Beautiful flora and fauna at Santa Fe Botanical Garden
September 19, 2022 During our stay in Santa Fe at the end of August, I spent one morning at Santa Fe Botanical Garden. I first visited in 2016, three years after it opened and right before the opening of Phase 2, Ojos y Manos: Eyes and Hands. My 6-year absence ...
Doors, gardens, art along Santa Fe’s Canyon Road
September 14, 2022 Santa Fe’s adobe structures seem an extension of the earth itself. Curvy walls in warm, desert hues — tan, soft rose, terracotta — rear up from the gravelly soil to enclose courtyards and residences. Wooden doors, some with slatted windows for a glimpse inside, add mystery and ...
East Austin art safari
August 23, 2022 She Will Have Her Way With You, 2020 I like to share interesting art that I’ve found in my wanderings around Austin. This art excursion occurred back in March, when I explored a few East Austin galleries and public art pieces. Here’s an exhibit I really enjoyed ...
Thai sala and tropicalesque garden at Olbrich Botanical Gardens
August 19, 2022 For my final post about the Madison Fling back in June, I’ll share the Thai Garden, a surprisingly exotic-looking space at Olbrich Botanical Gardens. First, that glimmering golden pavilion! Called a sala, such a pavilion “is a common structure in Thailand generally used as a shelter from ...
Meadow garden in gravel at Olbrich Botanical Gardens
August 18, 2022 A meadowy gravel garden at Olbrich I keep hearing about a new way of planting in gravel to make easy-care, low-weed, low-water gardens. The idea is, you scrape away 4-to-5 inches of soil, add a 6-inch-high barrier around the planting bed to contain the gravel at a ...
Planted plaza, fountains, and rose garden at Olbrich Botanical Gardens
August 15, 2022 For Part 2 of my visit to Olbrich Botanical Gardens during June’s Madison Fling, I’ll show you the Rose Garden. I confess the words “rose garden” never perk up my ears. Sure, I like roses OK, but so many rose gardens are really rose ghettos, planted in ...
Snapshots from Olbrich Botanical Gardens’ meadow, event, and herb gardens
August 12, 2022 Coneflowers at the entrance to Olbrich While in Madison for the Fling back in June, I had time for a pre-Fling visit to Olbrich Botanical Gardens, and then of course the garden was on the official tour schedule as well. Double Olbrich! I first visited this fine ...
Ann Munson’s woodland garden invites mystery and play
August 05, 2022 Woodland gardens aren’t show ponies of dazzling flower color. Their beauty shines through in subtler, shade-loving foliage plants, in dappled light glinting through leaves, in cool shadowed paths that gradually reveal tucked-away art and secret hideaways. Such is the garden of Ann Munson, which I toured on ...
Green-roof prairie and fantasy gardens at Epic Systems, Part 2
July 30, 2022 The fanciful, theme-park landscaping and architectural design of Epic Systems‘ corporate campus made for a one-of-a-kind tour during the Madison Fling in June. While I’d read about Epic’s imaginative design, I had not heard about its ambitious efforts at sustainability. According to the company’s website: “Epic’s buildings ...
Epic Systems campus, a fantasyland of gardens and architecture, Part 1
July 29, 2022 One of the zaniest, most eye-popping destinations on the Madison Fling tour in June was the corporate headquarters of medical-software giant Epic Systems, located in the rolling farm country of Verona, Wisconsin. Soulless lawns, sprawling junipers, boxwood hedges, and other ubiquitous ground-fillers of corporate landscaping are banished ...
Native prairie garden replaces half the lawn in the Grosz Garden
July 14, 2022 A shoulder-high, prairie-style garden makes a graceful swoosh through the sunny backyard of Linda and Phil Grosz in Middleton, Wisconsin. As the second stop on the Madison Garden Bloggers Fling tour in June, it immediately grounded me in the Upper Midwest, land of the tallgrass prairie. Linda ...
Japanese-inspired garden of Linda Brazill and Mark Golbach, Part 2
July 08, 2022 In my last post I shared the Asian-style front garden of Linda Brazill and Mark Golbach, whose Madison, Wisconsin, garden of 28 years I toured on the recent Garden Bloggers Fling. (I first saw their garden back in 2010.) Today let me lead you on a tour ...
East meets Midwest in the garden of Linda Brazill and Mark Golbach, Part 1
July 06, 2022 Back in 2010, my husband traveled to Madison for the IRONMAN Wisconsin race (which he finished!), and I tagged along as cheerleader. Oh and also to see gardens. I was a big fan of the design-focused blog Each Little World by Linda Brazill and Mark Golbach and ...
Kicking off Madison Fling: People, badgers, barns, and a bountiful rooftop garden
July 04, 2022 Farm country scenery at the Flower Factory near Madison In late June I joined approximately 50 garden bloggers, Instagrammers, podcasters, and YouTubers in picturesque Madison, Wisconsin, for the 13th annual Garden Bloggers Fling. After a COVID hiatus of two years, and a heroic display of patience, stamina, ...
Heart of stone: Tait Moring’s garden
May 18, 2022 Amid the flurry of gardens I had the pleasure of visiting in late April, landscape architect Tait Moring‘s garden stands out, as always, for its evocative stonework and a magpie collection of found objects, boyhood collections, and castoffs from clients’ gardens, which Tait assembles into art for ...
Poppies a-popping at Antique Rose Emporium, plus Round Top shopping
May 10, 2022 A month ago it wasn’t blazing summer in Austin but gentle spring. Early April found me on a wildflower safari with Patterson Webster, visiting from Canada, and my friend Diana Kirby. The Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham We drove out to Brenham for lunch at Truth BBQ ...
