LongHouse Reserve ramble, Part 2: Woodland garden, Yoko Ono sculpture, and Red Garden
January 06, 2022 When textile-artist Jack Lenor Larsen created his garden at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, New York, one of his goals, according to online interviews, was to encourage people to be nonconformist. He wanted to show that more can be done with a suburban backyard than the typical ...
Mad about Madoo: The secret garden, potager, and ginkgo grove
December 22, 2021 I’d driven out to the Hamptons — a Long Island, NY, detour on my October road trip from Maine to Virginia — mainly to see one garden: Madoo. The name itself is an endearment, taken from a Scottish dialect in which ma doo means my dove or ...
Yucca and palm fantasyland at John Fairey Garden
December 17, 2021 I’d been to The John Fairey Garden (formerly Peckerwood Garden) a half-dozen times before my late-October visit with Loree Bohl of Danger Garden, who was in town to give a Garden Spark talk. Frustratingly, I’d never toured the dry garden, though I’d glimpse its bristling yuccas and ...
Garden design lessons from a Texas gravel garden
November 10, 2021 Blue grama grass and whale’s tongue agave I’m always inspired by Linda Peterson’s low-water gravel garden in San Antonio, which normally is studded with gigantic Weber agaves, sculptural prickly pears, rivers of starfish-shaped soap aloes, and strategic screening shrubs that soften fencing and create a green backdrop ...
Victorian Garden, Stumpery, and origami sculpture: Missouri Botanical Garden, part 2
June 24, 2021 It’s Pollinator Week, so I’ll kick off Part 2 of my visit to Missouri Botanical Garden (MOBOT) with this bee-attracting patch of coneflowers behind one of the administrative buildings. What a pretty little garden of echinacea, allium, and amsonia in a hidden-away spot. Victorian Garden In contrast, ...
Cowboy pool, colorful outdoor living: Lorie and Michael Kinler’s Fort Worth Garden
March 05, 2021 Last fall, during a weekend trip to Dallas, I was invited to visit the Fort Worth garden of Lorie and Michael Kinler. The Kinlers are the design duo behind Redenta’s Landscape Design Kinler Landscape Architecture (renamed in 2022), formerly affiliated with Redenta’s Garden nursery in Dallas. A ...
Palms, agaves, and edibles in Peter Schaar Garden
October 27, 2020 I was happy to have the opportunity to see the garden of Peter Schaar in Dallas in early October. I know Peter as a palm and agave lover, a rose enthusiast (note the Texas Rose Rustler t-shirt), and an avid cook with a taste for growing herbs ...
Tropicalesque Tanglewild, where bananas and palms grow big and bold
September 17, 2020 With the arrival of cooler weather it’s garden visiting season, and I’ve started calling on gardening friends who are willing to have me over for a socially distanced, masked, outdoor visit. How I love touring gardens! This week’s tour is at Tanglewild Gardens, a 1.7-acre garden in ...
Hideaway garden at Davern Oaks: Austin Open Day tour
November 16, 2019 An Old Austin-style garden awaited across the street from the Greenway Garden on The Garden Conservancy‘s Open Day tour two weeks ago. What does Old Austin style look like? To me it means a mature tree canopy and a lush understory of sturdy subtropical evergreens like boxwood, ...
Water-saving Greenway Street Garden: Austin Open Day Tour
November 11, 2019 As Austin gardeners scramble today to get tender plants under cover ahead of an expected hard freeze (seems too early!), let’s continue with coverage of the recent Open Day tour sponsored by The Garden Conservancy. Green House on Greenway, the 2nd garden I visited, reminded me of ...
Chinoiserie enchantment at Chandor Gardens, part 2
October 31, 2019 Given 3-1/2 acres of cow pasture in North Texas, it turns out you can do quite a lot with it. Continuing with my mid-October visit to Weatherford’s Chandor Gardens (click for part 1 of my visit), here’s more of the romantic English-Chinese garden that portraitist Douglas Chandor ...
Chandor Gardens, née White Shadows, a hidden gem in North Texas, part 1
October 29, 2019 White Shadows — the name evokes romance and mystery — seems wholly appropriate for the dappled-shade garden surrounding a pale-gray house in the small Texas town of Weatherford, 30 miles west of Fort Worth. Here, in a series of alternately elegant and rustic garden rooms, you’ll find ...
Plant This: Mexican beautyberry
October 01, 2019 I am not, in general, a plant collector. I rarely make impulse buys at the nursery. And yet a few plants (agave, mangave, and Turk’s cap come to mind) have captivated me enough to try different varieties, even if I don’t exactly need or have space for ...
Nolina, yucca, and cypress add xeric structure in lush Austin garden
September 26, 2019 Have you ever seen a glorious spring garden fade by late summer into a semi-dormant hot mess? That’s what happens in Texas when you don’t include structural plants and hardscape to give your garden shape and interest in hotter, drier seasons. Landscape architect Jackson Broussard (formerly of ...
Bowled over by Linda Boley’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 07, 2019 A copper tree, its muscular branches devoid of leaves, stands as an organic sculpture in the Boulder, Colorado, rock garden of Linda Boley. The painted Japanese lilac caught my eye as soon as our bus arrived during the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling tour (June 2019). It signaled ...
Crevice gardens to crave at the garden of Carol Shinn: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
June 28, 2019 Colorado gardeners are crazy for crevice gardens, and no wonder. When the Rocky Mountains peek over your back fence, creating a miniature mountain range in your yard makes perfect sense. Alpine plants that thrive at high altitude and require excellent drainage love these rocky niches. Crevice gardens ...
