Walls

April 28, 2009 After visiting Jill Nokes’s walled garden last Sunday, the Austin garden bloggers drove to fellow blogger Jenny/Lancashire Rose‘s walled garden. Although differentiated by geography—Jill gardens on black gumbo clay in central Austin, Jenny on thin limestone “soil” and gravel in southwest Austin—they have much in common, including ...

April 14, 2009 “Get your desert eyes on,” Scott Calhoun urges in his new book The Hot Garden. In other words, see and appreciate the natural beauty of a country that is not lush, leafy, or green and that relies on rock and open space as much as plants for ...

January 22, 2009 After feeding the lories at the San Antonio Zoo, we stopped by the Antique Rose Emporium in north San Antone. In winter the roses are quiet, but the adobe walls are always colorful. And at any time of year they show off evergreen yuccas and agaves to ...

January 22, 2009 After feeding the lories at the San Antonio Zoo, we stopped by the Antique Rose Emporium in north San Antone. In winter the roses are quiet, but the adobe walls are always colorful. And at any time of year they show off evergreen yuccas and agaves to ...

November 08, 2008 Funny name and all, Peckerwood Garden is a place I’d wanted to see for years. But because it opens to the public for only a handful of days each year and it bars children under 12 from visiting (for safety reasons), as well as the fact that ...

November 01, 2008 If you’ve been following the saga of my ‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave (Agave ovatifolia ), you’ll know how I wrestled it out of the dirt in my old garden in order to bring it to my new house. This agave is just too hard to find and too ...

October 10, 2008 After visiting the theatrical Stone Palms garden during the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Austin tour last Saturday, Annie in Austin and I headed over to east Austin to visit the Tex-Asian garden dubbed Fatal Flower. As you can see, that’s a bit of a misnomer since there ...

October 08, 2008 With temps in the 50s this morning, milder afternoon heat (80s), and even an inch and a half of rain yesterday, it’s feeling autumnal. I can never resist a hint of fall, so I abandoned my unpacking to take some photos and show you my new garden-to-be ...

July 23, 2008 Among all the beautiful, bold, and imaginative gardens at Chanticleer, why do I like the Gravel Garden best? It so resembles the dry gardens of west Austin that I feel a little sheepish to admit that in this lush, Pennsylvania garden I preferred the familiarity of home ...

July 21, 2008 I’m sure something shines brightly every month that Chanticleer is open (April through October). But I felt fortunate to see the hydrangeas in full bloom since I rarely see one in Austin. I can never decide whether I prefer the pink or the blue. The lacecaps are ...

July 17, 2008 Fragrant lavender edges sunny paths in the King’s Garden at Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York, which we visited at the end of June. The name “King’s Garden” is a bit misleading because this formal, ornamental garden did not exist when the French built the nearby fort ...

May 31, 2008 Imagine how thrilling this pale-yellow Opuntia flower would look against a lavender wall. Or maybe a leaf-green wall, which would contrast with the purple pads of the cactus, especially in winter when its color is strongest. I’ve just read the Summer 2008 issue of Wildflower, the magazine ...

April 04, 2008 On her Blotanical “Plot” (site no longer active), in her entry for Garden to See Before I Die, Carol of May Dreams Gardens has written, “All those gardens of the Austin garden bloggers!” As it happens, a number of the Austin garden bloggers have had a burning ...

April 04, 2008 On her Blotanical “Plot” (site no longer active), in her entry for Garden to See Before I Die, Carol of May Dreams Gardens has written, “All those gardens of the Austin garden bloggers!” As it happens, a number of the Austin garden bloggers have had a burning ...

February 11, 2008 Flipping open to the middle of my first issue of Horticulture—a gift from my mother (thanks, Mom!)—I sucked in a deep breath in pure admiration of the garden featured in the article “Photo Finish” (Dec/Jan 08). Saturated in deep purple, chartreuse, and red, and anchored by all ...

February 11, 2008 Flipping open to the middle of my first issue of Horticulture—a gift from my mother (thanks, Mom!)—I sucked in a deep breath in pure admiration of the garden featured in the article “Photo Finish” (Dec/Jan 08). Saturated in deep purple, chartreuse, and red, and anchored by all ...