Willow City Loop wows with Texas wildflowers
March 29, 2024 I headed west to the Hill Country on Wednesday on a THIRD wildflower safari, cruising the Willow City Loop between Fredericksburg and Llano. This famously scenic, 13-mile ranch road winds through rugged canyons and over rocky hilltops offering spectacular views, with low-water crossings and free-range cattle to ...
Dambo troll enchants Austinites at Pease Park
March 21, 2024 A friendly troll has taken up residence in Pease Park, and Austin is going troll crazy. Built by Danish recycle artist Thomas Dambo, who dreams up and installs whimsical, wooden trolls at sites all over the world, Malin is Dambo’s latest creation. Commissioned by Pease Park Conservancy ...
Falling into ruin at Chanticleer Garden
January 13, 2024 Chanticleer’s Ruin Garden has a fairy tale quality. It’s not an actual ruin but was built in 1999 on the site of one of the original houses on the property. Plants creep up crumbling walls and emerge from cracked paving, ghostly faces appear in pools of water, ...
Exploring Chanticleer’s Elevated Walkway, Serpentine, and Bulb Meadow
January 03, 2024 Chanticleer Garden’s rooster theme continues with Marcia Donahue‘s cockscomb-bamboo sculptures, which mark the entrance to the Elevated Walkway garden. This is Part 4 of my visit to Chanticleer during the Philadelphia Area Fling last September. The winding pathway spirals around a big Japanese maple, which was blushing ...
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 ...
Birds and native thorn forest at Quinta Mazatlan
December 19, 2023 In early November, I drove 5 hours south to the Rio Grande Valley, land of citrus orchards and skinny-trunked palm trees. I was there for the final photo shoot for my upcoming book on Texas gardens (due out in 2025 with Timber Press). But I couldn’t leave ...
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 ...
Children’s Adventure Garden at Dallas Arboretum
November 20, 2023 The Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden at Dallas Arboretum opened 10 years ago, but somehow I’d never visited until last month. Why? I guess because my kids had outgrown children’s gardens by the time it opened, and so it wasn’t on my radar despite many visits over ...
Creek Show art installations glow at Waterloo Greenway
November 16, 2023 Last night I headed downtown to Waller Creek to see this year’s Creek Show, an annual exhibition of light-art installations, put on by Waterloo Greenway. While the event is free, let me tell you, it’s worth it to pay $10 for a fast pass that allows you ...
Jenny Rose Carey’s playful garden rooms at Northview, part 2
November 06, 2023 In my last post I showed you half of Jenny Rose Carey’s garden, Northview, which I toured during the Philadelphia Area Fling in September. Today I’ll show you the rest. Let’s start with her Fruits and Flowers Garden, where this Tin Man sculpture greeted me with open ...
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, ...
Pumpkin season at the Dallas Arboretum
October 28, 2023 While in Dallas last week I visited the Dallas Arboretum to see their annual pumpkin extravaganza. The last time I’d seen it was pre-Covid. Autumn at the Arboretum I was surprised to find that Autumn at the Arboretum has been relocated from a shady grove near the ...
Bamboo forest and pond gardens at WynEden
October 27, 2023 During the Philadelphia-Area Fling in late September, we toured Wayne Guymon’s WynEden in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. WynEden is an enormous private garden at 9.5 acres, “with 4,000 different plants and cultivars, 15,000 hostas, 7,000 Rhododendrons & Azaleas, 3 ponds, 3 streams and 5 acres of edited woodland,” ...
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
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 ...
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 ...
