November 01, 2010 The new-baby garden is growing by leaps and bounds. My garden is two years old now. A year ago, I marked Tecolote Hill’s 1st birthday with a series of before-and-after pictures, which helped me see what I’d accomplished and what I wanted to do next. (You can …

October 31, 2010 Happy Halloween, y’all! All material © 2006-2010 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited …

October 28, 2010 As October draws to a close, I thought I’d share a few images of Bull Creek in west Austin on a recent golden morning. Limestone and water. Central Texas was, eons ago, a shallow sea. The limestone is what remains of the sea creatures that once inhabited …

October 26, 2010 Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday known as Day of the Dead, is embraced in Austin each year with a street festival and parade. Unlike the macabre spectacle of Halloween, Day of the Dead is traditionally about remembering and honoring departed loved ones by creating altars …

October 22, 2010 Like a contemporary fairy-tale cottage, the home of James David and Gary Peese is glimpsed through the embrace of the surrounding garden: a fascinating, wow-inducing, richly planted—and richly hardscaped—yet intimate and surprisingly unpretentious garden. This was my final stop on last Saturday’s Open Days garden tour. James …

October 21, 2010 Continuing my westward route across Austin on Saturday’s Open Days tour, I headed to the Westlake garden at the Jones residence multimillion-dollar, 11,000 square foot mansion (as per Trulia). This is the view from their elevated front terrace. What? Those buildings? Downtown Austin, of course. I was …

October 20, 2010 Deborah Hornickel added on to her charming Bryker Woods home a couple of years ago, extending its footprint into her back garden, which you can see pre-remodel in my Open Days 2006 post about Deborah’s garden. Visiting post-remodel on Saturday’s Open Days tour, I found it to …

October 19, 2010 My third stop on Saturday’s Garden Conservancy tour took me to the elegant, hilltop garden overlooking downtown Austin. Surrounding a New Orleans-style Pemberton Heights home and shaded by majestic live oaks, the garden felt lush, green, and classically serene. Pictured above, a cut-stone path edged in dwarf …

October 18, 2010 There was plenty of Patch magic to go around during the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour last Saturday. Designer Philip Leveridge, who blogs about his garden at East Side Patch, his wife Leah, and their two young children seem to derive much enjoyment from their enticing, lawn-free …

October 18, 2010 I’m delighted to announce that I’m guest posting today on At Home in the Garden, the garden blog of MarthaStewart.com. I hope you’ll take the time to check it out. My thanks to garden editor Stacey Hirvela for inviting me to contribute a regional report. And if …

October 18, 2010 I’m delighted to announce that I’m guest posting today on At Home in the Garden, the garden blog of MarthaStewart.com. I hope you’ll take the time to check it out. My thanks to garden editor Stacey Hirvela for inviting me to contribute a regional report. And if …

October 17, 2010 ‘Sharkskin’ agave and ‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave at the Utility Research Garden The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Austin tour was held yesterday, with 6 private gardens open to the public. My first stop was the ambiguously named Utility Research Garden, which I imagined to be an experimental garden …

October 16, 2010 I hope you’ll join me today for Foliage Follow-Up, the day after Bloom Day when we celebrate leaves, bark, seedheads, etc.—plant characteristics often overlooked in favor of flowers. Share your favorite foliage for October, and then leave a link here in the comments so we can find …

October 15, 2010 At Lake Austin Spa on Wednesday, my guide, head gardener Trisha Shirey, showed me an interesting plant she’s growing in the vegetable garden—cotton! Related to the hibiscus, she explained, its flower opens white and soon fades to a soft pink. When the flowers drop, seedpods called bolls …