I walked through the garden, imagining the plants were feeling the joy too. In the side garden, the string lights on the fence came on as daylight faded away. Golden thryallis makes a bushy, flowering ...
More faux bois at San Antonio River Walk and Witte Museum
June 14, 2024 I went on a faux bois safari in San Antonio in April, hunting down all the faux bois — locally known as trabajo rústico — that I could find in one day. And I found a LOT. Check out my faux bois post here. But there’s far ...
Cindy Bolz’s Asian-style garden of Japanese maples
June 06, 2024 I have exactly one Japanese maple in my garden, inherited with the house. But I’ve enjoyed the graceful beauty of its foliage and form for many years. So imagine my delight when I visited collector Cindy Bolz‘s garden in Farmers Branch, an inner suburb of Dallas, where ...
Prairie wildflower oasis at Native Texas Park in Dallas
May 30, 2024 On a mid-May trip up to Dallas, I swung by the Laura W. Bush Native Texas Park just before sunset to see the big wildflower show I’d been hearing about this spring. I was not disappointed. Red-and-yellow firewheel, purple horsemint, rusty Mexican hat, and lilac American basketflower ...
Eye-candy containers at Vivero nursery
May 29, 2024 At Vivero Growers nursery in southwest Austin, big containers are planted as eye-catching showpieces. I oohed and aahed over them, including this one with hot-pink ice plant and a giant hesperaloe, during a recent visit. Sizzling pink ice plant flowers Check this one out: a potted Mexican ...
Deborah Hornickel’s modern-formal garden invites outdoor lounging
May 28, 2024 Deborah Hornickel credits her garden’s timeless good looks and livability to her good friend James David, a hugely influential designer formerly of Austin with a showpiece personal garden and a revered boutique/nursery called Gardens. (He and partner Gary Peese now call Santa Fe home.) Thanks to James’s ...
Tanglewild Gardens merges passion for daylilies with tropical wow factor
May 23, 2024 Every time I visit Tanglewild Gardens, an Asian-influenced, daylily-hybridizing, future-wedding-venue garden in North Austin, I’m impressed by the energy and ambition of its owners. Skottie O’Mahony and Jeff Breitenstein, 13 years into the making of Tanglewild, continue to expand on its garden rooms and are in the ...
A no-fuss, downsized garden that still brings joy
May 14, 2024 I adored Colleen Jamison’s former garden, with its inviting patios, winding paths, charming decor, and custom gates and arbors built by her husband, Bruce. I blogged about that garden 11 years ago, as well as the median of her street that Colleen transformed into a community park ...
“It’s what was here”: A prairie garden grows near downtown Austin
May 01, 2024 You wouldn’t expect to find a huge prairie garden here — the backyard of a private home so close to downtown Austin that blue-glass skyscrapers peek over the treetops. Owner Colin Corgan bought a historic 1880s house in the Travis Heights neighborhood a few years ago and ...
