Garden rooms and green roof at Cloverleaf Drive Garden: Austin Open Days Tour 2017
November 13, 2017 This year’s Garden Conservancy-sponsored Open Days tour in Austin featured gardens in a variety of styles and a variety of neighborhoods (not just West Austin). I especially enjoyed exploring the Cloverleaf Drive garden, which, along with Jackson Broussard’s, is located east of I-35 in a “regular-folks” neighborhood ...
Spring stroll at the Wildflower Center
February 27, 2017 After speaking at the Native Plant Society of Texas Spring Symposium, held at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center last Saturday (and a big thank-you to the organizers and wonderful audience members!), I strolled the gardens with my dad, who was visiting from North Carolina. The early ...
Edibles, green roof, and playground at Mueller Community Gardens & Gaines Park
November 25, 2016 We spent Thanksgiving in the mixed-use, urban-infill, sustainably-designed Mueller neighborhood in east Austin, where my in-laws hosted us in their lovely new home. As always when we visit, I’m impressed by the park spaces and community amenities available to Mueller residents, and I fantasize about moving into ...
RH Austin rooftop garden showcases contemporary outdoor furniture
October 06, 2016 Three weeks after its grand opening, I climbed the glittering, mirrored grand staircase at the 62,000-square-foot mansion known as RH Austin (Restoration Hardware, rebranded), one of the anchor stores in the new Northside section of The Domain shopping center in north Austin. After a cursory inspection of ...
Scenes from Minneapolis gardens, sightseeing, and bloggers: Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling
August 03, 2016 This is my 10th post about the recent Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling, and I have two more coming up that cover one very special garden. Even so, I won’t have shown you every garden we visited. There were just too many! But here are a few images ...
Looking Up at Laguna Gloria and Austin City Hall
November 23, 2015 Last Saturday, a chilly, blustery day under a brilliant cobalt-blue sky, my dad and I attended two docent-led tours about the landscape architecture at cultural sites in Austin: one at Laguna Gloria, the other at Austin City Hall. Led by landscape architects who’ve restored or designed these ...
Cabbagetown garden art and Hugh Garner Co-Op Green Roof: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 29, 2015 The teeny tiny gardens of Toronto’s Cabbagetown neighborhood of Victorian homes kicked off our final day of Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling in early June. Due to the tight quarters, pictures of artful vignettes were easier to take than overview photos, and I’m sharing my favorites here. Cabbagetown ...
Pretty goods at Austin nurseries
February 05, 2015 By Monday morning, which was my deadline for turning in my new book manuscript, I hadn’t showered in three days, changed out of my sweats in two, or slept more than 4 hours a night for about a week, give or take a few coma-like naps. Yesterday, ...
The High Line park in NYC, a skyline promenade, part 2
October 19, 2014 At the end of Part 1 of my post about visiting the High Line in New York City last weekend, we’d just entered Chelsea Market Passage. After the dimness of the passageway, you exit into bright sunlight on the aptly named Sun Deck. Wooden lounge chairs resembling ...
Up on the High Line, a skyline promenade
October 19, 2014 Have you ever flown across the country to see one garden? I did last weekend. Rapturous articles and blog posts about the High Line, New York City’s garden-park conversion of an abandoned elevated rail line through the city’s old Meatpacking District, had seduced me for 5 years ...
Perot Museum of Nature and Science plaza, frogs, and rooftop garden
October 06, 2014 Over the weekend we traveled to Dallas to visit our son at college and do a little sightseeing in Big D. We’d stared curiously at this Borg-like building from the highway through downtown Dallas on several previous visits, and this time we finally had a chance to ...
Rocking a gravel garden in the Kuzma Garden: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 14, 2014 After the barely controlled excess of Floramagoria, the next garden we toured on the Portland Garden Bloggers Fling seemed, at first glance, restrained, even austere. No seating was visible aside from garden walls and steps. With the exception of a few monumental, colorful pots placed as focal ...
Splendor in the grass at Rhone Street Gardens: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 07, 2014 The 3rd and final day of touring on the recent Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland, Oregon, dawned cool and misty — exactly what Portland should be, at least according to heat-shunning me. After two days of unusual heat, I was thrilled, even when it started to thunder ...
Checking out Chickadee Gardens: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 03, 2014 The Garden Bloggers Fling takes you to so many wonderful gardens that it would be understandable if you simply overloaded by the end of the day, unable to appreciate one more. Thankfully I find new gardens energizing, and when our bus pulled up at Portland blogger Tamara’s ...
Joy Creek and Cistus Nurseries: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 19, 2014 After touring Lan Su Chinese Garden in downtown Portland, the two Fling buses headed out to scenic, agricultural Sauvie Island for our visits to two premier nurseries: Cistus and Joy Creek. Cistus is a plant lover’s mecca, with rare and interesting plants from all over the world, ...
Wildflowers and more in bloom at the Wildflower Center
April 15, 2014 For Garden Bloggers Bloom Day let’s go to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center here in Austin. I visited on Sunday with family who were in town, hoping to see some bluebonnets. We saw a lot more than that, including these beautiful pink flowers that resembled apple ...
