Playful plant-lover’s garden of LA designer Dustin Gimbel
September 28, 2015 Concrete orb shish-kabobs in Dustin’s garden The Death Star was blasting mercilessly when I visited designer Dustin Gimbel’s garden in Long Beach, CA, last week — not at all in the mellow, sunny-L.A. way I’d been led to expect. But perhaps Diana and I are fated to ...
Sedgey evergreen garden of Pat Mozersky for Foliage Follow-Up
September 16, 2015 Austin designer Mark Word (see my profile about him) designed this serene, green San Antonio garden that you can see on the upcoming Watersaver Landscape Tour on October 24. I got a preview last Friday thanks to Shirley of Rock-Oak-Deer. The garden belongs to Pat Mozersky, the ...
Dreamy green courtyard and water-saving garden in San Antonio
September 15, 2015 My friend Shirley of Rock-Oak-Deer in San Antonio recently uttered the magic words: Come see a few gardens! So last Friday I hopped in my car, drove south to the Alamo City, and met Shirley to tour three gardens. Two of the gardens will be on this ...
Oxblood lilies pop up after first fall rain
September 12, 2015 Maybe last week’s inch of rain — the first in two months — wasn’t technically the first fall rain. After all, it still sweltered into the 90s that day and the day after. But by the reckoning of the oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida), the soil is refreshed ...
Evening garden design musings
September 08, 2015 Dusk is falling more softly as summer wanes, and the lingering evening glow is inviting, even if Austin is still hot and dry. Here are a few random shots from a recent walk-around at dusk. (The rest are in my post about foliage gardening apologies.) This view ...
Foliage gardening apologies: do you do it?
September 06, 2015 At least once or twice a month I find myself trying to explain my garden to politely interested non-gardeners. A couple of days ago the smiling inquiry was from a new doctor. Upon learning that I liked to garden, she asked the standard question, “What do you ...
Lively formality in the garden of Deborah Hornickel
July 06, 2015 If you admired the beautiful details of James David’s grand Rollingwood garden, which I had the privilege of visiting last spring, you may have wondered what a smaller, more economically built garden of his might look like. And I’m here to show you, thanks to James’s longtime ...
Fling wrap-up at Toronto Botanical Garden: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
July 01, 2015 Wherever I travel, I enjoy visiting local botanical gardens. So I was happy to see that Toronto Botanical Garden would be our final stop — including a catered dinner — on the recent Garden Bloggers Fling in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Upon arrival we 70 garden bloggers were ...
Cabbagetown garden art and Hugh Garner Co-Op Green Roof: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 29, 2015 The teeny tiny gardens of Toronto’s Cabbagetown neighborhood of Victorian homes kicked off our final day of Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling in early June. Due to the tight quarters, pictures of artful vignettes were easier to take than overview photos, and I’m sharing my favorites here. Cabbagetown ...
Golden brocade garden of Marion Jarvie: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 28, 2015 All that is gold does not glitter, especially in the Toronto, Ontario, garden of designer and speaker Marion Jarvie. Her home garden was our midday stop on the 2nd day of touring at Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling. High and bright, the sun flattened and shadowed my photos ...
Storybook garden on Algonquin Island: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 25, 2015 Tell me this doesn’t look like a Thomas Kinkade painting, but in the best sense — light gleaming in the window of a picturesque cottage — without the kitsch. With rain clouds darkening the sky, this was the last island garden I visited (see my Toronto Islands ...
Island hopping, Toronto-style: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 23, 2015 Seventy garden bloggers boarded a ferry earlier this month and were transported from bustling downtown Toronto (pictured above) to the idyllic lanes of the Toronto Islands (below), a mere 15 minutes across Lake Ontario but seemingly a world away. This was the last tour on our first ...
Hillside Swansea gardens: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 20, 2015 For 8 years I’ve been fortunate to attend the annual Garden Bloggers Fling, a 3-day international garden blogger meet-up and city-wide garden tour, organized each year by volunteer bloggers from the host city. This year, in early June, Toronto’s garden bloggers hosted the Fling, led by sisters ...
Art and design intrigue in the garden of Syd Teague
June 01, 2015 Once a month the Austin garden bloggers gather at one of our gardens to socialize, talk plants and design, and do a plant swap. Last Saturday we met up in Rock Rose/Jenny Stocker’s garden, which despite a recent hailstorm and torrential rains was absolutely beautiful. But we ...
Before and after: 6 years making a garden
May 25, 2015 Bluesy garden: our upper patio, just off the living room and master bedroom It’s always eye-opening to see how much a garden has evolved by comparing before and after images. We moved into our current home in October 2008, and I started tinkering with a few beds ...
Farewell visit to James David’s Austin garden, part 2
May 20, 2015 A grand limestone staircase bisected by a rill leads from the back of the house to a large pond in the lower garden. Yesterday I showed you around the upper level of James David’s magnificent garden, which I visited in late March and which is currently for ...
