Snapshots from Olbrich Botanical Gardens’ meadow, event, and herb gardens
August 12, 2022 Coneflowers at the entrance to Olbrich While in Madison for the Fling back in June, I had time for a pre-Fling visit to Olbrich Botanical Gardens, and then of course the garden was on the official tour schedule as well. Double Olbrich! I first visited this fine ...
Native prairie garden replaces half the lawn in the Grosz Garden
July 14, 2022 A shoulder-high, prairie-style garden makes a graceful swoosh through the sunny backyard of Linda and Phil Grosz in Middleton, Wisconsin. As the second stop on the Madison Garden Bloggers Fling tour in June, it immediately grounded me in the Upper Midwest, land of the tallgrass prairie. Linda ...
Heart of stone: Tait Moring’s garden
May 18, 2022 Amid the flurry of gardens I had the pleasure of visiting in late April, landscape architect Tait Moring‘s garden stands out, as always, for its evocative stonework and a magpie collection of found objects, boyhood collections, and castoffs from clients’ gardens, which Tait assembles into art for ...
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 ...
Exploring Houston’s Centennial Gardens and Japanese Garden
March 08, 2022 During the Houston oil bust of the late 1980s, when I was a student at Rice University, I’d occasionally jog across Main Street to visit Hermann Park’s ancient-looking zoo or outdoor amphitheater. Those were hard times for Houston and its parks — though I was too young ...
Every passage is a destination at Chanticleer
February 28, 2022 Yellow canna and bamboo sculpture by Marcia Donahue along Chanticleer’s elevated walkway Chanticleer makes each step, each path, a place of discovery and delight. I visited the Philadelphia-area garden on my road trip last fall. This is Part 5 in my series about creative, romantic, stunning-in-every-way Chanticleer ...
Flowery meadow instead of lawn at Chanticleer’s house garden
February 26, 2022 You’d expect a garden surrounding an estate house to be formal, restrained, with neat lawns and containers that serve to frame the grand structure. The house garden at Chanticleer, a Pennsylvania “pleasure garden” I visited during my East Coast road trip last October, upends this convention through ...
Plants hold court at Chanticleer’s Teacup and Tennis Court gardens
February 23, 2022 Teacup Garden in 2021 A teacup-shaped fountain in the entry garden at Chanticleer gives the Teacup Garden its name. Each year the plantings around the fountain are redesigned to create a bold, new theatrical vignette. I visited Chanticleer in Wayne, Pennsylvania, last October on my East Coast ...
Gravel garden at Chanticleer reminds me of Texas
February 21, 2022 Whether you love plants, exciting planting combos, design and gardening artistry, or overlooks and hideaways to sit and enjoy a beautiful garden, Chanticleer has it all. Located near Philadelphia, Chanticleer dubs itself “a pleasure garden,” and it’s been my favorite public garden since I first visited in ...
Garden path wonderland at Paxson Hill Farm, part 3
February 15, 2022 My detour to Paxson Hill Farm‘s beautiful and imaginative gardens in New Hope, Pennsylvania, proved to be a highlight of my big road trip last October. Here’s Part 3 of my tour. Click here for Part 1 and Part 2. Railroad tie path Leaving the hobbit house ...
Gardens galore at Paxson Hill Farm, part 1
February 09, 2022 Paxson Hill Farm’s crossroads, where inviting paths branch in every direction A friend asked me how I find gardens to see when traveling. Aside from online research a lot comes down to asking gardeners who live in the area. And it pays to build in time for ...
Grand trees and pastoral views at Winterthur, part 1
February 02, 2022 Japanese maple I first visited Winterthur on a blustery June day in 2016. In mid-October last year, I returned to see the garden at the turn of a new season, its summer greens tinged with pale gold and rusty orange, berries and quince brightening bare branches, and ...
LongHouse Reserve ramble, Part 3: Pond, zodiac amphitheater, and grass garden
January 09, 2022 You wouldn’t believe how long I studied these stone-like spheres at LongHouse Reserve when I visited the East Hampton, New York, garden back in October. The openness of the gravel under a grove of trees, with lush greenery all around, and those great, lumpy, gray and brown ...
Mad about Madoo, part 2: Formal garden and iconic Chinese bridge
December 23, 2021 Continuing with my visit to Madoo, an artist’s garden in Sagaponack, New York, let’s head to the rear of the 2-acre property. A long rectangular section extends out from the main gardens, reaching toward agricultural fields beyond the fence line. An ornate blue gate opens to an ...
Fill up your cup at Innisfree Garden, part 1
December 08, 2021 “Pam, I hope you are planning a visit to Innisfree, the world’s greatest underrated and too little known garden.” So messaged James Golden of Federal Twist after I’d asked if I might visit his own increasingly well-known garden while on my Northeast road trip in October. As ...
Autumn asters, garden rooms in Michael Gordon’s New Hampshire garden
November 29, 2021 Michael Gordon’s garden in early October is aster-licious Through phone interviews for magazine assignments, I’ve gotten to “know” many interesting gardeners around the country. One of these is Michael Gordon of Peterborough, New Hampshire, whose garden I wrote about for Country Gardens in 2019. An optometrist by ...
