Otherworldly trees and rocks at Joshua Tree National Park
August 03, 2020 Oh hi! Let’s pop back into the national park road trip. From the central coast of California, back in late June, we headed home to Austin via a more southerly route than our outbound one. We zipped through Los Angeles — regretful that the pandemic prevented any ...
Grand views at Grand Canyon
July 07, 2020 We steered clear of crowded lookout points like this one at Grand Canyon. In the before-times, a summer road trip was a pleasurable, even adventurous, undertaking. In the covid era it feels almost miraculous to pull off any kind of travel while adhering to federal and local ...
Read This: Desert Gardens of Steve Martino
October 12, 2018 Weeds and walls. That’s how Phoenix landscape architect and native son Steve Martino describes his life’s work of designing gardens in the Arizona desert. Steve has a knack for simplifying the language of design and explaining how his own designs work. “Weeds” is his shorthand for native ...
Look for my articles in Garden Design on Mosaic Gardens and Steve Martino desert garden
June 20, 2017 Do you take Garden Design magazine? I’m pleased to be a contributing writer, and in the Summer 2017 issue you’ll find two articles I wrote about gardens in Arizona and Oregon that couldn’t be more different. “Into the Arroyo” tells the story of an unlikely desert garden ...
Read This: Hummingbird Plants of the Southwest
February 13, 2017 After screech owls, hummingbirds are my favorite garden visitors. Zipping around in jewel-toned splendor, these tiny birds with pugnacious personalities are a joy to watch. One of my favorite gardening moments occurred when I was watering some new salvias I’d planted, and suddenly heard a deep thrumming ...
Read This: The Bold Dry Garden
October 10, 2016 Our gardens tell our stories. The plants we choose, the features we create, the very layout is an autobiography of our passions, fancies, and personality. That’s why the most inspiring gardens spring from impassioned and artistic minds. The Ruth Bancroft Garden near San Francisco is a perfect ...
West Texas sky-gazing at McDonald Observatory and Davis Mountains, plus swimming at Balmorhea Pool
August 30, 2016 The last two days of our Southwestern road trip took us through West Texas and the surprisingly green and scenic Davis Mountains, where we visited McDonald Observatory. A land of big sky, low humidity, and dark nights is the perfect place for gazing at stars and planets ...
Going underground at Carlsbad Caverns
August 30, 2016 With the 100th birthday of the U.S. National Park Service this month, I’m pleased we were able to visit two National Parks on our recent road trip: Mesa Verde in Colorado and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. We’d visited before with our eldest when he was little ...
Chasing Georgia O’Keeffe’s ghost at Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch
August 25, 2016 The day after gazing at Georgia O’Keeffe’s landscapes and monumental flower paintings at the museum in Santa Fe, we drove north through the monsoon-greened high desert of northern New Mexico, the landscape the artist adopted as her own. As soon as I saw it, that was my ...
High-altitude garden in bloom at Santa Fe Botanical Garden
August 22, 2016 Two weeks ago today we drove west on a spontaneously planned, cutting-it-close-with-the-first-day-of-school, two-week road trip through West Texas, northern New Mexico, and western Colorado. One of our early stops was Santa Fe, New Mexico, a beautiful old city we once regularly visited but hadn’t seen in 16 ...
Drive-By Gardens: Desert-style garden in Wells Branch
December 19, 2015 In the Wells Branch neighborhood just north of Austin, on the way to my mom’s house, I regularly drive past this desert-style, no-lawn front garden. I’ve watched it evolve from a few tiny plants dotted across an expanse of decomposed granite to its current lusher look, softened ...
Evening photo shoot at The Huntington Gardens: GWA Pasadena
October 29, 2015 The Huntington gardens near Los Angeles have, for years, been on my wish list of botanical gardens to visit. So I was thrilled to see an afternoon visit and after-hours photoshoot offered on the itinerary of the Garden Writers Association symposium on September 20. Unfortunately, it was ...
Modern gravel garden sips water, amps up architecture
September 25, 2015 Succulent and cactus gardeners and fans of modern design, you’ll want to see this garden on the upcoming San Antonio Watersaver Landscape Tour on October 24. I recently enjoyed a preview visit, thanks to an invitation from Shirley of Rock-Oak-Deer and Heather of Xericstyle. This contemporary garden ...
Palo verde paradise at Arizona State University Polytechnic campus
February 13, 2015 For all you snowbound readers up north or eager-beaver gardeners down south, you’ll find lots of floral sunshine in this post, which I’ve been holding onto since last spring. During my Phoenix visit last April, my friend Noelle, aka AZ Plant Lady, took me to some water-saving ...
Inspired landscape architecture at Cavalliere Park in Scottsdale
May 29, 2014 While touring low-water gardens in Phoenix and nearby Scottsdale, Arizona, in early April with my friend Noelle Johnson, aka AZ Plant Lady, we stopped at Cavalliere Park. Constructed in 2012, the park is a model of sustainability and is a 3-star SITES-certified project. Aside from all that, ...
Xeriscape is not a zeroscape: Scottsdale Xeriscape Garden demonstrates the beauty of saving water
May 09, 2014 It’s a common mispronunciation, but it’s also a bit of a Freudian slip: saying “zeroscape” instead of “xeriscape.” To xeriscape is to design a garden that conserves water through the use of drought-tolerant plants grouped according to water needs, water-collection systems, mulch, non-wasteful irrigation, and other rather ...
