Meeting up with "Gays Who Garden" Andrew and Jared

Meeting up with “Gays Who Garden” Andrew and Jared

November 15, 2021 I can’t remember when I started following @gayswhogarden on Instagram, but their alliterative, cheeky, and decidedly out username caught my eye, as did their beautiful images of soft-petaled roses, colorful Texas wildflowers, and glowing dahlias (in Austin — how??). We started chatting online, and in due course ...
Modern ranch garden embraces water collection and wildflowers in New Braunfels

Modern ranch garden embraces water collection and wildflowers in New Braunfels

May 17, 2021 Last spring Cody and Michelle Koehler finished their garden installation at their home in New Braunfels, Texas. Less than a year later, February’s epic freeze killed most of their large specimen plants, including Weber agaves, olive and palo verde trees, and toothless sotol. Like everyone else in ...
Plant trials with style at Redenta's Landscape Design office garden

Plant trials with style at Redenta’s Landscape Design office garden

October 07, 2020 With beautiful fall weather on tap and the first of the Mexico-bound monarch butterflies reaching North Texas, last weekend seemed like the perfect time for a trip to Dallas-Fort Worth. So I reached out to a few gardeners there and mapped out a 2-day itinerary, and my ...
Tropicalesque Tanglewild, where bananas and palms grow big and bold

Tropicalesque Tanglewild, where bananas and palms grow big and bold

September 17, 2020 With the arrival of cooler weather it’s garden visiting season, and I’ve started calling on gardening friends who are willing to have me over for a socially distanced, masked, outdoor visit. How I love touring gardens! This week’s tour is at Tanglewild Gardens, a 1.7-acre garden in ...
Midsummer garden walkabout

Midsummer garden walkabout

August 08, 2020 Whale’s tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia) Midsummer has never been my favorite season in the garden. It’s hot and humid. Mosquitoes are fierce. And yet this summer, perhaps because I’m spending more time at home and in my own garden than usual, I’m also appreciating it more. Here’s ...
Red and yellow autumn foliage in my garden

Red and yellow autumn foliage in my garden

November 30, 2019 Fall color in Austin was surprisingly good this year, including the show put on by the ornamental trees in my own garden, like the species Japanese maple (Acer palmatum). Most years it goes rusty red in mid-December, coordinating with the red Christmas balls I hang from an ...
Hilltop pollinator garden of Ruthie Burrus: Austin Open Day tour

Hilltop pollinator garden of Ruthie Burrus: Austin Open Day tour

November 20, 2019 Having visited Ruthie Burrus’s garden before (including at Austin Garden Bloggers Fling), I knew it would be one of my favorites on the Austin Open Days tour in November, sponsored by The Garden Conservancy. Let’s start with the entry garden, where a concrete trough softened by ferns ...
Water-saving Greenway Street Garden: Austin Open Day Tour

Water-saving Greenway Street Garden: Austin Open Day Tour

November 11, 2019 As Austin gardeners scramble today to get tender plants under cover ahead of an expected hard freeze (seems too early!), let’s continue with coverage of the recent Open Day tour sponsored by The Garden Conservancy. Green House on Greenway, the 2nd garden I visited, reminded me of ...
Day of the Dead at Lucinda Hutson's casita and garden

Day of the Dead at Lucinda Hutson’s casita and garden

November 04, 2019 In early November each year, Austin writer Lucinda Hutson celebrates Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday for remembering and honoring deceased loved ones. Decorating her Rosedale home — her purple casita, as she calls it — and Mexican-style garden with colorful flowers, food, tequila bottles, skeleton ...
Via Libre, a free-spirited garden along the freeway

Via Libre, a free-spirited garden along the freeway

July 25, 2019 Moss green doors sparkle with tin milagros — an inviting gateway into a garden courtyard. Many people wouldn’t consider buying a house sandwiched between MoPac expressway, a multi-lane highway with freight trains chugging down the center median, and its neighborhood feeder road. But Cynthia Williams Deegan and ...
A garden for relaxing with friends: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling

A garden for relaxing with friends: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling

July 14, 2019 Kicking off the 3rd day of the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling in, yes, Denver, we toured an inviting patio garden designed for relaxing with family and friends. The owners, Kirsten and Scott Hamling, had set up a long table for Father’s Day brunch. Lucky invitees! A cheerful ...
A fusion of nature and art in Scott Deemer's garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling

A fusion of nature and art in Scott Deemer’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling

July 11, 2019 A “designer showpiece” garden conveys a grand gesture, expensive hardscaping, and maybe not much in the way of plants. At the home garden of Scott Deemer in Niwot, Colorado, a grand-gesture fireplace and beautifully designed hardscaping create a wow moment as soon as you step onto the ...
Unscripted beauty in Scripter meadow garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling

Unscripted beauty in Scripter meadow garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling

July 10, 2019 Larry and Mary Scripter grew up in prairie country, Larry on a farm in Kansas and Mary in the Black Hills of South Dakota, surrounded by the Great Plains. So it’s not surprising that they’re drawn to grassy meadow gardens and have created one at their home ...
TatTopia garden embraces stonework and sustainability: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling

TatTopia garden embraces stonework and sustainability: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling

July 09, 2019 When the construction dust settled at Tatiana Maxwell’s new energy-wise home, studio, and guest house in Boulder, Colorado, in 2010, the yard was just an expanse of bare dirt. Her first thought was to build an English-style cottage garden. But after brainstorming with stonemason artist Thea Alvin ...
Crevice gardens to crave at the garden of Carol Shinn: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling

Crevice gardens to crave at the garden of Carol Shinn: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling

June 28, 2019 Colorado gardeners are crazy for crevice gardens, and no wonder. When the Rocky Mountains peek over your back fence, creating a miniature mountain range in your yard makes perfect sense. Alpine plants that thrive at high altitude and require excellent drainage love these rocky niches. Crevice gardens ...
Garden retreat under the oaks in San Antonio

Garden retreat under the oaks in San Antonio

May 24, 2019 An invitation to tea — the real deal, with scones, clotted cream, cucumber sandwiches, lemon tarts, and champagne — was treat enough to entice me to the San Antonio home of two sisters I’ve gotten to know through a friendship with their mother. But when I arrived ...