A plant-collector’s jungle garden of palms, sotol, and more
December 14, 2021 Like a Mayan ruin — except not crumbling and with a fresh coat of white paint — John Ignacio’s house near Bull Creek in northwest Austin stands amid a jungle-evoking garden of palms, bamboo, and other bold foliage. I’d been introduced to John by a mutual friend, ...
Garden design lessons from a Texas gravel garden
November 10, 2021 Blue grama grass and whale’s tongue agave I’m always inspired by Linda Peterson’s low-water gravel garden in San Antonio, which normally is studded with gigantic Weber agaves, sculptural prickly pears, rivers of starfish-shaped soap aloes, and strategic screening shrubs that soften fencing and create a green backdrop ...
Yuccas big and small give a garden the blues
September 30, 2021 I’m getting Blue Garden Lotusland vibes from this part of the garden. A loose grid of paleleaf yucca (Yucca pallida) glows blue-green amid foamy, silver woolly stemodia (Stemodia lanata) groundcover. The anchor plant, by the trio of blue ceramic balls, used to be a gigantic ‘Green Goblet’ ...
Reds for fall and foliage power
September 21, 2021 Ah, end of summer in Texas, and fall only a few weeks away. It’s still a bit too early for the fresh flowering of our “second spring,” but festive reds blaze among the ferny foliage of cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit) on the deck railing. Everyone warns me ...
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 ...
Modern ranch garden embraces water collection and wildflowers in New Braunfels
May 17, 2021 Last spring Cody and Michelle Koehler finished their garden installation at their home in New Braunfels, Texas. Less than a year later, February’s epic freeze killed most of their large specimen plants, including Weber agaves, olive and palo verde trees, and toothless sotol. Like everyone else in ...
Spring sights in the garden
April 29, 2021 ‘Frazzle Dazzle’ dyckia My spring planting is done, and I think all my post-freeze cutting back is done too. There are still brown shrubs and dead-looking small trees (like a pomegranate coming back from the roots, with a few leaves here and there on upper branches) taking ...
Read This: Striking Succulent Gardens
March 09, 2021 After the prolonged deep freeze that Texas endured last month, which reduced our beloved agaves and other succulents to oozing mush and browned nearly everything else back to the roots, it may not seem…timely…for a Texan to review a book about succulent gardening. But it would be ...
Origami sculpture and Christmasy cactus garden at San Antonio Botanical Garden
December 07, 2020 I first admired Kevin Box‘s playful origami sculptures on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. Now he’s exhibiting his work at San Antonio Botanical Garden through early May 2021. I kept wanting to visit this fall but couldn’t find time until last weekend, when my husband and I ...
Michael McDowell’s front-yard prairie garden
October 16, 2020 How can it have been 9 years since I first visited Michael McDowell’s front-yard prairie garden? Michael’s garden lives large in my memory, alight with morning sunlight and festive fall color (click for my 2011 tour), and it inspires daily via his blog Plano Prairie Garden and ...
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 ...
Plant trials with style at Redenta’s Landscape Design office garden
October 07, 2020 With beautiful fall weather on tap and the first of the Mexico-bound monarch butterflies reaching North Texas, last weekend seemed like the perfect time for a trip to Dallas-Fort Worth. So I reached out to a few gardeners there and mapped out a 2-day itinerary, and my ...
Houston Botanic Garden’s surprising cactus garden and more – part 2
September 25, 2020 During my inaugural visit to the brand-new Houston Botanic Garden last weekend, my eyes widened when I rounded a bend and saw this — a rocky garden of agave, yucca, and cactus. After all, this is Houston, city of sauna-like summers and 50 inches of annual rainfall ...
Cenizo in bloom after the rain
September 06, 2020 Praise be to the rain gods, who delivered 2 inches of rain Thursday and Friday and broke Austin’s month-long heat wave. Rain lilies and oxblood lilies are waving their flower flags in celebration, but the prima donna of rain-celebrating plants has to be cenizo (Leucophyllum frutescens). This ...
Potted succulents don’t ask for much (and that’s the way I like it)
August 10, 2020 Potted plants green up my patio, deck, and porch, and I often plunk them into garden beds as focal points. But being in Texas, mine aren’t packed with flowering annuals or perennials that require daily or twice-daily watering. Instead they showcase water-thrifty plants like succulents, cacti, even ...
Finger-pointing cacti at Saguaro National Park
August 07, 2020 If you’re feeling ticked off about the covid state of the world, Saguaro National Park might be the perfect place to go, since its namesake flora look like they’re giving the finger to the universe. Saguaro was the last park we visited during our family road trip ...
