Cutting Garden and Fling Party at Chanticleer

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 ...
Ringing Bell's Woodland at Chanticleer Garden

Ringing Bell’s Woodland at Chanticleer Garden

January 18, 2024 The most secret part of Chanticleer is the entrance to Bell’s Woodland, set off beyond the colorful cutting garden (coming up in my next post). The plant list for it is tucked inside a metal sculpture of a hornet’s nest hanging from a tree — worthy of ...
Rocking a dry garden at Chanticleer's Gravel Garden

Rocking a dry garden at Chanticleer’s Gravel Garden

January 09, 2024 Every time I visit Chanticleer’s Gravel Garden, I get a familiar feeling. Many plants we grow in Central Texas appear in this Pennsylvania dry garden, and it’s fun to see them in a new context. Although the garden bristles with yuccas, agaves, and cactus and sways with ...
Chanticleer's dreamy House Garden

Chanticleer’s dreamy House Garden

January 01, 2024 Happy New Year! Let’s kick off 2024 with another post about glorious Chanticleer Garden, which I visited in late September during the Philadelphia Area Fling. Today I’ll show you the House Garden. Gravel Circle A rooster statue — the symbol of Chanticleer — greets you at the ...
Gardens for adventure, art, and games at Paxson Hill Farm

Gardens for adventure, art, and games at Paxson Hill Farm

November 22, 2023 Picking up my tour of Paxson Hill Farm — from the Philadelphia Area Fling in September — where I left off yesterday, let’s keep exploring! After emerging from the hobbit house hideaway, I followed the path uphill through another weeping-tree arch. The romance! Am I right? The ...
Paxson Hill garden still gorgeous in the rain

Paxson Hill garden still gorgeous in the rain

November 21, 2023 On the final day of the Philadelphia Area Fling in late September, we stopped at Paxson Hill Farm in New Hope, Pennsylvania, to tour its marvelous garden behind the nursery. Even though Tropical Storm Ophelia had made garden-touring rather sodden (but still plenty fun!), I knew Paxson ...
Jay's front-yard garden of native plants in Dallas

Jay’s front-yard garden of native plants in Dallas

November 13, 2023 A few weeks ago in Dallas, I met up with Jay of NewTexasGardens at his home garden. It was great to meet a fellow Instagrammer whose photos I admire and who posts interesting content, like measuring the temperature of artificial turf on a hot summer day and ...
From mill to Mill Fleurs, a garden of rare plants

From mill to Mill Fleurs, a garden of rare plants

November 09, 2023 I love a good play on words, and the garden of Barbara and Robert Tiffany employs two in its name. Mill Fleurs occupies the site where two old mills — from the 1700s! — perch along Tohickon Creek. Thirty years ago, the couple purchased the derelict structures, ...
Jenny Rose Carey's charming Northview Garden, part 1

Jenny Rose Carey’s charming Northview Garden, part 1

November 05, 2023 It was a soggy late-September midday at the Philadelphia Area Fling when we visited author and horticulturist Jenny Rose Carey‘s garden, Northview Garden, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. My bus of 50 (garden bloggers, Instagrammers, and YouTubers) was invited first to have a sit-down lunch in the carriage ...
Stoneleigh native-plant estate garden and Flingers

Stoneleigh native-plant estate garden and Flingers

November 02, 2023 Our banquet dinner at the Philadelphia Area Fling was held in the grand old Tudor Revival mansion at Stoneleigh: A Natural Garden, located in Villanova, Pennsylvania. Before dinner, we were set loose in the garden to explore for an hour. Let’s start with the house garden, where ...
Tropical terraces, color, and meadow at Owl Creek Farm

Tropical terraces, color, and meadow at Owl Creek Farm

October 30, 2023 One of my favorite private gardens at the Philadelphia Area Fling back in September was Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm. It’s not really a farm, so far as I could tell. The Hutton garden is sizeable, though, and its rural setting in West Chester, Pennsylvania, ...
Christy Ten Eyck-led tour of San Antonio garden

Christy Ten Eyck-led tour of San Antonio garden

October 16, 2023 On Saturday I headed down San Antonio way for a Garden Dialogues event led by Christy Ten Eyck, principal of Ten Eyck Landscape Architects in Austin, at a private garden she designed in San Antonio’s Hill Country Village. Christy has long been an inspiration for her design ...
Moon gate and woodland garden at Boulder Haven

Moon gate and woodland garden at Boulder Haven

October 15, 2023 Have you ever seen a moon gate as beautiful as this one? I don’t think I have. It appears like a portal to another world around a back corner at Boulder Haven, the home garden of designer Carol Verhake in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. Carol’s garden was on the ...
October blooms brighten my garden

October blooms brighten my garden

October 12, 2023 October! It’s the best month of the year, providing sweet relief from a Texas summer with cooler weather and rain and bringing the garden back to life. Let’s take a stroll ALL around the garden and see what there is to see. It’s oxblood lily season! These ...
Into the sunflowers in Longwood's meadow

Into the sunflowers in Longwood’s meadow

October 04, 2023 As I roamed Longwood Gardens during the Philadelphia Area Fling, I was eager to see the Meadow Garden in its late September glory. I set off on the meadow trail in late afternoon, as the light slanted low through golden petals and tawny grasses. I reached the ...
Italian Water Garden, trees, and treehouses at Longwood Gardens

Italian Water Garden, trees, and treehouses at Longwood Gardens

October 02, 2023 One of my favorite picture books from my childhood is Marcia Brown’s Cinderella, which received a Caldecott Medal in 1955 for Brown’s enchanting illustrations. Jeweled ball gowns, romantic palace grounds, fairy godmother magic — it all came to sparkling life on the page. I haven’t paged through ...