Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park
August 26, 2016 Yesterday the U.S. National Park Service celebrated its centennial. My family and I love visiting national parks, and during our recent road trip through New Mexico and up to Durango, Colorado, we couldn’t pass up the chance to see a new one (to us): Mesa Verde National ...
Chasing Georgia O’Keeffe’s ghost at Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch
August 25, 2016 The day after gazing at Georgia O’Keeffe’s landscapes and monumental flower paintings at the museum in Santa Fe, we drove north through the monsoon-greened high desert of northern New Mexico, the landscape the artist adopted as her own. As soon as I saw it, that was my ...
High-altitude garden in bloom at Santa Fe Botanical Garden
August 22, 2016 Two weeks ago today we drove west on a spontaneously planned, cutting-it-close-with-the-first-day-of-school, two-week road trip through West Texas, northern New Mexico, and western Colorado. One of our early stops was Santa Fe, New Mexico, a beautiful old city we once regularly visited but hadn’t seen in 16 ...
Summer color that stands up to the Death Star
August 08, 2016 As the Death Star sizzles for weeks on end — 100 degrees F and no rain in sight — it might seem as if all the garden can do is endure. But no! Plants that put on their best show in the heat of summer, even a ...
Dogwood enchantment and a wild windstorm at Winterthur Gardens
June 16, 2016 The Brandywine Valley of Pennsylvania has been calling my name since 2008, when I passed through during a family road trip and fell in love with the rolling, wooded countryside, its charming villages and Revolutionary War history, and numerous estate gardens that make it a garden traveler’s ...
Falling for the Folly Bowl, a garden amphitheater
October 07, 2015 Twelve years ago, Los Angeles garden designer Susanna Dadd and her husband, artist James Griffith, built a back-yard amphitheater in a ravine alongside their Altadena home. Dubbing it The Folly Bowl, they’ve been hosting free, or nearly free, public concerts each summer, choosing unique performers that will ...
Leaf peeping and Living a Great Story at Lady Bird Lake
November 25, 2014 After sightseeing and shopping on vibrant South Congress Avenue on Sunday, yesterday my dad and stepmother joined me for a post-lunch, 3-mile walk around Lady Bird Lake. Rusty orange bald cypress, golden cedar elm, and fiery red crepe myrtles have set the shore ablaze. This is as ...
Inspired landscape architecture at Cavalliere Park in Scottsdale
May 29, 2014 While touring low-water gardens in Phoenix and nearby Scottsdale, Arizona, in early April with my friend Noelle Johnson, aka AZ Plant Lady, we stopped at Cavalliere Park. Constructed in 2012, the park is a model of sustainability and is a 3-star SITES-certified project. Aside from all that, ...
Visit to Desert Botanical Garden and Chihuly Exhibit: Desert twilight and Chihuly after dark
May 01, 2014 Have you ever visited a garden twice in one day? After a late morning/mid-afternoon stroll through Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden on April 4th, I returned just before sunset to enjoy the “magic hour” of light and see the Chihuly glass sculptures dramatically lit. The low, warm light ...
Tanzanian safari: Tent camp on the Serengeti, crocodiles, and soaring over volcanoes
January 14, 2014 We made several more game drives while visiting the western corridor of Serengeti National Park (June 2007), seeing many, many elephants — and I took so many photos of them that my family got elephant-fatigue when viewing them later. I’ll only show you a few, and not ...
Tanzanian safari: Serengeti National Park and sunrise hot-air balloon ride
January 13, 2014 We left the Maasai village (June 2007 trip to Tanzania) and got back on the dirt road heading to Serengeti National Park. The drive in our open-roofed cars was long, dusty, and jolting. Open grasslands gave way to a savanna with flat-topped acacias and occasional spring-fed watering ...
Taking a spin under the Zilker Christmas Tree
December 02, 2013 Is it too early for a Christmas tree post? I hope not because last night we attended the lighting of the Zilker Christmas Tree and got into the holiday spirit. This is the tree’s 47th year, and it is as magical as ever. At 155 feet tall, ...
THIRST art exhibit: Memorializing 300 million trees killed by drought
September 30, 2013 Lady Bird Lake is a constant-level lake — kept that way through releases of water upstream — which means that the ongoing, devastating Texas drought has not touched this beautiful body of water that meanders through downtown Austin. While Lake Travis and other Highland Lakes continue to ...
Artful desert garden of Keith and Helga Zwickl
October 28, 2012Morning light gilds the cactus and succulent garden Keith and Helga Zwickl welcomed us to their Tucson, Arizona, garden during the Garden Writers Association symposium a couple of weeks ago. I really enjoyed this garden, not only for its stunning collection of cacti and succulents, but also for ...
The DreamFlower desert garden of Lorien Tersey
October 26, 2012Arizona adobe When you have to jackhammer the “soil” to plant anything, when your garden gets only 12 inches of rainfall a year, when you live in a desert, you just know gardening isn’t going to be easy. And yet, despite these conditions in Tucson, Arizona, which I ...
Canyons, river, and sky: Big Bend country (Days 2-3)
March 20, 2012 Following up on my overall impressions of Big Bend National Park, today I’ll take you on a tour of the sights. Our first morning we drove up into the Chisos Mountains to hike the Chisos Basin Loop Trail. At an elevation of 4,500 feet over the desert ...
