Wildflowers and more in bloom at the Wildflower Center
April 15, 2014 For Garden Bloggers Bloom Day let’s go to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center here in Austin. I visited on Sunday with family who were in town, hoping to see some bluebonnets. We saw a lot more than that, including these beautiful pink flowers that resembled apple ...
Warm up in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
January 07, 2014 Revisiting my trip to Beijing proved so enjoyable on a cold winter day that I’m continuing the travel theme. Next up: Mexico! In March 2006, just one month after I started this blog, my husband and I traveled to San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico. I ...
Native plant gardens rev up Austin City Hall
November 21, 2013 Overlooking Lady Bird Lake and backing up to the tall codominiums of downtown, Austin City Hall delights me every time I drive by. With an angular, contemporary exterior clad in copper and limestone and a front facade that steps down toward the lake, the building has a ...
Support Your Independent Nursery: The Great Outdoors GIVEAWAY
October 22, 2012 Each week in October, which is Support Your Independent Nursery Month, I am featuring one of my favorite Austin-area nurseries here at Digging. To make things even more interesting, I’m also hosting a giveaway every week—one from each nursery! This week I’m shining a spotlight on The ...
Support Your Independent Nursery Month: The Great Outdoors
October 19, 2011It’s Support Your Independent Nursery month! Each Wednesday in October I’m posting about one of my favorite independent garden centers in the Austin area. Today I’m shining a spotlight on The Great Outdoors, located just south of the hip strip known as SoCo on South Congress Avenue. (This ...
Nursery tour: The Great Outdoors
August 21, 2010 For a nursery located within spitting distance of downtown, on South Congress Avenue, The Great Outdoors is surprisingly large, which befits a place featuring a nearly life-size topiary elephant as its mascot and another on its sign. From the street you glimpse a colorful mural, a screen ...
On top of Austin at the Austonian
June 06, 2010 I enjoyed a bird’s-eye view of Austin last Wednesday from the top of the Austonian, Austin’s newest, tallest, and surely most luxurious condominium tower. My friend Terry Mitchell, a member of the marketing and public relations team, and his wife kindly offered me and my husband and ...
Whole Foods garden inspires from ground level to rooftop
October 28, 2009 Sunday we went to lunch at Whole Foods’ flagship store at 5th and Lamar. I generally treat this amazing downtown grocery store like a tourist destination and visit about as frequently. So it was a real treat to finally get out of the car instead of driving ...
Green roof at Palisades West
March 31, 2009 Several readers expressed interest in hearing more about the green roof atop the parking garage at Palisades West office complex that I visited last Friday. Developer Tim Hendricks of Cousins Properties came out to speak to a handful of visitors who’d jumped at the chance to see ...
Whirlwind gardening week
March 30, 2009 As March rushes into April, the past week has been a rush of manual labor in my new-baby garden, garden visits, and the excitement of new plants to try out in the garden. Last Saturday, I dragged my family to the Palisades West office complex in southwest ...
Green roof tour, Yucca Do’s move, & another Austin blogger
March 26, 2009 Golden barrel cactus, ‘Angelina’ sedum, and two ‘Elegans’ sedums For anyone in the Austin area who’s interested in green roofs, I thought I’d share info about this Saturday’s tour of the largest green roof in town. Casey Boyter of GRoWERS writes: I am pleased to announce that ...
Green roof tour, Yucca Do's move, & another Austin blogger
March 26, 2009 Golden barrel cactus, ‘Angelina’ sedum, and two ‘Elegans’ sedums For anyone in the Austin area who’s interested in green roofs, I thought I’d share info about this Saturday’s tour of the largest green roof in town. Casey Boyter of GRoWERS writes: I am pleased to announce that ...
Green roof movement in Austin
February 06, 2008 Green roof on a Hill Country residence. Photo used with permission from Casey Boyter My preconceptions of green roofs are changing with the times. I used to picture, I don’t know, rustic Swedish cottages when I thought of green roofs—if I thought of them at all. Then ...
Chicago: Big town on the prairie
October 11, 2007 Cloud Gate, popularly known as the Bean, in Millennium Park I would return to Chicago for the gardens alone. From street-corner planting boxes filled with tumbling perennials and annuals to prairie-style Lurie Garden to the vast Botanic Garden, Chicago had my head swiveling to take it all ...
Amsterdam in bloom
July 17, 2007 Traveling home from Tanzania, my dad and I stopped for two nights in Amsterdam to have a look around, as we were passing through and neither of us had been to the Netherlands before. What a change from dusty, dry-season Tanzania. Surrounded by water and picturesquely built ...
Gardens on Tour 2007: Stratus green-roof garden
May 17, 2007 I’d never seen a green roof before, and as this is the first one in Austin I didn’t want to miss my chance. So mom and I drove down to southwest Austin’s Circle C neighborhood, which is near the Wildflower Center, the sponsor of this tour and ...
