August 05, 2011 Joy Creek Nursery While visiting Portland before the Seattle Garden Bloggers Fling, I was treated to nursery visits with Loree of Danger Garden. Fresh out of sun-baked, drought-stricken Austin, and plunked amid the lush greens—and chartreuse and burgundy—of Portland’s landscape, I’m ashamed to say I moaned and …

August 04, 2011 I’m baaack! Did you miss me? If you thought I’d gone AWOL from Austin’s summer from hell, well, you were right. I left early for the Garden Bloggers Fling last month, flying into Portland, Oregon, on July 20 in order to meet blogger friend, foliage fiend, and …

July 18, 2011 Moby, my ‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave (Agave ovatifolia), sails through hot summer days in part-sun/bright shade, perched above most of the garden in a terraced bed. It’s a ghostly white whale of a plant, about 5 feet in diameter, an iconic presence in my former garden and in …

July 16, 2011 It’s Foliage Follow-Up, a day of celebrating leafy beauty in the garden. After I took my photos, I noticed that they fell into one of two categories: the fierce, pointy leaves of yuccas, agaves, dyckias, and mangaves, and the fine texture of various grasses or grass-like plants …

July 15, 2011 Water lilies, Turk’s cap, sweet almond verbena, globemallow, catmint, Mexican oregano, hymenoxys, flame acanthus, Mexican honeysuckle, golden thryallis, plumbago, agastache, Salvia coccinea — all are blooming in my garden this Bloom Day. But you know what? After 31 days at or above 100F so far this summer, …

July 14, 2011 Looking for a flowering, sweet-scented shrub that can take the heat and drought dished out in a central Texas summer? Then try sweet almond verbena (Aloysia virgata), an Argentinian deciduous shrub with a strong vanilla almond fragrance. Mine grows at the base of our elevated deck, and …

July 12, 2011 When it doesn’t rain and temperatures soar into the 100s every day for weeks, the garden can look a bit…shall we say…parched. I recently responded by ripping out a mishmash of crispy plants, a lot of onesies and twosies brought along from my former garden, and replaced …

July 05, 2011 Austin area gardeners are fortunate to have a number of good independent nurseries, run by people who know our plants and local growing conditions, at which to shop. (Click on Nurseries in my sidebar for more info about and photo tours of those I frequent.) Now I …

Chimney Rock and Sliding Rock hikes near Asheville, NC, with my kids brought back fun memories from my childhood …

June 29, 2011 As always when visiting a beautiful garden, time was short, so the Walled Garden and conservatory were our final stop at Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina, earlier this month. The grounds slope steeply down from the grand house, through the Italian Garden and Shrub Garden, leading …

June 27, 2011 In Breakfast at Tiffany’s Holly Golightly cautions, “There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl’s complexion.” Maybe so, but not a garden’s complexion. For proof, I give you these images of a limelight-colored border from the Biltmore House gardens in Asheville, North Carolina, which …

June 26, 2011 My favorite part of the extensive Biltmore House gardens, which I visited during a recent vacation in Asheville, North Carolina, was the Shrub Garden—a bit of a misnomer since it also contains a lot of spectacular specimen trees, like this weeping blue atlas cedar. Look at its …

June 25, 2011 Built by George W. Vanderbilt, youthful inheritor of his family’s shipping fortune, Biltmore House is a 250-room, French-style chateau nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Asheville, North Carolina. The home is still owned by the Vanderbilt family but was opened to the public …

June 23, 2011 During my recent vacation in North Carolina, my dad and I had the pleasure of visiting the garden of Freda Cameron and her husband in Chapel Hill. I’ve long been a reader of Freda’s blog, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel, which is a great source of …