Read This: The Art of Outdoor Living
February 05, 2021 Are you craving greenery? Want to drool over gorgeous Southern California patio and entry gardens while gleaning excellent design ideas for your own garden? Then immerse yourself in Los Angeles designer Scott Shrader’s book, The Art of Outdoor Living: Gardens for Entertaining Family and Friends (Rizzoli, 2019) ...
Fearless Gardening book giveaway – bonus round!
January 24, 2021 Update 1/28: And the winner is Chris Watkins! Congratulations, Chris! I’ll email you today to arrange the book pickup, so please check your spam folder if you haven’t heard from me by tonight. Thanks for commenting, everyone! Woot woot! I’ve been sent an extra copy of Fearless ...
Glowing front-yard gardens, plus Fearless Gardening winner
January 16, 2021 On twilight walks around the neighborhood I love coming to this house, the home of neighbor friends who deck out their front-yard garden with hanging globes of blue and white for Christmas every year. I’m in no hurry for them to take them down. The lights add ...
Fearless Gardening book launch and GIVEAWAY
January 08, 2021 Midwinter is a great time to take stock of your garden and mull over what you want it to be, how you want it to evolve, and — let’s be honest — how you want it to freaking WOW you every time you step into it. Maybe ...
Leaving a garden and starting over: Uprooted by Page Dickey
December 02, 2020 I left my last garden 12 years ago with little regret, despite my love for that sunny cottage garden. Instead I looked forward to starting a new, larger garden in completely different conditions: from sun to shade, from deep clay soil to thinner soil over limestone, from ...
In for a rose, out for a garden visit at Antique Rose Emporium
October 01, 2020 I passed through Brenham on the way home from Houston two weekends ago. Naturally, I stopped at The Antique Rose Emporium nursery, ostensibly to search for another ‘Icecap’ rose to replace one that croaked after the summer, but really to check out the gardens. They were in ...
Read This: Windcliff by Daniel Hinkley
September 16, 2020 “There is no magic or revelation,” world-renowned plantsman Dan Hinkley modestly declares in the preface of his book Windcliff: A Story of People, Plants, and Gardens (Timber Press, 2020), just “my attempt to convey my thoughts on good gardening as applied to my own climate and surroundings.” ...
Read This: Spirit of Place
July 30, 2020 The Garden Conservancy preserves significant American gardens and shares all manner of interesting gardens with the public via its beloved Open Days program, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year despite the Covid-cancellation of all tours. I’m a big fan of their work, particularly because their outreach ...
Read This: The Earth in Her Hands
May 05, 2020 Women’s contributions have been long overlooked in the gardening world, particularly at recognized levels of design and horticulture. So too with the contributions of women of color and those whose work doesn’t cater to the 1% (or even 10%) whose gardens have traditionally filled the pages of ...
Read This: The Pollinator Victory Garden
April 22, 2020 Today is Earth Day, a reminder to do all we can to help Mother Nature and make a positive difference for the health of our planet. May I suggest a goal of making your yard or garden (or balcony or patio!) more attractive to pollinators? Gardening to ...
Read This: Private Gardens of Santa Barbara: The Art of Outdoor Living
March 09, 2020 Stuck at home fretting about coronavirus? Luckily we gardeners have our gardens to occupy us, soothe our minds, and even feed us during times like these. But reading about beautiful gardens and learning design from a master is also a great way to while away the hours, ...
Read This: The Gardens of Japan
March 03, 2020 As Tokyo’s cherry blossom season approaches, it’s the perfect time to read a book about Japanese gardens: The Gardens of Japan by Helena Attlee, with photographs by her husband, Alex Ramsay, published by Frances Lincoln in 2017 (a paperback version of a hardback originally published in 2010) ...
Read This: Dreamscapes by Claire Takacs
December 10, 2019 Claire Takacs has my dream job: she travels the world to photograph gardens. The Australian garden photographer known for her moody yet incandescent images of sunlight stretching long fingers over treetops and through stained-glass flowers and foliage published her first solo book last year, Dreamscapes: Inspiration and ...
Thomas Rainer comes to Austin for Garden Spark
September 23, 2019 Thomas Rainer, a Washington, D.C.-based landscape architect and author of Planting in a Post-Wild World, came to Austin last week to give a terrific presentation for Garden Spark, the design-based speaker series I started 3 years ago. Sixty attendees — home gardeners, designers, horticulturists, landscape architects, and ...
Deer-Resistant Design book features my garden, other Austin gardens!
July 19, 2019 In October of 2017, Seattle-area designer, author, and speaker Karen Chapman came to Austin to present for my Garden Spark series and to photograph gardens for a new book she was working on. That book has just been published: Deer-Resistant Design: Fence-Free Gardens that Thrive Despite the ...
Crevice garden, Japanese garden, and more sculpture at Denver Botanic Gardens: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 16, 2019 Continuing with my visit to Denver Botanic Gardens during the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling (June 2019), here is my favorite installation in the ongoing Human | Nature exhibit: Lights by Steinunn Thorarinsdottir. Five impassive, rough-hewn figures stand amid the grasses of the Plains Garden. Small holes punched ...
