Garden Spark talk held under the stars at Barton Springs Nursery
September 26, 2021 Photo: Barton Springs Nursery After a hiatus of a year and a half, my Garden Spark speaker series returned last Thursday with a presentation by always-inspiring landscape architect Tait Moring, in a beautiful new outdoor classroom at Barton Springs Nursery. I’ve been trying to get Tait for ...
Pease Park after dark
September 08, 2021 I recently returned to Kingsbury Commons at Pease Park to see the Treehouse and other new features after dark. It turns out, nighttime Pease Park may be even better than daytime Pease Park! (Click for my first visit to Pease). I mean, look at the Treehouse, glowing ...
Exploring reimagined Waterloo Park in downtown Austin
August 30, 2021 Shade trees are precious in a hot climate, 200-year-old heritage live oaks even more so. As Waterloo Park in downtown Austin emerges from a massive, 10-year redesign and overhaul, two grand old live oaks on the west side of the park greet visitors as if lovingly presented ...
Nighttime is datura time
July 19, 2021 On a recent evening I followed the fragrance of lemon Pledge to find my datura (Datura wrightii) practically howling at the moon. I counted at least 20 flowers, each as big across as my outstretched hand. The fragrant flowers of this native Texas plant open at dusk ...
Playing at revamped Kingsbury Commons in Pease Park
July 12, 2021 I recently rounded up the family to explore the newly redesigned section of Austin’s Pease Park known as Kingsbury Commons. The biggest draw for me was seeing the Treehouse, a rusty orb of rebar and steel beams — less a treehouse than a giant ball of pollen! ...
Redesigning a boring side garden and shading a patio
May 12, 2021 Side garden after replanting I got rid of all the lawn years ago — a big design move — but a garden isn’t static. Years later a space often needs a redesign if it’s become overgrown or certain plants haven’t performed as expected. And sometimes things just ...
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 ...
Twilight in the garden as wicked cold arrives
February 11, 2021 As I look out the window, it’s hard to believe this beautiful, warm twilight by the pool was just two evenings ago. Today a cold rain is freezing to tree limbs and encasing ready-for-spring plants in heavy ice. Shrubs are bent low. Bamboo is nearly prostrate. As ...
Glowing front-yard gardens, plus Fearless Gardening winner
January 16, 2021 On twilight walks around the neighborhood I love coming to this house, the home of neighbor friends who deck out their front-yard garden with hanging globes of blue and white for Christmas every year. I’m in no hurry for them to take them down. The lights add ...
Octopus joins fantastical creatures at Mueller parks
January 06, 2021 A giant purple octopus wraps its tentacles around the restrooms at brand-new Jessie Andrews Park in Austin’s Mueller development. Like the monsters in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Lord of the Rings, this supersized sea creature menacingly creeps close, ready perhaps to grab someone or wrench ...
Flowers for a warm Texas fall
November 24, 2020 Aside from forsythia sage, which is STILL going strong after nearly a month of flowering (you can see its yellow flowers in the background), let me highlight a couple other plants that have been putting on a show into late November. Philippine violet (Barleria cristata), while nearly ...
The garden of Redenta’s Garden owner Ruth Kinler
October 12, 2020 It was the colorful, modern Fermob furniture that first lured me into Redenta’s Garden, a beloved Dallas nursery “for the modern gardener.” (Click for my tour.) So when I visited the home garden of owner Ruth Kinler, I was happily unsurprised to see more of that fabulous ...
Outdoor lights bring house to life at night
August 19, 2020 This isn’t a post about how to install landscape lighting (click for that tutorial). It’s just me enjoying our front-of-house lighting so much that I took a few pics of it again last weekend. Sometimes it’s the basic stuff that makes you happy. Looking along the dry ...
New landscape lighting for back garden
June 24, 2020 Uplighting on an agave, path light near a yucca in the foreground, and existing string lights It only took 12 years, but we finally installed path lighting and uplighting in the backyard, and what a big difference it makes. We already had two sets of string lights ...
Dazzling holiday lights in Johnson City and Austin
December 24, 2019 For dazzle and shine and small-town Christmas spirit, there’s no better place than Johnson City, Texas, about an hour west of Austin, and the headquarters of Pedernales Electric Co-op, where a grove of live oak trees is annually transformed into a nebula of twinkle lights. It’s a ...
Modern-rustic dining patio at Texas French Bread
December 04, 2019 All you really need for a garden, as Phoenix landscape architect Steve Martino says, are a tree, a chair, a wall, and a little water. The rustic-modern patio at Texas French Bread reminded me of this when I stopped by for lunch yesterday. Designed by Christy Ten ...
