Feeling the blues – happy blues – in Lori Daul’s garden
April 02, 2019 Visiting the garden of Lori Daul, aka The Gardener of Good and Evil, on a cool spring afternoon gives me a case of the blues. But the blues are moody only in hue, not in spirit! Lushly planted with Texas-tough plants, her suburban South Austin garden is ...
Garden Spark 2018 season concludes; 2019 season TBA soon!
October 22, 2018 Hey, garden friends! My 2018 season of Garden Spark talks concluded last Thursday with a terrific talk by designer/author Susan Morrison about small-garden design. Thanks to everyone who braved waterlogged Austin’s wet streets to attend! After Susan’s talk and booksigning (her latest book is The Less Is ...
3rd hottest summer in Austin’s history inching to a close
September 03, 2018 Have you heard any whimpering — or hopefully just stoic silence — from your Central Texas gardening friends this summer? Here’s why: we’ve been hammered by the Death Star and no rain for months now. It’s officially the 3rd hottest summer on record (as measured from June ...
Spring flowerings in my garden
March 27, 2018 The mountain laurels and redbuds and plums are done. Carolina jessamine is done. But ‘Tangerine Beauty’ crossvine (Bignonia capreolata ‘Tangerine Beauty’) is hitting its stride as we move into mid-spring here in Central Texas. It looks especially fetching alongside the burgundy leaves of Loropetalum chinense ‘Sizzling Pink’ ...
It’s been a cold winter, but the garden’s still got it going on
February 14, 2018 Thank heavens for evergreens, grasses, yuccas, and structural features like stock-tank ponds, big containers, and low walls. After this withering, frostbitten winter, my garden would otherwise be flattened. Of course I’ve been moaning and groaning about the damage anyway. (Isn’t that what we gardeners do?) But taking ...
Garden rooms and green roof at Cloverleaf Drive Garden: Austin Open Days Tour 2017
November 13, 2017 This year’s Garden Conservancy-sponsored Open Days tour in Austin featured gardens in a variety of styles and a variety of neighborhoods (not just West Austin). I especially enjoyed exploring the Cloverleaf Drive garden, which, along with Jackson Broussard’s, is located east of I-35 in a “regular-folks” neighborhood ...
Autumn stroll around my garden
October 27, 2017 Autumn is my favorite season in the garden, when the Death Star abates and cool breezes blow in from the north, pushing that Gulf Coast humidity back to Houston where it belongs. The sky goes china blue, fall perennials burst into bloom, and fall-blooming grasses incandesce in ...
Strolling into danger — Danger Garden, that is
September 22, 2017 Every three years I manage a trip to Portland, and each time ( and ) I’ve been fortunate to visit the garden of my friend Loree Bohl — fellow spiky plant lover, the prolific blogger of Danger Garden, and a collector-gardener with an incredibly artistic and meticulous ...
Evergreen combos (mostly) for Austin
September 16, 2017 A local reader asked me about evergreen plants that grow well here in central Texas, and as I was putting together today’s Foliage Follow-Up post, I realized it’s a good opportunity to share some of my faves. I use a lot of evergreen plants — though not ...
A narrow side yard lives large in the garden of Rebecca Sams and Buell Steelman
September 08, 2017 I don’t think I planned a family road trip from San Francisco to Portland just to have an opportunity to swing through Eugene, Oregon, to visit the garden of Buell Steelman and Rebecca Sams, the husband-and-wife design-and-build team at Mosaic Gardens, whose work I greatly admire and ...
New shade sails and other garden goodness
May 05, 2017 We’ve always wanted shade for our deck, which is one of the few spots in our yard not overhung by live oaks. Facing south, it gets blasted by the Death Star all day long, and even our kitchen table overlooking the deck gets unpleasantly toasty by midafternoon ...
Easter Sunday Foliage Follow-Up
April 16, 2017 I’m imagining my blog feed filling up with pictures of pastel Easter eggs and white lilies. But here at Digging, in spite of a flurry of kitchen activity (I’m making Tex-Mex deviled eggs and a lemon cake), it’s still Foliage Follow-Up. Let’s start with the stock-tank pond ...
Let’s take a walk around the garden
April 10, 2017 Live oak leaf and pollen season is finally over, and the patios are clean again, hallelujah! This calls for a spring garden stroll, so let’s go. I’ve been playing with a squid theme on one wall of the upper patio. A couple of tentacle pots from Tentacle ...
Garden clean-up in progress for Foliage Follow-Up
February 16, 2017 The pond patio garden is mostly evergreen, so the big cleanup here occurs later, in March, when I muck out the pond and divide the water plants. With our brief winter segueing right into spring, February is a transitional month here in Central Texas. We may yet ...
Rainy-day winter garden
January 17, 2017 The weather may be dreary, but I like it. Cool (but not freezing) temps and a gentle rain give me a reason to get stuff done indoors while the quiet garden just soaks it all in. The Moby spawn — Agave ovatifolia babies — are looking good ...
Remembering 2016 in the garden
January 01, 2017 January Happy New Year, everyone! Following Jean’s example at Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog, I’m recapping 2016 with a single photo from each of the past 12 months in my garden. Poring over my old blog posts, I was reminded of the fleeting charms of the passing seasons ...
