Look for my interviews in Austin Home and Texas Gardener
June 28, 2017 Digging has been a little quiet for the past week because I was away at the Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling, touring public and private gardens in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and northern Virginia. But on the home front, I’ve been interviewed by writers at two local magazines, ...
Read This: 101 Organic Gardening Hacks, The Spirit of Stone, and The Cocktail Hour Garden
May 15, 2017 A raft of gardening books has piled up on my desk this spring. I’m tempted to lash the whole stack into a raft and paddle to a deserted island, where I’ll have time to read them all (if only that wouldn’t make them soggily unreadable). If you’re ...
Turning a neighborhood median strip into a garden
April 18, 2017 A few years ago I toured Colleen Jamison’s beautiful garden in central-west Austin, and a few days ago I had the pleasure of a revisit. It is still wonderful! But here’s what wowed me before I even stepped foot in her garden: a median strip down the ...
Talking waterwise gardens, blogging & more on Still Growing Podcast
January 27, 2017 Have a seat at the kitchen table, and let’s have a chat! At least, that’s how it felt to be interviewed last week by Jennifer Ebeling, host of the popular Still Growing Podcast, for an episode about making water-saving gardens that airs today. Jennifer Ebeling, host of ...
Come hear my talk at the Wildflower Center on 2/25
January 10, 2017On Saturday, February 25, I’ll be speaking at the day-long Native Plant Society of Texas (NPSOT) Spring Symposium at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. My talk is called Local Heroes: Designing with Native Plants for Water-Saving Gardens, and it’s about creating water-wise home gardens ...
Edibles, green roof, and playground at Mueller Community Gardens & Gaines Park
November 25, 2016 We spent Thanksgiving in the mixed-use, urban-infill, sustainably-designed Mueller neighborhood in east Austin, where my in-laws hosted us in their lovely new home. As always when we visit, I’m impressed by the park spaces and community amenities available to Mueller residents, and I fantasize about moving into ...
Come to my free talk at Antique Rose Emporium this Saturday
November 03, 2016Texas gardeners, come on out to The Antique Rose Emporium Fall Festival in Brenham, Texas, this weekend for entertaining and educational garden speakers, beautiful display gardens, and fun! I’ll be speaking this Saturday, November 5th, from 1:30 to 2:30 pm. My talk, with plenty of eye-candy photos, is ...
South Texans, I’m presenting at Planta Nativa in McAllen
October 11, 2016 Do you live in the Valley, Corpus Christi, or San Antonio? South Texans, I hope you’ll join me on October 22nd to hear my presentation and enjoy the festivities at the 2nd annual Planta Nativa festival, held at beautiful Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen! My evening presentation is ...
Read This: The Bold Dry Garden
October 10, 2016 Our gardens tell our stories. The plants we choose, the features we create, the very layout is an autobiography of our passions, fancies, and personality. That’s why the most inspiring gardens spring from impassioned and artistic minds. The Ruth Bancroft Garden near San Francisco is a perfect ...
Inside out: My article about Ted Flato of Lake Flato is in Garden Design
September 17, 2016 Have you gotten the new issue of Garden Design magazine (Autumn 2016)? I’m pleased to say I have an article in it: a profile of Ted Flato of the visionary architectural firm Lake Flato and a 16-page spread of their gorgeous residential projects, each of which is ...
360 West Magazine reviews The Water-Saving Garden
June 03, 2016 Seeing a positive review of my new book, The Water-Saving Garden, makes me so happy. After all, selling a book takes such a different skill set than writing it, and so much material competes for our limited reading time. Reviews — whether by editors in magazines and ...
Drive-By Gardens: Contemporary curb appeal in Shoalwood
May 17, 2016 Last week, while cruising around north-central Austin’s Shoalwood and south Allandale neighborhoods, I noticed a trend: contemporary curb appeal with gravel and concrete-paver paths, low walls and fences to separate public and private areas, and turf reduction in favor of lower-water plants. Take this 1950s ranch, for ...
Passionate about gardening sustainably for the place you live
May 02, 2016 New Jersey gardener and author Mike “The Gardener” Podlesny interviewed me recently for his popular Vegetable Gardening Podcast, and you can listen to it here (scroll to bottom). Despite the veggie-centric podcast title, Mike interviews all kinds of gardeners about any gardening topic you might imagine. I’m ...
I’m interviewed in Boston Globe about Texas gardening and blogging
April 25, 2016 “When Spotlight won Best Picture,” I asked the Boston Globe reporter the day after the Oscars, “did you celebrate?” Heather Ciras was interviewing me for a non-investigative story (thank goodness) about gardening and blogging. The night before, I’d been happy to see my favorite movie of 2015 ...
4 fun events for central Texas gardeners
March 22, 2016Spring has sprung, and that means garden events are happening every weekend here in central Texas. Amid all the excitement in your own garden, it’s easy to miss hearing about something that you’ll kick yourself later for missing. So here’s my round-up of 4 upcoming garden events that ...
The public side of writing a book
March 03, 2016 This may be stating the obvious, but to write a book you have to be able to sit in a quiet room for hours a day, for months and months, and be alone with your thoughts, and write. Words may flow like honey, or they may ooze, ...
