Gardens on Tour 2013: Kathy Cove Garden
May 13, 2013 Garden tour season in central Texas kicked off last Saturday with the annual Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour, which this year featured five Austin gardens in which native plants play a predominant role. I toured with three other bloggers — Cat from The Whimsical Gardener, Shirley from ...
New retaining wall eliminates hard-to-mow slope
December 09, 2012 Before: October 2008 We almost didn’t buy this house because we didn’t like the front exterior. We’d read the listing online and drove by but were turned off by the bland, 1970s style and the way the heavy-browed garage wing in front appeared to be sinking into ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Garden of Jeff Pavlat and Ray Clayton
November 15, 2012 My sixth and final stop on November 3rd’s Open Days tour was the garden of my friend Jeff Pavlat, located in the Westlake area. Jeff is vice president of the Austin Cactus and Succulent Society, and he’s kindly invited me to visit his garden before (click for ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Bonnell Drive Garden
November 08, 2012 My fourth stop on Saturday’s Open Days tour was the Bonnell Drive Garden in hilly West Austin, created by my friend Curt Arnette of Sitio Design. (For a post about Curt’s fascinating personal garden, click here.) The contemporary front garden complements the Texas-modern style of the wood-and-limestone ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Garden of Jennifer and Fred Myers
November 04, 2012 On Saturday I joined several garden-blogging friends for the biennial Open Days tour, sponsored by the Garden Conservancy. I consider Open Days to be the best garden tour in Austin. You often see high-design gardens mingled with a gardener’s sensibility and creative, personal touches. This year’s Open ...
Asheville Garden Bloggers Fling: Wamboldtopia, an artists’ garden
May 25, 2012 Skulls, skeletons, gravestone fragments, gargoyles, and other eerie tokens are tucked into nooks and crannies… …and dangle from the eaves throughout Wamboldtopia, an art-filled garden (or garden of art) and stonemason’s paradise located off Wamboldt Avenue in west Asheville. The Goth accents… …are countered by a slew ...
Asheville Garden Bloggers Fling: Gentling Garden, a mountainside eden
May 23, 2012 The first thing you learn about gardens in Asheville, North Carolina, on the slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is that they have a lot of stairs. We’re talking serious elevation changes. What does this mean for the gardeners who live here? Well, for one thing they ...
Garden Designers Roundtable: Our Home Gardens
May 21, 2012 Regular readers know that I often post about my own garden projects and my garden’s evolution. Heck, when I started blogging 6 years ago, that was the whole point. Today I have a good excuse for posting home-garden pics because it’s this month’s topic for Garden Designers ...
Shelagh Tucker garden at Seattle Garden Bloggers Fling
August 07, 2011 Six Austin garden bloggers journeyed to Seattle for the Garden Bloggers Fling. That’s me on the left, Caroline of The Shovel-Ready Garden, Becky of Wolf’s Garden, Vicki of Playin’ Outside, Jenny of Rock Rose, and Diana of Sharing Nature’s Garden. Look! Scarves & cardigans in July! The ...
Gardens on Tour 2011: Stratford Drive garden
May 09, 2011 Imagine a steep, overgrown hillside of invasive nandina, bamboo, and ligustrum. That’s what the homeowners on Stratford Drive looked out on after building a contemporary, 5-star green home (as rated by the Austin Energy Green Building program) in the Rollingwood neighborhood of west Austin. According to the ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2010: Jones garden
October 21, 2010 Continuing my westward route across Austin on Saturday’s Open Days tour, I headed to the Westlake garden at the Jones residence multimillion-dollar, 11,000 square foot mansion (as per Trulia). This is the view from their elevated front terrace. What? Those buildings? Downtown Austin, of course. I was ...
Hillside gravel and timber path–done!
June 23, 2010 What joy in the completion of a long-delayed project! I’m not speaking of the narrow side garden itself, which is quickly filling in under the blazing sun’s heat, but the gravel-and-timber pathway that leads you through the sloping garden. I rarely pass up a chance to show ...
Gardens on Tour 2010: Bridle Path garden
May 10, 2010 The Bridle Path garden in the Tarrytown neighborhood was my favorite on Gardens on Tour 2010 because it had the best of both worlds: a naturalistic garden for sun and shade in the front, with a charming council-ring style seating area tucked out of sight of the ...
Going vertical: Jeff Pavlat’s hillside Austin garden
September 02, 2009 Cascading down a steep-sloping front yard, Jeff Pavlat’s 8-year-old terraced xeric garden is a symphony of form, texture, and subtle color echoes. I met Jeff a year ago at an Oracle Gorge Nursery sale and have asked his advice about agaves and aloes from time to time ...
Going vertical: Jeff Pavlat's hillside Austin garden
September 02, 2009 Cascading down a steep-sloping front yard, Jeff Pavlat’s 8-year-old terraced xeric garden is a symphony of form, texture, and subtle color echoes. I met Jeff a year ago at an Oracle Gorge Nursery sale and have asked his advice about agaves and aloes from time to time ...
Gardens on Tour 2009: Buckeye Trail garden
May 11, 2009 A carpet of silver ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea) sparkles like a stream in the Buckeye Trail garden. My pictures from this garden, our third stop on the Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour, don’t do it justice. The Buckeye Trail garden, located in Rollingwood, was my favorite of the ...
