Spikes and springtime
March 22, 2023 Spiderwort (Tradescantia occidentalis), a self-sowing native and a springtime beauty, continues to color my shady spaces purple. Its bee-feeding flowers open at dawn and close in the early afternoon, except on cool, cloudy days, when they may stay open all day. More flower spikes line the raised ...
One-of-a-kind design on the 2023 Tribeza Interiors Tour, Part 2
January 26, 2023 I’m so glad Austin’s excellent Tribeza Interiors Tour is back after a 2-year pandemic hiatus. On Sunday’s tour day, I managed to see all 7 of the featured houses, plus squeeze in a picnic lunch courtesy of my touring partner, in the 5 hours allotted to the ...
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 ...
Native plants and Hill Country style at Paula Stone’s Fredericksburg garden
October 25, 2022 Two Fridays ago a couple of friends and I drove out to Fredericksburg, a charming town in the Texas Hill Country, founded in the mid-1800s by German immigrants and built out of native limestone block, pressed-tin ceilings, and galvanized roofs. We’d been invited to visit by Paula ...
Have we outlasted the heat-wave summer?
August 31, 2022 What a summer this has been for Austin. Hot as Hades, rainless and parched for months and months. And then, finally, flooding rains in mid-August drenched parts of the city — I got 4.75 inches over a few days, although friends in South and West Austin got ...
Planted plaza, fountains, and rose garden at Olbrich Botanical Gardens
August 15, 2022 For Part 2 of my visit to Olbrich Botanical Gardens during June’s Madison Fling, I’ll show you the Rose Garden. I confess the words “rose garden” never perk up my ears. Sure, I like roses OK, but so many rose gardens are really rose ghettos, planted in ...
Cindy Fillingame’s glowing, rainy-day garden
August 09, 2022 Let’s pedal on into another lovely Wisconsin garden from the Madison Fling in June, this one belonging to Cindy Fillingame. An old, three-wheeled bicycle greets you out front, a tub of yellow pansies glowing behind the seat, pink penstemon popping up through the spokes. While Austin continues ...
At the Wildflower Center with Jennifer Jewell
June 04, 2022 When Jennifer Jewell of Cultivating Place came to Austin a month ago, we visited the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center together. I enjoy showing visitors around our state botanical garden, planted exclusively with native Texas plants. In early May, the late-spring wildflowers were in party mode. Wildflowers ...
Tropicalismo drive-by garden
June 01, 2022 Driving through the South Austin neighborhood where my friend Lori lives, I passed this exuberant, tropical-style front garden. I immediately swung around and lurked at the curb to take in all the color and ka-pow energy of bananas and crinums and poppies, oh my. Under the shade ...
Heart of stone: Tait Moring’s garden
May 18, 2022 Amid the flurry of gardens I had the pleasure of visiting in late April, landscape architect Tait Moring‘s garden stands out, as always, for its evocative stonework and a magpie collection of found objects, boyhood collections, and castoffs from clients’ gardens, which Tait assembles into art for ...
New succulent nursery by OG Agave spikes up Lakeway
May 16, 2022 Austin gardener Matt Shreves is crazy about cacti and succulents. His own gorgeous garden is a spiky showcase of agaves, barrel cactus, yuccas, Argentine saguaro and other columnar cacti, as well as small container-sized succulents. I’ve featured his garden twice — here and here — so check ...
Coleson Bruce’s crevice garden in spring flower
May 04, 2022 Two weeks ago Coleson Bruce invited me back to his garden to see it in spring flower. I’d first visited Coleson’s garden last fall — a garden unlike any other I’ve seen in Austin or even Texas. Colorado-style crevice gardens are unusual here, and Coleson’s is not ...
Gathering spaces in Ruthie Burrus Garden, part 2
May 02, 2022 In my last post I hope I wowed you — as I was wowed — by the colorful wildflower meadow and textural spiky-soft shade garden of Ruthie Burrus. If you missed it, check out Part 1 of my visit to Ruthie’s West Austin garden. Today we’ll explore ...
Wildflower Center abloom in early April
April 23, 2022 Claret cup cactus flowering at the top of the Wildflower Center tower I’m overdue for a visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center — and it’s only been two weeks since I was there! But a lot happens in April and May. What was blooming two ...
Comings and goings in the spring garden
March 30, 2022 She ran late by a week or two, but Spring finally made up her mind and sprung. Last week ornamental trees like Mexican plum (Prunus mexicana) flushed into flower as live oaks overhead began their annual mass shedding of “evergreen” leaves. It’s autumn and spring all at ...
Plants hold court at Chanticleer’s Teacup and Tennis Court gardens
February 23, 2022 Teacup Garden in 2021 A teacup-shaped fountain in the entry garden at Chanticleer gives the Teacup Garden its name. Each year the plantings around the fountain are redesigned to create a bold, new theatrical vignette. I visited Chanticleer in Wayne, Pennsylvania, last October on my East Coast ...
