October garden events in Austin: Save the dates!
October is a busy month for Austin gardeners. It’s prime planting season, the weather is cool enough to start those hardscaping projects we put off all summer, classes and presentations are happening left and right, and it’s garden-tour season again. Yippee! Mark your calendars and join me at several gardening events around town this month.
Amy Stewart: Wicked Plants
Fellow blogger and best-selling author Amy Stewart is coming back to Austin on her Wicked Plants tour for two book-signings, one at the Wildflower Center, the other at Pots & Plants Garden Center (the nursery with all the pink flamingos at Hwy. 360 and Bee Cave Rd.). Amy blogs at Garden Rant and Dirt, and several of the Austin bloggers met Amy in 2007, when she was promoting Flower Confidential at Book People. She’s an entertaining speaker, and I imagine her presentation for Wicked Plants will be wickedly funny and replete with tales of death by plants—perfect for Halloween. Here are the details:
Saturday, October 24, 11 a.m.
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Sunday, October 25, 1 p.m.
Pots & Plants Garden Center
The Wildflower Center says this:
Amy Stewart, an author of four books about the perils and pleasures of the natural world, will speak at 11 a.m., October 24, in the auditorium about Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities, followed by a book signing until 2 p.m. Drawing on history, medicine, science and legend, Stewart will discuss the book’s tales of bloodcurdling botany that entertain, alarm and enlighten. Find out which plant killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother, which shrub ignited a global war and what plant has killed 90 million people.
Botanical murder mysteries! Doesn’t that sound exciting? Unfortunately I’ll have to miss Amy’s Saturday presentation due to my daughter’s Halloween piano recital. Maybe I can make it on Sunday.
Inside Austin Gardens Tour: Sustainable Gardening For Urban Wildlife
Saturday, October 24, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
This year’s Inside Austin Gardens Tour, according to the TCMGA website, is focusing on…
…how to design urban garden spaces that attract wildlife, using native plants and sustainable gardening practices. The event includes garden tours and educational seminars at each location, including: “Gardening to Attract Birds;” “Plant Magnets for Butterflies and Hummingbirds;” and “Adapted & Native Plants in Your Landscape.”
Tickets for the 2009 Inside Austin Gardens Tour are $10 (or $5 per garden) and can be purchased at any home on the tour. In addition, plants are available for sale on-site.
Three Austin garden bloggers will be opening their garden gates on the tour: Cheryl Goveia of Conscious Gardening, Randy Case of Horselips’s Horse Sense, and Eleanor Pratt of Garden of E. I look forward to seeing their lovely gardens in person.
Goblins in the Garden
Sunday, October 25, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
If you have young children or grandchildren, don’t miss Goblins in the Garden at the Wildflower Center. My kids are too old for it now, but we used to go; in fact, I blogged about Goblins in the Garden in 2006. It’s a fun, not-too-scary, Halloween-in-the-garden event. The Wildflower Center describes the activities:
There are plenty of spooky surprises and special treats for the entire family. Follow the Trail of Bones, see the scarecrow exhibit and watch pumpking carving. Families are welcome to take pictures of themselves at our Punkin’ Patch, Trick or Treat around the gardens and check out the Haunted Tower. Halloween fun at the Wildflower Center for the whole family! Don’t forget to dress up!
Admission: $7 for adults, $6 seniors and students and $3 for children 5 to 12 years old (under 5 free).
Limestone & Water: Plants, Design and Inspiration for the Texas Garden
Saturday, October 31, 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
On Halloween itself, the Wildflower Center and the Garden Conservancy are co-sponsoring a garden design seminar with talks by authors and designers Scott and Lauren Ogden, Big Red Sun co-founder and designer Dylan Crain Robertson, and NYC garden writer (and blogger at What Were the Skies Like) Stephen Orr. (New York City? Yes, but he was raised by gardening parents in West Texas and has dry-land gardening credentials.) I’m really looking forward to this event, and I’m so glad they’re having it in the morning so it doesn’t conflict with my family’s Halloween festivities.
The Garden Conservancy rightly says:
Austin is such a terrific place in which to garden! Four garden design experts share their experience with innovative design in a hot climate. If you aren’t lucky enough to live in Austin but live and garden elsewhere in a drier climate, this seminar applies to you too!
SEMINAR TOPICS AND SPEAKERS:
Smarter Gardens: Gardening with Less but Getting More
Stephen Orr
Stephen identifies a new revolution in garden design that treats gardens not as resource guzzlers—water, labor, materials, energy—but as conserving and graceful places in which to live and rest year ’round.
Plant Driven Design: Honoring Plants, Place, and Spirit
Scott Ogden and Lauren Springer Ogden
By putting plants first, the Ogdens empower gardeners to design and designers to plant, while creating a powerful connection between place, plants, and people. Authors of Plant-Driven Design: Creating Gardens That Honor Plants, Place, and Spirit.
Outside You Can Live In
Dylan Crain Robertson
Big Red Sun co-founder Dylan Robertson crafts and maintains elegantly functional outdoor living spaces that include sophisticated built environments and sensitive plantings.
It’s not cheap, but these speakers should be terrific. If you like, check out my review of the Ogdens’ Plant-Driven Design. The Wildflower Center breaks down the fees for the event:
Workshop fee of $65 for Center and Garden Conservancy members, $75 for the general public, and $40 for students with identification. $35 for Friday evening reception, plus a free Wildflower Center garden tour for registered attendees at 2 p.m. Saturday.
The Friday evening reception will be held in the incredible garden of James David and Gary Peese. I’m going to skip that event in the interest of frugality, but if you haven’t seen their garden you won’t want to miss this opportunity.
All material © 2006-2009 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Pam, I so wanted to visit Austin this month! My friends were transferred to the Boston area and didn’t have time for me to visit…The Halloween Water and Limestone presentation sounds like it will be excellent. Pumpkins these days are so much more interesting then the ones i grew up with~~ gail
Gail, I was so looking forward to seeing you in Austin this month. I’m sorry you didn’t get to come. Maybe next year. (This pumpkin is actually from two years ago; I’m reusing the picture!) —Pam
Hi Pam, Thanks for the calendar. Eleanor Pratt’s garden will also be on the MG tour. She blogs at Garden of E, http://gardenofe.blogspot.com/.
Thanks for the reminder, Vertie. I’ve updated my post with that info. —Pam
You are so lucky to have all of those gardens to tour. So much inspiration and entertainment.
I really like the new photo of you on your side bar.
Thanks, Lisa! —Pam
I’m really looking forward to 2 of those events. The M G garden tour and also the Conservancy program at the WFC. I need help and quickly! I wish my grandchildren were here to take along to Goblins in the Garden. I love mysteries and gardening so I must try to look at those books. Thanks for the heads up.
My pleasure, Jenny. I’ll see you at the seminar. —Pam
Lots of great activities where you live! I’ve always wanted to visit Austin and may get the chance soon for a business trip. -Jackie
Fall is a wonderful time to visit Austin, Jackie. Smart planning to avoid summer! 🙂 —Pam
Like the new blog photo!
Thanks so much, Chris. —Pam
Hi Pam.
I just want to say a big thank you for this informative post…I do not know how you stay on top of all the events that are happening in the Austin area, but I for one really appreciate it. I will be taking the hobbits to the Wildflower Center halloween exhibit based on this post.
ESP.
I hope the hobbits enjoy Goblins in the Garden. We had many happy times there. As for staying on top of things, I get sent a lot of notices about garden happenings. So I decided to compile everything into one post for October. —Pam
Such a busy month! Thanks for listing all the activities…I would love to take in some garden design seminars. I thought the one by Stephen Orr sounded especially interesting.
Yes, it does, Jenny B. All the seminar speakers are included in the one ticket price, and the others should be good as well. —Pam
As much as I adore both Amy Stewart and the garden tour, much angst is in the air because they’re both scheduled for the very same day I’ve been invited to throw a pumpkin out of an airplane. I think I’m going to do the tour, but how often does one get offered a chance to throw a PUMPKIN out of an AIRPLANE?!! Sigh.
Not too often, in my experience! Hmm, that would be hard to pass up, Lori, and it would certainly make for a one-of-a-kind blog post. But I guess it would entail standing next to an open door on an airplane, an airplane flying well above the ground, yes? I’m not sure I could do it, even for a pumpkin toss. Please do tell how you scored such an invitation though. —Pam
Pam, thanks for the post on the Limestone & Water event – hope you enjoy it!
I’m looking forward to it, Stephanie. Thanks! —Pam
SIGH!
All these Halloween-inspired garden events … see? I keep on SAYING I SHOULD be an Austin Gardener! Why, oh WHY do I live in LA???
What FUN! I’m there in spirit … hahahahahahahahahaha!
“in SPIRIT…”
okay, hat was bad… sorry – no more puns while commenting!
XOXO!
Look at it this way, Germi: being in L.A., you got to design a garden for the man behind the Scream movies, for one thing. You can’t do that in Austin, although we do have a few filmmakers of our own, and I have no doubt you’d be designing fabulous gardens for them in no time. Until that day, you can be an honorary Austin garden blogger—in spirit, right? —Pam
Pam – About the pumpkin-airplane thing, one of my friends has a friend who has both his own plane and a funny sense of humor. If I go, I’ll be sure to take pictures! We’d actually be throwing the pumpkins out the window of a glider towed by the plane!
Oh my god, that sounds terrifying—and fun! If you go I hope you take pictures to share. But don’t fall out with the pumpkin! —Pam
Looks like a fun time for everyone!! I love that huge spider web!!!!
The spider and web were part of an traveling exhibit called Big Bugs. It’s at the San Antonio Botanical Garden right now. —Pam
I’m really tempted to blow off my previous commitments and make a trip to Austin to tour the MG gardens and hear Amy. If I can work it out to do so, I’ll let you know!
I hope you can make it, Cindy. There’s a lot of good garden stuff going on in Austin this month. —Pam
Just my luck to be scheduled the day of a garden tour! Well, I hope to see a few of you, anyway. I promise to be super-entertaining!
Yes, that was a bit of bad luck, but Austin has gardeners to spare. I’m sure you’ll have a good crowd on both days. Good luck, Amy! —Pam
There is so much going on, and I want to do it ALL! I’m so happy to know Amy will be speaking on Sunday; that will increase my odds of getting to hear her, and I can’t wait to read the new book. We also have a class pumpkin patch visit scheduled for the afternoon of the 24th, so my garden touring will be, as Kallie says, “with the jets on!”
That’s how I’ll be touring too, Diana. See you in the stratosphere. —Pam