A city park floating on air: Klyde Warren Park in Dallas
November 03, 2019 A remarkable green space floats overhead, literally flashing before your eyes as you commute or pass through downtown Dallas. Built above 3 blocks of the Woodall Rodgers Freeway, Klyde Warren Park is a remarkable green roof that has become a beloved public park. Traffic flows beneath the ...
Chandor Gardens, née White Shadows, a hidden gem in North Texas, part 1
October 29, 2019 White Shadows — the name evokes romance and mystery — seems wholly appropriate for the dappled-shade garden surrounding a pale-gray house in the small Texas town of Weatherford, 30 miles west of Fort Worth. Here, in a series of alternately elegant and rustic garden rooms, you’ll find ...
Steppe garden evangelist Panayoti Kelaidis’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 18, 2019 Despite its Mile High City moniker, Denver is not a mountain town. True, the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies loom on its western horizon, but Denver sits on a relatively flat, semi-arid, grassy plain — aka a steppe, one of the 4 vast steppe ecosystems in the ...
Party under the willow tree in Judy Seaborn’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 13, 2019 Grandmother Willow offers sage advice in Pocahontas. Old Man Willow terrorizes the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. The Whomping Willow bashes the unwary and guards a secret passageway in the Harry Potter series. Why does the willow figure so prominently in our cultural mythology? Perhaps ...
TatTopia garden embraces stonework and sustainability: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 09, 2019 When the construction dust settled at Tatiana Maxwell’s new energy-wise home, studio, and guest house in Boulder, Colorado, in 2010, the yard was just an expanse of bare dirt. Her first thought was to build an English-style cottage garden. But after brainstorming with stonemason artist Thea Alvin ...
Garden retreat under the oaks in San Antonio
May 24, 2019 An invitation to tea — the real deal, with scones, clotted cream, cucumber sandwiches, lemon tarts, and champagne — was treat enough to entice me to the San Antonio home of two sisters I’ve gotten to know through a friendship with their mother. But when I arrived ...
Feeling the blues – happy blues – in Lori Daul’s garden
April 02, 2019 Visiting the garden of Lori Daul, aka The Gardener of Good and Evil, on a cool spring afternoon gives me a case of the blues. But the blues are moody only in hue, not in spirit! Lushly planted with Texas-tough plants, her suburban South Austin garden is ...
Food for people and butterflies in San Antonio Botanical Garden’s culinary and entry gardens
November 06, 2018 San Antonio was calling my name last week, so I hopped in the car with my friend Cat of The Whimsical Gardener, and we road-tripped south to see the new gardens at San Antonio Botanical Garden. Wow, was I impressed with the changes! Zachry Foundation Culinary Garden ...
Sissinghurst Castle Garden, part 2: White Garden, meadow, and tower views
August 04, 2018 Has any garden been more admired, copied, and written about than Vita Sackville-West’s White Garden at Sissinghurst? We visited in mid-June, and I was excited to finally step into this glowing space and see it for myself. Twilight would be better for appreciating the pale effect of ...
Sissinghurst Castle Garden, part 1: Walls and roses in the English countryside
August 03, 2018 Sissinghurst. Mecca to gardeners worldwide. Like every traveling gardener, I’d put Sissinghurst Castle Garden at the top of my bucket list, and when we started planning a trip to England I insisted on seeing the famous garden of Vita Sackville-West. So one sunny mid-June morning, we drove ...
Tea in Rosemary Verey’s garden at Barnsley House
July 30, 2018 Elton John worked with her on his garden. Prince Charles too. I’m sure everyone who knows anything about garden design or English gardens knows of the late Rosemary Verey. But I confess I knew nothing of her when I visited the famous designer and author’s former home ...
Cotswolds country charm at Victoria Summerley’s Awkward Hill Cottage
July 19, 2018 It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that my family and I traveled to England last month to see gardens. Particularly, romantic English gardens in the rosy flush of June. And specifically, three gardens I’ve longed to see for years: the famous estate gardens Sissinghurst and Great ...
Old school sightseeing in Oxford, England
July 16, 2018 English longhorns at Christ Church Meadow in Oxford Last month, after two nights in London, we rented a car and drove to Oxford, our home base for several day trips we’d planned for the remainder of our vacation. Oxford is a lovely old city, and we enjoyed ...
Kew Gardens walkabout: Mediterranean Garden, Treetop Walkway, and more
July 15, 2018 London’s Kew Gardens is a big place at 300 acres, with a variety of gardens, glasshouses, a magnificent arboretum, and other attractions. During my mid-June visit on a family vacation, I saw as much as I could during a 4- or 5-hour visit. Here’s the last installment ...
Hedge fun: The Italian Renaissance garden of Château d’Ambleville
July 05, 2018 So many châteaux (manor houses, mostly, but also palaces and castles) litter the French countryside that today some can be purchased for a relative song. We were not looking to buy, however, but merely to visit a couple of châteaux in mid-June, after our tour of Monet’s ...
Kirk Walden’s Hill Country garden atop Lake Austin
May 25, 2018 With this killer view of Lake Austin, many homeowners might have sodded a lawn, plunked a few pots of annuals around the pool, and called it done. But Kirk Walden, whose garden was the final stop on the recent Austin Garden Bloggers Fling tour (I photographed it ...
