A Texas-style crevice garden – and neighborly collaboration – brings midcentury Austin home to vibrant life
January 18, 2022 At the end of October, when Loree of Danger Garden was in town for her Garden Spark talk, we finagled an invitation to the tropicalesque garden of John Ignacio. John in turn introduced us to his friend and neighbor Coleson Bruce, who kindly allowed a couple of ...
Ceremony garden shop in Wimberley
December 30, 2021 While at Wimberley Market Days in early December to shop at my friend Cynthia’s booth, she told me about a must-see garden boutique in the town center called Ceremony. My friends and I made a beeline for it right after a catfish lunch along Cypress Creek. Ceremony ...
A collected home with heart at Via Libre garden
December 03, 2021 Known in Abilene for their extensive gardens, designer and artist Cynthia Williams Deegan and her husband, Bobby, picked up and moved to Austin in 2013 to be near their children and grandchildren. Austin has grown more enchanting as a result. As I’ve written previously, Cynthia and Bobby ...
The yellow glow of late fall
December 02, 2021 Cool, blue-sky weather has me spending more time in the garden, having friends over, and tinkering with planting beds. It’s kind of glowing out there. Why? Yellow is the color of fall in my garden, starting with the wonderful forsythia sage (Salvia madrensis), which lights up the ...
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 ...
Lucinda Hutson’s colorful Day of the Dead garden
October 25, 2021 Austin author Lucinda Hutson‘s garden blazes with color every day of the year. But come October, for Day of the Dead, she kicks it up a big notch. Yellow and orange marigolds glow from every pot, mingling with hibiscus, coral vine, and roses in sherbet hues, all ...
A passion for purple in Lucinda Hutson’s garden
April 22, 2021 Reveling in the flowery, herb-scented beauty of Lucinda Hutson‘s garden is always a delight, but especially this spring, after the devastating February freeze that set back every Texas garden. Lucinda’s garden was hit hard too, but thanks to her own nonstop cleanup and replanting, twice-weekly gardener assistance, ...
Water, water everywhere in Cat’s wildlife-friendly garden
September 22, 2020 Every time I visit my friend Cat Jones‘s garden, it’s lovelier than the time before. Over the past 4 to 5 years she’s been busily making her Steiner Ranch garden, which overlooks a wildflower meadow and a wooded canyon, into a retreat for her and her family ...
Garden Seventeen, a new nursery in north-central Austin
July 31, 2020 It’s a happy day when a new nursery opens north of the river, especially if within a quick 10- or 15-minute drive from my house. So my head snapped up with interest when I heard about a new nursery opening — during a pandemic, no less — ...
Cactus flowers and 3D-printed agaves
May 30, 2020 Ka-pow! Colorful cactus flowers are knocking my socks off. Look at these orange beauties. And these in satin pink! Mwah! I love them. And check out these bamboo-textured agaves my son printed on his 3D printer. Cool, eh? They look especially good displayed on a Charley Harper-illustrated ...
Hilltop getaway at Two Coves Garden: Austin Open Day tour
November 21, 2019 The last garden I visited on the Open Day tour sponsored by The Garden Conservancy was designed by B. Jane Gardens, and which B. has continued to maintain for the last three owners. Located off City Park Road, the Two Coves Drive Garden perches atop a hill ...
The happily-ever-after Berger Street Garden: Austin Open Day Tour
November 07, 2019 It’s time to kick off my coverage of last weekend’s Open Day tour in Austin, sponsored by The Garden Conservancy. Six private gardens were open to the public, and I started at the Berger Street Garden, where a homey blue shotgun cottage extends its front porch with ...
Day of the Dead at Lucinda Hutson’s casita and garden
November 04, 2019 In early November each year, Austin writer Lucinda Hutson celebrates Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday for remembering and honoring deceased loved ones. Decorating her Rosedale home — her purple casita, as she calls it — and Mexican-style garden with colorful flowers, food, tequila bottles, skeleton ...
Casa Neverlandia and sculpture by James Talbot keep Austin delightfully weird
October 10, 2019 Never pass up a chance to see something creative or unusual. Seeing how someone’s passion gets turned into art fascinates me. So when I heard about Casa Neverlandia, the home of fellow Rice University grad, artist, architect, and free spirit James Talbot, I knew I had to ...
Plant pictures for your home at Articulture
August 27, 2019 It’s peace, love, and plants at Articulture, a creative-cool boutique in far-south Austin that sells living wall art and one-of-a-kind succulent and tillandsia arrangements, as well as fun accent pieces and home goods. In addition, Articulture’s design team creates incredible green-wall installations, the store hosts regular workshops ...
Sunny southern France vacation, part 2
August 22, 2019 Dodging the heat waves that plagued France this summer, my husband and I day-tripped through Provence for 5 days in late July after meeting up with our daughter following her study abroad program (she did not manage to dodge the heat waves). In my last post I ...
