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 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 ...
Homey fall garden at Brandywine Cottage
October 19, 2023 Tropical Storm Ophelia swept across the Philadelphia region during late September’s Philly Area Fling. But Flingers shall not be deterred! On we Flung in raincoats, ponchos, umbrellas, and waterproof shoes — or in sopping wet pants and socks. Our group arrived at plantsman and designer David L ...
Linda’s live oak courtyard garden in San Antonio
October 18, 2023 After the tour of the Ten Eyck garden last Saturday, I visited my friend Linda Peterson’s garden, one of my favorites in all of Texas. Her garden is home to several charismatic live oaks, including this one with octopus-like arms stretching through a porthole cutout in a ...
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
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, ...
Old San Antonio style in Melody’s garden
June 12, 2023 While in San Antonio two weeks ago, I met up with my friend Melody, who invited me to see her garden again. I first visited 9 years ago — whaaaat? where does the time go? — and was eager to see it again. In her large flower ...
Ima Hogg’s Bayou Bend garden is preserved in time
June 05, 2023 Back in April, work took me to Houston. While there, I stepped back in time with a visit to Bayou Bend, the formal estate garden of Houston socialite, art collector, and philanthropist Ima Hogg. The daughter of a Texas governor with terrible baby-naming skills, Ima shouldered the ...
Ann Munson’s woodland garden invites mystery and play
August 05, 2022 Woodland gardens aren’t show ponies of dazzling flower color. Their beauty shines through in subtler, shade-loving foliage plants, in dappled light glinting through leaves, in cool shadowed paths that gradually reveal tucked-away art and secret hideaways. Such is the garden of Ann Munson, which I toured on ...
Shady oasis with folk art and inviting central patio
July 20, 2022 The exuberantly planted and decorated garden of Jim Ottney and Jay Hatheway has secret hideaway vibes. Located at the end of a dead-end street in charming Stoughton, Wisconsin, 20 miles southeast of Madison, the garden hides behind a screen of trees and shrubs. A winding path leads ...
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 ...
Japanese-inspired garden of Linda Brazill and Mark Golbach, Part 2
July 08, 2022 In my last post I shared the Asian-style front garden of Linda Brazill and Mark Golbach, whose Madison, Wisconsin, garden of 28 years I toured on the recent Garden Bloggers Fling. (I first saw their garden back in 2010.) Today let me lead you on a tour ...
East meets Midwest in the garden of Linda Brazill and Mark Golbach, Part 1
July 06, 2022 Back in 2010, my husband traveled to Madison for the IRONMAN Wisconsin race (which he finished!), and I tagged along as cheerleader. Oh and also to see gardens. I was a big fan of the design-focused blog Each Little World by Linda Brazill and Mark Golbach and ...
Creative paths and cutting garden glory at Chanticleer
March 03, 2022 Chanticleer Garden enchants through marvelous plant combos and artful garden spaces that evoke a sense of mystery, romance, and discovery. I visited Chanticleer, located in Wayne, Pennsylvania, on my East Coast road trip last fall. This is Part 6 — and the finale — of my blog ...
Anemones and autumn memories in Cat’s garden
January 12, 2022 Back in late October, when Loree of Danger Garden was visiting, Cat Jones invited us over for a garden visit. Her lipstick-pink anemones, a passalong from Rock Rose‘s Jenny Stocker (who’s since departed Austin for Arizona), were blooming. We both adore these fall flowers, which Jenny kindly ...
LongHouse Reserve ramble, Part 2: Woodland garden, Yoko Ono sculpture, and Red Garden
January 06, 2022 When textile-artist Jack Lenor Larsen created his garden at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, New York, one of his goals, according to online interviews, was to encourage people to be nonconformist. He wanted to show that more can be done with a suburban backyard than the typical ...
