Visiting Layanee’s ledge and garden in Rhode Island
July 21, 2016 Wherever I travel these days, I seem to know a garden blogger who lives there. That’s partly because I’ve been blogging and reading blogs for a decade and partly because I’ve gotten to know lots of bloggers in person through years of attending the annual Garden Bloggers ...
My article about Voorhes’ homestead garden in Austin Home
June 05, 2016 A homestead garden in the city? You bet! I’ll show you the productive garden of Adam Voorhes and Robin Finlay — a commercial- and editorial-photography team (and married couple) known as The Voorhes — in the Summer 2016 issue of Austin Home, which you can find on ...
May flowers from A (agave) to V (vitex)
May 27, 2016 As the days fly toward summer, the daylilies are showing off their lovely throats… …and blushing, ruffled petals. Here’s ‘Best of Friends’. The first ‘Apple Tart’ smolders among the white-striped flax lilies. Stretching on long stems like giraffe necks, ‘Wilson’s Yellow’ daylily stands tall amid grasses and ...
Blue twilight garden
May 07, 2016 Cobalt blue may be overused in gardens, but I don’t care. It’s such a lovely color to complement the green plants, and it’s so cooling in Austin’s hot climate. Add a little turquoise and robin’s-egg blue to the mix, and it’s even better. I added more blue, ...
Enjoying the end of spring in Austin
May 05, 2016 Any day now it’ll be summer in Texas, hot and sticky. But this week we’ve enjoyed several cool mornings — in the 50s! — and warm, non-humid afternoons. If I could bottle this up for summer I would. May is a beautiful month in Austin, no doubt ...
Moby death vigil and other flowerings
April 11, 2016 In case you don’t follow me on Facebook or Instagram, where I’ve been posting pictures since last Wednesday, when I first noticed it, I must break the news to you: Moby is dying. Moby is my beloved whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia) and the most iconic plant ...
Instagramming my garden
February 19, 2016 I resisted joining Instagram for the longest time because it seemed like One More Thing to keep up with. But its huge popularity and my dawning recognition that it’s ideal for sharing gardening goodness (my mission statement, after all!) have convinced me to take the plunge. And ...
Sunshine and succulents for January Foliage Follow-Up
January 16, 2016 I wait all summer for winter days like these. China-blue skies. Warm sunshine on my face, the Death Star tame and friendly. A garden as yet untouched by a freeze — which is unusual, actually. We would normally have had several overnight freezes by mid-January, but so ...
Aloe surprise and prepping for owls
January 10, 2016 Aloes bloom in profusion at the Huntington in Los Angeles at this time of year, and my winter-blooming ‘Blue Elf’ aloe is already sending up asparagus-shaped bloom spikes. But soap aloe (Aloe maculata) prefers warmer weather to strut its stuff in my Austin garden. And yet… …with ...
Hillside oasis: the magical garden of Joy and Roland Feuer
October 04, 2015 While in Los Angeles recently for Garden Writers Association, I spent a day off-conference touring private gardens that Annette Gutierrez of Potted arranged for a small group of us. One of these was the garden of Joy and Roland Feuer, a welcoming and artistic couple who constructed ...
Colorful LA garden of Potted maven Annette Gutierrez
September 25, 2015 I was in Los Angeles/Pasadena last weekend for the annual Garden Writers Association symposium, and boy oh boy, do I have some cool gardens to show you! Not all were on the GWA tours, which were limited to 3 private gardens and one public garden (the fabulous ...
Sedgey evergreen garden of Pat Mozersky for Foliage Follow-Up
September 16, 2015 Austin designer Mark Word (see my profile about him) designed this serene, green San Antonio garden that you can see on the upcoming Watersaver Landscape Tour on October 24. I got a preview last Friday thanks to Shirley of Rock-Oak-Deer. The garden belongs to Pat Mozersky, the ...
Stained-glass leaves and Crazy Eyes snake
August 22, 2015 Even a dark-green, fibrous leaf, like that of cast-iron plant (Aspidistra elatior), glows like a stained-glass window when backlit by the setting sun. In the lowest, shadiest part of my garden, it fringes a native Mexican buckeye (Ungnadia speciosa), which is also aglow. A tunnel of incandescent ...
Farewell visit to James David’s Austin garden, part 2
May 20, 2015 A grand limestone staircase bisected by a rill leads from the back of the house to a large pond in the lower garden. Yesterday I showed you around the upper level of James David’s magnificent garden, which I visited in late March and which is currently for ...
Soggy garden blues make me happy
May 12, 2015 During the horrible drought year of 2011, I swore I’d never complain about rain again, and I’m not tempted now. My garden has had nearly 5 inches of rain since last Tuesday, washing out a gravel path twice and incubating a healthy crop of mosquitoes. And how ...
Owl’ll be watching you
April 28, 2015 After weeks of live oak litter, first leaves and then pollen catkins, and weeks of me raking, blowing, and bagging, the garden is finally visible again. Sunday evening I went outside with no expectation of doing any spring chore: no clean-up, no pruning, no planting, no mulching, ...
