Cold-hardy cactus and more at plantsman Kelly Grummons’s garden
November 12, 2024 While in Denver this fall, I found Colorado gardeners to be warm and generous about sharing their creations and eager to make introductions to other gardeners they admire. That’s how I came to meet plantsman Kelly Grummons, co-owner of specialty nursery Prairie Storm Nursery. How, exactly? After ...
Fall at SummerHome Garden, Part 1
October 19, 2024 When I told gardening friends I’d be in Denver in late September, many urged me to visit SummerHome Garden. It was already on my list. SummerHome has had glowing media attention since its creation in 2020, and I’d read about it in Visionary and Shrouded in Light ...
Exploring Dan Hinkley’s Windcliff, part 2
August 27, 2024 Agapanthus and grasses When you’ve read about a garden and then visit in person for the first time, it can feel both strangely familiar and a little disorienting. As you walk around, you recognize certain features — plants, art, viewpoints — but you also don’t really know ...
Winding my way through Windcliff, part 1
August 25, 2024 Seeing Windcliff, the private garden of plantsman Dan Hinkley and architect Robert Jones, was a huge draw on the Puget Sound Fling tour. I read and reviewed Dan’s book Windcliff a couple years ago and hoped I might be able to visit the garden one day. And ...
Wildflowers, edibles, and hibiscus-munching tortoise at Teresa Garcia’s garden
May 17, 2024 A colorful patch of native Texas wildflowers greeted me in Teresa Garcia’s garden on the Inside Austin Gardens Tour last weekend. Ka-pow! Like Katie Bird Farm in my last post, Teresa’s garden is large (one acre) with extensive gardens, and located in southwest Austin. Let’s start our ...
Transplanted from PNW, Nancy begins new garden in Austin
March 23, 2024 I was happy to visit the new garden of a new gardening friend a few days ago. Located in Austin’s Windsor Hills neighborhood, the garden represents a new beginning for its creator, Nancy Fortner (@gardeningwhileold). In 2021, to be near their daughter, Nancy and her late husband, ...
Cutting Garden and Fling Party at Chanticleer
January 24, 2024 Last September, the Philadelphia Area Fling took me to Pennsylvania, where I enjoyed two visits to the incomparable Chanticleer. I spent a full day there before the tour began and returned for the official afternoon visit, which ended with dinner, live music, and dancing in the garden ...
Goodbye, sweet boy
October 23, 2022 Our very good boy Cosmo crossed over the rainbow bridge on Tuesday. I miss him so much. From age 3, when we brought him home from a rescue group, to age 14, he brought joy and amusement and comfort to our lives. Cosmo was a sweet, excitable, ...
James David and Gary Peese’s new garden in New Mexico
September 09, 2022 Landscape architect James David and Gary Peese departed Austin about 5 years ago, leaving behind a 36-year-old, swoon-worthy garden that regularly starred on Open Days Tours and was covered by Martha Stewart, Architectural Digest, and, ahem, yours truly (click for my final visit). Looking for cooler weather, ...
James Golden’s Federal Twist garden is like Fight Club, except we do talk about it
January 22, 2022 At the garden gate, towering grasses make you feel about 3 feet tall Plants duke it out for space and sunlight in every garden. But at Federal Twist, a wet-meadow garden in a clearing in the woods near Stockton, New Jersey, you witness the brawling fistfight from ...
At Bedrock Gardens art leads you on a journey
November 18, 2021 In early October, as we road-tripped south from our leaf-peeping week in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, I was head-over-heels excited to revisit Bedrock Gardens, a private-transitioning-to-public garden in the town of Lee. I first visited Bedrock Gardens in 2014, when the owners, Jill Nooney and Bob Munger, ...
Betty Ford Alpine Gardens grows high in the Rockies
August 05, 2021 At 8,200 feet above sea level, Betty Ford Alpine Gardens in Vail, Colorado, claims bragging rights as the highest botanical garden in North America. It’s named, of course, in honor of the former first lady, who along with her husband, former President Gerald Ford, was a beloved ...
Spring sights in the garden
April 29, 2021 ‘Frazzle Dazzle’ dyckia My spring planting is done, and I think all my post-freeze cutting back is done too. There are still brown shrubs and dead-looking small trees (like a pomegranate coming back from the roots, with a few leaves here and there on upper branches) taking ...
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 ...
Snow day in Austin, Texas!
January 12, 2021 The biggest snowfall in a decade turned Austin into a floofy white wonderland on Sunday, January 10. All day long, fat snowflakes floated down from the sky, as if the clouds were having a pillow fight. Sure, this may not look like much to you northerners, but ...
Farewell, fall flowers; hello, first freeze
December 01, 2020 So long, ‘Grapes’ gomphrena. It’s been a grand fall. But with a first freeze of 29F predicted early this morning, I expect your button-like flowers will soon look pale and freeze-dried. Well, it was time, I guess. Sayonara, forsythia sage. You were absolutely beautiful for two solid ...
