Have we outlasted the heat-wave summer?
August 31, 2022 What a summer this has been for Austin. Hot as Hades, rainless and parched for months and months. And then, finally, flooding rains in mid-August drenched parts of the city — I got 4.75 inches over a few days, although friends in South and West Austin got ...
Epic Systems campus, a fantasyland of gardens and architecture, Part 1
July 29, 2022 One of the zaniest, most eye-popping destinations on the Madison Fling tour in June was the corporate headquarters of medical-software giant Epic Systems, located in the rolling farm country of Verona, Wisconsin. Soulless lawns, sprawling junipers, boxwood hedges, and other ubiquitous ground-fillers of corporate landscaping are banished ...
Coleson Bruce’s crevice garden in spring flower
May 04, 2022 Two weeks ago Coleson Bruce invited me back to his garden to see it in spring flower. I’d first visited Coleson’s garden last fall — a garden unlike any other I’ve seen in Austin or even Texas. Colorado-style crevice gardens are unusual here, and Coleson’s is not ...
Spring garden party at Lucinda’s purple casita
April 14, 2022 If I’m lucky, springtime means an invitation to Lucinda Hutson‘s festive garden. And last weekend I felt lucky indeed to be invited to her purple casita on a perfect spring day. Out front, pansies were still somehow hanging on, despite recent warm temperatures. Ready to take over, ...
Fantasy gardens at Paxson Hill Farm, part 2
February 11, 2022 The gardens of Paxson HIll Farm, which I explored during the Pennsylvania portion of my road trip last October, started out good and got even better. In my last post I shared the farm’s nursery, Shade Garden, Katsura Garden, and Temple Garden. Let’s move on to a ...
A Texas-style crevice garden – and neighborly collaboration – brings midcentury Austin home to vibrant life
January 18, 2022 At the end of October, when Loree of Danger Garden was in town for her Garden Spark talk, we finagled an invitation to the tropicalesque garden of John Ignacio. John in turn introduced us to his friend and neighbor Coleson Bruce, who kindly allowed a couple of ...
Mad about Madoo: The secret garden, potager, and ginkgo grove
December 22, 2021 I’d driven out to the Hamptons — a Long Island, NY, detour on my October road trip from Maine to Virginia — mainly to see one garden: Madoo. The name itself is an endearment, taken from a Scottish dialect in which ma doo means my dove or ...
A collected home with heart at Via Libre garden
December 03, 2021 Known in Abilene for their extensive gardens, designer and artist Cynthia Williams Deegan and her husband, Bobby, picked up and moved to Austin in 2013 to be near their children and grandchildren. Austin has grown more enchanting as a result. As I’ve written previously, Cynthia and Bobby ...
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 ...
Lucinda Hutson’s colorful Day of the Dead garden
October 25, 2021 Austin author Lucinda Hutson‘s garden blazes with color every day of the year. But come October, for Day of the Dead, she kicks it up a big notch. Yellow and orange marigolds glow from every pot, mingling with hibiscus, coral vine, and roses in sherbet hues, all ...
Contemporary front-yard patio makes inviting entry
February 02, 2021 A subtle front-yard patio garden attracted my attention one day, as I passed a house with orange doors in my northwest Austin neighborhood. Steel edging outlines a rectangular planting strip around a simple concrete patio adjacent to the front walk. Low native and adapted plants add texture, ...
Plant trials with style at Redenta’s Landscape Design office garden
October 07, 2020 With beautiful fall weather on tap and the first of the Mexico-bound monarch butterflies reaching North Texas, last weekend seemed like the perfect time for a trip to Dallas-Fort Worth. So I reached out to a few gardeners there and mapped out a 2-day itinerary, and my ...
Tropicalesque Tanglewild, where bananas and palms grow big and bold
September 17, 2020 With the arrival of cooler weather it’s garden visiting season, and I’ve started calling on gardening friends who are willing to have me over for a socially distanced, masked, outdoor visit. How I love touring gardens! This week’s tour is at Tanglewild Gardens, a 1.7-acre garden in ...
Tree of Life, architecture, and jazz in New Orleans New Year
January 11, 2020 We rang in the new year in New Orleans, the U.S. city at the top of our Italian exchange student’s list of places to see, after New York and San Francisco. NOLA is only a 7-1/2-hour drive (with no stops) from Austin, so we rented an Airbnb, ...
Hilltop getaway at Two Coves Garden: Austin Open Day tour
November 21, 2019 The last garden I visited on the Open Day tour sponsored by The Garden Conservancy was designed by B. Jane Gardens, and which B. has continued to maintain for the last three owners. Located off City Park Road, the Two Coves Drive Garden perches atop a hill ...
Hilltop pollinator garden of Ruthie Burrus: Austin Open Day tour
November 20, 2019 Having visited Ruthie Burrus’s garden before (including at Austin Garden Bloggers Fling), I knew it would be one of my favorites on the Austin Open Days tour in November, sponsored by The Garden Conservancy. Let’s start with the entry garden, where a concrete trough softened by ferns ...
