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 ...
Philadelphia Area Fling and Andrew Bunting's Belvidere

Philadelphia Area Fling and Andrew Bunting’s Belvidere

September 28, 2023 A gravel garden in the front yard of Andrew Bunting’s Belvidere I spent all last week in the beautiful countryside around Philadelphia for the 14th annual Fling (formerly known as Garden Bloggers Fling), touring private and public gardens with around 100 other garden writers, bloggers, Instagrammers, YouTubers, ...
Happy, colorful courtyards at The Lincoln Marfa

Happy, colorful courtyards at The Lincoln Marfa

September 18, 2023 I stayed at The Lincoln, a boutique hotel of 14 “unique homes” at a century-old property, when I visited Marfa a couple weeks ago. A bright yellow door and orange cosmos flowers offered a cheerful welcome as I rolled my bag to Unit 7, passing a gigantic, ...
Running through Marathon, Texas

Running through Marathon, Texas

September 03, 2023 On the way home from a trip to far West Texas in late July, my friend and I swung through tiny Marathon, Texas, for lunch. Fifty miles east of Marfa and 50 miles north of Big Bend National Park, Marathon is known as the gateway to remote ...
Michael Eason's desert garden retreat

Michael Eason’s desert garden retreat

August 14, 2023 While in West Texas a couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting designer and author Michael Eason‘s garden in Alpine. Michael had lined up some wonderful gardens for me to visit there, ones that he’d designed, but it was nice to see his own personal ...
Robert Bellamy's upcycled Marfa garden

Robert Bellamy’s upcycled Marfa garden

August 02, 2023 Last week I road-tripped 7 hours west to remote Marfa, a sleepy desert town in far West Texas that’s also, thanks to Donald Judd, an art mecca drawing visitors from all over the world. Quite a few Marfa lovers from Dallas, Houston, and Austin own second homes ...
Drive-By Garden: Waterwise front yard and patio

Drive-By Garden: Waterwise front yard and patio

June 30, 2023 Driving around the Delwood neighborhood in East Austin last week I spotted this attractive waterwise front yard. A huge crape myrtle shades one side of the midcentury-style home, sheltering a small patio beneath its branches. On the sunny side, Mexican feathergrass, giant hesperaloe, firecracker fern, and fall ...
Back to Beck's majestic live oaks

Back to Beck’s majestic live oaks

February 10, 2023 Two days into no power and no heat, with shattered trees making a dangerous obstacle course around our house, and all this coming just two years after Snowpocalypse, I packed a bag, picked up Mom and her dog from her cold, dark apartment, and headed to Houston ...
Layers of natural beauty, predators and prey, in Julia Lucey art

Layers of natural beauty, predators and prey, in Julia Lucey art

January 19, 2023 I’m in love with the enchanting art of California artist Julia Lucey, who’s currently exhibiting her mixed media collages at Austin’s Wally Workman Gallery. I went to see them on Tuesday and stood enraptured before each one, watching as hidden details revealed themselves amid ravishing colors and ...
Shangri La Botanical Gardens, a garden fairy tale

Shangri La Botanical Gardens, a garden fairy tale

December 15, 2022 Dancing Sisters bottle tree sculpture at Shangri La Sleeping Beauty has nothing on Shangri La Botanical Gardens & Nature Center. Located in the small town of Orange, Texas, just across the Sabine River from Louisiana, Shangri La’s very existence is in some ways as fantastical as the ...
Enjoying fall color and a mellow garden

Enjoying fall color and a mellow garden

December 07, 2022 By the time I hang red Christmas balls from the agave’s spines, the Japanese maple finally blushes red too. Fall comes late to Central Texas, but I’ll take it, even at Christmastime. Last week was peak color for the Acer palmatum. Today, shriveled tan leaves cling to ...
Spotlight around the garden

Spotlight around the garden

November 09, 2022 Before Halloween I took a few photos of whatever caught my eye, starting with the whale’s tongue agave in the tractor-rim planter. Hello, gorgeous! Somebody is watching me from the far end of the Berkeley sedge lawn. Hello, deer. Oh, and the Wheeler’s sotol that replaced the ...
Cynthia Deegan's free-spirited, collected home and garden

Cynthia Deegan’s free-spirited, collected home and garden

November 01, 2022 The mossy green doors of Cynthia Deegan’s milagro-spangled garden gate opened to me again a week or so ago, when she generously invited me and Garden Spark speaker Teri Speight to come on over. What a treat to follow up our visit to Lucinda’s garden with Cynthia’s! ...
Day of the Dead in Lucinda's colorful garden

Day of the Dead in Lucinda’s colorful garden

October 27, 2022 Lucinda Hutson welcomed me and Teri Speight, my recent Garden Spark speaker, into her garden last week to see it decorated for Day of the Dead. This is a treat I look forward to all year. Lucinda’s garden and purple cottage always glow with color in October, ...
Hotel Magdalena courtyard evokes Hill Country canyon

Hotel Magdalena courtyard evokes Hill Country canyon

October 06, 2022 After an all-day meeting on South Congress recently, I strolled down Music Lane to Hotel Magdalena, a boutique hotel that opened in 2020. I’d been wanting to see the place since learning that Ten Eyck Landscape Architects did the landscaping and Lake|Flato Architects designed the hotel itself ...