Garden structures

April 05, 2012 My next stop on the Houston Open Days tour on March 24 was the classically elegant Tudor Garden, located in the Broadacres Historic District. To my mind, the property’s best asset is the view of a double line of mature live oaks marching down the center median ...

April 03, 2012 My next stop on the Houston Open Days tour on March 24 was the classic, walled J. Green Garden, located in the Montrose neighborhood. The official description: This urban garden in Montrose is a lovely counterpoint to the house owned by well-known Houston interior designer Jon Green, ...

April 02, 2012 The Garden Conservancy’s 2012 Open Days program opened on March 24 in Houston, a 3-hour drive east of Austin. Diana of Sharing Nature’s Garden and I made a day trip of it and started our tour at the Cortlandt Street Garden. Here’s the official description: Located in ...

March 25, 2012 On our way home from Big Bend last weekend, we cruised through Marfa for lunch and a quick look around town. When we spotted the Thunderbird Hotel’s Capri Lounge, an event space and former Army storage hangar, we stopped to tour the Christy Ten Eyck-designed garden surrounding ...

February 20, 2012 This brainiac baby head is just one of the creative succulent planters I spotted during a recent visit to Tillery Street Plant Co. in East Austin. Tillery Street sells wholesale and retail “to the unwashed masses,” with a concentration of agaves, yuccas, acacias, small succulents, and other ...

January 11, 2012 “A collection of plants, however choice and brilliantly well-tended, doesn’t become a real garden until it takes on the character and personality of the gardener behind it. The best gardens—those we fall into for hours, appearing new with every visit—are ones in which the owners are telling ...

November 27, 2011 Friday’s blue skies enticed me outdoors and down to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center for a stroll. For yesterday’s post about the entry courtyard, woodland garden, and Hill Country Stream, click here. A limestone wall separates the woodland garden from the sun-drenched demonstration garden, which opens ...

November 27, 2011 Friday’s blue skies enticed me outdoors and down to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center for a stroll. For yesterday’s post about the entry courtyard, woodland garden, and Hill Country Stream, click here. A limestone wall separates the woodland garden from the sun-drenched demonstration garden, which opens ...

November 26, 2011 Avoiding the Black Friday madness and taking advantage of a beautiful fall day in Austin, my family and I headed to the Wildflower Center for a post-lunch stroll yesterday. Since all the plants at the Wildflower Center are native to Texas, it’s illuminating to see what still ...

November 26, 2011 Avoiding the Black Friday madness and taking advantage of a beautiful fall day in Austin, my family and I headed to the Wildflower Center for a post-lunch stroll yesterday. Since all the plants at the Wildflower Center are native to Texas, it’s illuminating to see what still ...

November 10, 2011 Like a go-go dancer at a small-town prom, Big Red Sun‘s theatrical streetside display garden stood out from the crowd of surrounding businesses at its original location on E. Cesar Chavez. Its gift shop—jammed with garden books, hip furniture, clothes, jewelry, and home decor—was as enticing as ...

November 08, 2011 The cinderblock wall planter idea just keeps getting bigger and better. At Big Red Sun‘s recently reopened boutique nursery in east Austin, I spotted this edible wall planted in artistically stacked concrete blocks—a riff, perhaps, on the succulent wall at Potted that inspired my own succulent wall? ...

November 03, 2011 My friend Jenny Stocker, who blogs at Rock Rose, has shared her garden with me many times over the years. Each time I am struck anew by the beauty of her English-style xeric Texas garden, which shows many native plants to advantage in gravel-mulched, walled courtyards surrounding ...

October 31, 2011 Happy Halloween! How do you like these warty, spooky, gray pumpkins? These and many, many more are on display now through November 23 at the Dallas Arboretum’s Autumn Festival, a fantasyland of pumpkins and pumpkin houses that attracts hordes of camera-snapping moms and dads and costumed tots ...

August 25, 2011 In late July, after the Seattle Garden Bloggers Fling ended, my family joined me for sightseeing in the Emerald City and beyond. I convinced them to see one more garden with me, the Seattle Japanese Garden in the Washington Park Arboretum. At 3-1/2 acres, the garden is ...

August 20, 2011 The final event of last month’s Seattle Garden Bloggers Fling was an afternoon visit to Dragonfly Farms Nursery—“Where Abnormality is the Normality!”—in Kingston, WA, and a fun happy hour on the lawn. Dragonfly Farms offers not only an enticing selection of plants for sale but beautiful and ...