Freshening up potted succulents in mid-summer
July 31, 2012 Do you ever buy plants and then leave them sitting in their plastic pots on the back steps for months? That’s what I did with a handful of small succulents, which I purchased in the spring to use in freshening up the cinderblock wall planter (click for ...
Garden Designers Roundtable: Contrast textures to make a good garden better
June 26, 2012 Even the smallest vignettes benefit from strong contrasts of texture. Take this tabletop display, for example. The slick zinc tabletop contrasts with a nubby lace doily, and the spiny cactus contrasts with the smooth, ceramic pot. If you use design techniques to bring greater interest to your ...
Southwestern plants, French style & tropical verve in the garden of Curt Arnette
June 12, 2012 Landscape architect Curt Arnette, of Sitio Design, is one of the best and yet most modest garden makers you’ll meet in Austin. Back when I was a newbie gardener, breaking ground at our first house in Austin, he and his wife Melisa were our across-the-street neighbors. What ...
Asheville Garden Bloggers Fling: Wamboldtopia, an artists’ garden
May 25, 2012 Skulls, skeletons, gravestone fragments, gargoyles, and other eerie tokens are tucked into nooks and crannies… …and dangle from the eaves throughout Wamboldtopia, an art-filled garden (or garden of art) and stonemason’s paradise located off Wamboldt Avenue in west Asheville. The Goth accents… …are countered by a slew ...
Asheville Garden Bloggers Fling: Curve Studios Garden recycles junk into garden structure
May 24, 2012 Lunch on the first day of the Garden Bloggers Fling in Asheville, North Carolina, was billed as BBQ and gourmet ice cream from The Hop—yum! Shopping for locally made pottery and art at Curve Studios was promised as well—and was fantastic. But what I didn’t expect was ...
Asheville Garden Bloggers Fling: Gentling Garden, a mountainside eden
May 23, 2012 The first thing you learn about gardens in Asheville, North Carolina, on the slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is that they have a lot of stairs. We’re talking serious elevation changes. What does this mean for the gardeners who live here? Well, for one thing they ...
Gardens on Tour 2012: Brecourt Manor Garden & Foliage Follow-Up
May 16, 2012 The fourth garden on this year’s Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour, at 7316 Brecourt Manor Way in southwest Austin, was also the smallest, with only the back yard “gardened up.” The back yard opens to a view of the greenbelt beyond, so native plants were chosen to ...
Gardens on Tour 2012: Zadock Woods Garden
May 15, 2012 The third garden on this year’s Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour, at 6400 Zadock Woods Drive in southwest Austin, was perhaps my favorite of the bunch because of the cheerful native-perennial beds out front, the inviting, shaded patio in back, and the attractive mix of enclosing garden ...
Gardens on Tour 2012: Ridgecrest Garden
May 14, 2012 The second garden on this year’s Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour, in the high-dollar Westlake neighborhood, was the exception to the smaller suburban gardens that dominated the tour. Although the garden beds (designed by Lann Sawyer of Lannscape) at 1400 Ridgecrest Drive would scale well to a ...
Dallas Open Days Tour 2012: Passmore Garden
May 12, 2012 My third stop on the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour last weekend was the garden of Paul and Kay Passmore, whose new home of stone, steel, and glass is surrounded by a one-year-old, wildlife-attracting, native-plant garden. Here’s the official description: The gardens surround a new contemporary house ...
Dallas Open Days Tour 2012: Middleton Farm Garden
May 11, 2012 My second stop on the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour last weekend was the Middleton Farm Garden, a contemporary home with homesteading flair in suburban north Dallas. Here’s the official description: A suburban oasis loosely composed as three distinct aspects. A casual, manicured space of green lawn, ...
Lee Clippard’s naturalistic garden with a modern edge
April 29, 2012 I recently visited the East Austin garden belonging to blogger Lee Clippard of The Grackle and Martha Stewart Living fame to get a few pictures for my upcoming book, Lawn Gone!. As you can see, Lee’s lawn is indeed long gone, replaced by a dappled-shade garden of ...
Garden delights with the Whimsical Gardener
April 26, 2012 My friend and fellow blogger Catherine of The Whimsical Gardener invited me to lunch in her garden yesterday, which was abloom with fragrant star jasmine, glowing white abutilon, and these shell-pink ‘Colorado’ water lilies in her stock-tank pond. Catherine recently moved her 4-foot-diameter tank from a focal-point ...
Manfreda and yucca in bloom, plus plants to trial
April 22, 2012 The xeric garden is eye-poppingly bold in bloom this week. The native wildflower winecup (Callirhoe involucrata) is sprawling through the agave bed with her stained chalices held up for refills. Purple skullcap (Scutellaria wrightii), native to the Hill Country, also thrives amid the spiky plants. Topping out ...
Upper patio garden, succulent wall & new mod chairs
April 10, 2012 When the aloes are in bloom, everything seems right with my upper patio garden, viewed here from below, in the mid-level garden. They add a punch of hot color that contrasts so well with the chartreuse greens of spring. Looking past them to the cinderblock wall planter ...
Lucinda Hutson’s Easter-egg colorful garden
April 08, 2012 Author and designer Lucinda Hutson‘s gabled purple cottage and garden in the Rosedale neighborhood of Austin is as colorful as a basket of Easter eggs… …but even better because it contains scented petals, billowy texture, and something blooming at every turn, like this ‘Julia Child’ rose. When ...
