Inspired by Christy Ten Eyck’s garden on KLRU
January 31, 2013Ten Eyck’s Austin gardenLinda Lehmusvirta of KLRU’s Central Texas Gardener has produced one of the best episodes ever in her interview with acclaimed landscape architect Christy Ten Eyck, who moved back to Austin in 2006 after 22 years living and designing gardens in Phoenix, Arizona. Watch the episode ...
How to green up your winter garden in central Texas
January 17, 2013 Texas dwarf palmetto (Sabal minor), foxtail fern (Asparagus densiflorus ‘Meyersii’), heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata), sparkler sedge (Carex phyllocephala ‘Sparkler’), and bamboo muhly (Muhlenbergia dumosa) add plenty of greenery to the winter garden. Audrey, a regular reader of Digging, recently asked me how to plant for winter greenery, ...
Updating the old homestead and lawn-removal “after” pics
November 28, 2012 Giving our aging ranch house a facelift has been an ongoing project since we moved in four years ago. The house is comfortably proportioned and liveable on the inside, but the exterior is, well, homely, so we gave it a brow-lift earlier this year with a gabled ...
Mark Word landscape design at El Monumento in Georgetown
November 20, 2012 Last month I had the pleasure of meeting Mark Word, a highly regarded residential and commercial designer here in Austin. Thanks to his work designing unique and memorable gardens for Liz Lambert’s boutique hotels, including uber-hip Hotel San Jose and the more luxurious Hotel Saint Cecilia, Mark’s ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Bonnell Drive Garden
November 08, 2012 My fourth stop on Saturday’s Open Days tour was the Bonnell Drive Garden in hilly West Austin, created by my friend Curt Arnette of Sitio Design. (For a post about Curt’s fascinating personal garden, click here.) The contemporary front garden complements the Texas-modern style of the wood-and-limestone ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Garden of Christine Ten Eyck
November 06, 2012 My third stop on Saturday’s Open Days tour was probably the best known of the bunch, and one I’ve visited previously on the Wildflower Center’s 2010 Gardens on Tour. It’s the personal garden of landscape architect Christine Ten Eyck, which has appeared in the book Tomorrow’s Garden ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Garden of Yvonne Tocquigny
November 05, 2012 My second stop on Saturday’s Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour was the courtyard garden of Yvonne Tocquigny and Tom Fornoff, located in West Austin’s tony Tarrytown neighborhood. Elegant but relaxed and beautifully designed, this garden has a secret-garden aspect, with green walls erected in front and in ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Garden of Jennifer and Fred Myers
November 04, 2012 On Saturday I joined several garden-blogging friends for the biennial Open Days tour, sponsored by the Garden Conservancy. I consider Open Days to be the best garden tour in Austin. You often see high-design gardens mingled with a gardener’s sensibility and creative, personal touches. This year’s Open ...
Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2012: Donnis Doyle Garden
October 10, 2012 The Austin garden bloggers recently got a sneak preview of the upcoming Inside Austin Gardens Tour, hosted by the Travis County Master Gardeners. We visited 5 gardens, and I hope to be able to show them all to you before the tour date on October 20th. I’ll ...
Front yard garden in full fall bloom
October 02, 2012 Every time I arrive at home, slowing to pull into my driveway, I get to enjoy this. Yep, this is my neighbor Donna’s streetside garden that she let me design for her earlier this year. And now it’s all filled in and blooming like crazy. Here’s how ...
Drive-By Gardens: Sedge lawn and grasses make another lawn-gone garden
September 11, 2012 Driving in East Austin recently, I spotted this cheery yellow house with an alternative lawn of sedge—probably either Texas or Berkeley sedge—in the front yard… …and a row of native Lindheimer muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri) along the side-yard fence. A few brown patches marred the beauty of the ...
Stylish xeric garden by Sitio Design
September 04, 2012 My friend Curt Arnette, the talented landscape architect at Sitio Design and plant lover whose personal garden I visited in May, designed this contemporary gravel garden for a Westlake client, and I recently got to take a peek. The lot is wooded and steeply sloped and the ...
Oreo cows, goats & gardens at Fearrington Village, Pittsboro, NC
August 21, 2012 My dad lives in Fearrington Village, a planned community of mostly retirees outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It’s a lovely community of 2,000, built on wooded, rolling hills, anchored by an English-style village square with a few shops, an independent bookstore (sadly lacking in garden titles, ...
Drive-By Gardens: Rockin’ alternative lawns in north Austin
July 30, 2012 Driving around north Austin last week, I spotted quite a few nontraditional front yards, where the owners had traded in the typical expanse of St. Augustine or Bermuda for a smaller plot of grass, a sedge lawn, or a garden instead of lawn. No matter the style, ...
Lawn Gone! book available for pre-order
July 22, 2012 After a fall and winter of writing and compiling photos and a spring and summer of editing and proofreading, I’m thrilled to announce that my upcoming book, Lawn Gone! Low-Maintenance, Sustainable, Attractive Alternatives for Your Yard, has a beautiful cover design and is now available for pre-order ...
Southwestern plants, French style & tropical verve in the garden of Curt Arnette
June 12, 2012 Landscape architect Curt Arnette, of Sitio Design, is one of the best and yet most modest garden makers you’ll meet in Austin. Back when I was a newbie gardener, breaking ground at our first house in Austin, he and his wife Melisa were our across-the-street neighbors. What ...
