Fall xeriscape garden at Rollingwood City Hall
November 25, 2019 ‘Strawberry Fields’ gomphrena blazes with color amid bold agaves and barrel cactus. While driving through West Austin on the Open Day garden tour earlier this month, I had a sixth-sense feeling that a garden was calling my name. Oh yes, I thought, remember the xeriscape garden at ...
Planting for a drier future at Nuevo Santander Garden: Austin Open Day tour
November 19, 2019 The Nuevo Santander Garden on the Austin Open Day tour, sponsored by The Garden Conservancy earlier this month, reminded me of native-plant gardens from the old Wildflower Center tour that used to be held Mother’s Day weekend. With its wild and woolly design using Texas natives, it ...
Happy fall garden
October 20, 2019 With the Death Star at bay and a little rain last week, the plants are rejoicing with a flush of flowers. It’s a second spring for us Texas gardeners. Being mostly shady, my garden isn’t exactly a flower-lover’s paradise. It’s all about foliage and texture and, frankly, ...
No Rain? No Problem. Read my interview about waterwise gardening in Garden Gate magazine
August 30, 2019 It’s been a hot, dry summer for a lot of us, and our gardens may be looking pretty parched right about now. I grow a waterwise garden here in Austin, but even so I lost a few plants after the rain spigot cut off in mid-July. There’s ...
Keith Funk’s front-yard oasis: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 22, 2019 The last private garden on the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling tour (June 2019) belongs to Keith and Retha Funk of Centennial, Colorado. When they bought their house in 2011, they inherited some lovely trees but also a tired landscape of overgrown shrubs and too much lawn. Their ...
Steppe garden evangelist Panayoti Kelaidis’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 18, 2019 Despite its Mile High City moniker, Denver is not a mountain town. True, the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies loom on its western horizon, but Denver sits on a relatively flat, semi-arid, grassy plain — aka a steppe, one of the 4 vast steppe ecosystems in the ...
Steppe garden, foxtail lilies, and sculpture at Denver Botanic Gardens: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 16, 2019 All 80+ bloggers had lunch under a pavilion at Denver Botanic Gardens on Day 3 of the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling (June 2019), and then we were set loose for about an hour. One hour is not enough time to see DBG, of course. One day hardly ...
A dryland garden inspired by Mother Nature: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 15, 2019 After 24 years as a radio talk show host on gardening, Jim Borland may have retired, but his Denver garden continues to broadcast loud and clear about how to garden in semi-arid eastern Colorado (15 inches of annual precipitation) without using any supplemental water. His gardening inspiration? ...
Rocking it at Gardens on Spring Creek: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
June 25, 2019 On a road trip to Devils Tower last August, I passed through Fort Collins, Colorado, and took the opportunity to visit The Gardens on Spring Creek. Construction was underway, doubling the size of the gardens, and so only some of the spaces were open: a flowery entry ...
Palo verde path at new Mueller neighborhood park
May 29, 2019 Branch Park, the newest public park in the Mueller neighborhood, opened recently, and I swung by one afternoon to take a look. The play spaces (including a waterscape “river”, play airplane, and conical climbing obstacles) and round playing field are terrific additions to the other parks at ...
Garden retreat under the oaks in San Antonio
May 24, 2019 An invitation to tea — the real deal, with scones, clotted cream, cucumber sandwiches, lemon tarts, and champagne — was treat enough to entice me to the San Antonio home of two sisters I’ve gotten to know through a friendship with their mother. But when I arrived ...
Read about my garden in Country Gardens magazine
May 06, 2019 My garden is featured in a national gardening magazine, and I’m pretty excited about it! Grab the summer 2019 issue of Country Gardens (not just country gardens, y’all), turn to page 66, and you’ll find my article “Plant for Drought, Plan for Rain.” It’s about how I ...
Spring is abloom in shades of pink and turquoise
May 01, 2019 I haven’t done a photo tour of my own garden in a while, so let’s go, starting with a new planting of Gulf Coast penstemon (Penstemon tenuis) and winecup (Callirhoe involucrata), both Texas natives. Along with an artichoke — I’ve always wanted to try one — they’re ...
Wildflowers and Succulents: A Texas-English garden, part 2
April 11, 2019 Doorways in chunky stucco walls frame vista after flowery vista in the garden of Jenny Stocker, also known as Rock Rose, the title of her blog. I showed you half of her Austin garden yesterday. Today I’ll lead you through the rest, starting with the sunken garden ...
Foxgloves and cacti: A Texas-English garden, part 1
April 09, 2019 Ah, let us return to the always-stunning garden of Jenny Stocker, aka Rock Rose. Born and raised in England, Jenny and her husband, David, years ago adopted Texas as their home. Jenny’s garden, a series of stucco-walled courtyards surrounding their contemporary house, reflects her English roots but ...
Waterwise beauty and metal animal safari in Linda Peterson’s San Antonio garden
December 05, 2018 An invitation to Linda Peterson’s garden in San Antonio proved too tempting a treat to resist on the day before Halloween. I arrived in San Antonio in time to tour the terrific new culinary and adventure gardens at San Antonio Botanical Garden before heading over to Linda’s mint-green ...
