Creative paths and cutting garden glory at Chanticleer
March 03, 2022 Chanticleer Garden enchants through marvelous plant combos and artful garden spaces that evoke a sense of mystery, romance, and discovery. I visited Chanticleer, located in Wayne, Pennsylvania, on my East Coast road trip last fall. This is Part 6 — and the finale — of my blog ...
Every passage is a destination at Chanticleer
February 28, 2022 Yellow canna and bamboo sculpture by Marcia Donahue along Chanticleer’s elevated walkway Chanticleer makes each step, each path, a place of discovery and delight. I visited the Philadelphia-area garden on my road trip last fall. This is Part 5 in my series about creative, romantic, stunning-in-every-way Chanticleer ...
Flowery meadow instead of lawn at Chanticleer’s house garden
February 26, 2022 You’d expect a garden surrounding an estate house to be formal, restrained, with neat lawns and containers that serve to frame the grand structure. The house garden at Chanticleer, a Pennsylvania “pleasure garden” I visited during my East Coast road trip last October, upends this convention through ...
A garden rising from ruin at Chanticleer
February 22, 2022 View from Chanticleer’s Gravel Garden to the Ruin My last post overflowed with images of the glorious gravel garden at Chanticleer, a public garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania, that I visited on my road trip last October. That garden segues right into the Ruin, which I’ll share today ...
Gravel garden at Chanticleer reminds me of Texas
February 21, 2022 Whether you love plants, exciting planting combos, design and gardening artistry, or overlooks and hideaways to sit and enjoy a beautiful garden, Chanticleer has it all. Located near Philadelphia, Chanticleer dubs itself “a pleasure garden,” and it’s been my favorite public garden since I first visited in ...
Fantasy gardens at Paxson Hill Farm, part 2
February 11, 2022 The gardens of Paxson HIll Farm, which I explored during the Pennsylvania portion of my road trip last October, started out good and got even better. In my last post I shared the farm’s nursery, Shade Garden, Katsura Garden, and Temple Garden. Let’s move on to a ...
Gardens galore at Paxson Hill Farm, part 1
February 09, 2022 Paxson Hill Farm’s crossroads, where inviting paths branch in every direction A friend asked me how I find gardens to see when traveling. Aside from online research a lot comes down to asking gardeners who live in the area. And it pays to build in time for ...
Anemones and autumn memories in Cat’s garden
January 12, 2022 Back in late October, when Loree of Danger Garden was visiting, Cat Jones invited us over for a garden visit. Her lipstick-pink anemones, a passalong from Rock Rose‘s Jenny Stocker (who’s since departed Austin for Arizona), were blooming. We both adore these fall flowers, which Jenny kindly ...
LongHouse Reserve ramble, Part 3: Pond, zodiac amphitheater, and grass garden
January 09, 2022 You wouldn’t believe how long I studied these stone-like spheres at LongHouse Reserve when I visited the East Hampton, New York, garden back in October. The openness of the gravel under a grove of trees, with lush greenery all around, and those great, lumpy, gray and brown ...
LongHouse Reserve weaves gardens and sculpture: Dune path, pavilion, and tropical rill
January 06, 2022 My visit to LongHouse Reserve on October 10, a cool, drizzly afternoon, was almost an afterthought. I’d detoured through the Hamptons on my Northeastern road trip largely to visit Madoo, garden of the late artist Robert Dash. With two days to fill in the Hamptons I did ...
Mad about Madoo: The secret garden, potager, and ginkgo grove
December 22, 2021 I’d driven out to the Hamptons — a Long Island, NY, detour on my October road trip from Maine to Virginia — mainly to see one garden: Madoo. The name itself is an endearment, taken from a Scottish dialect in which ma doo means my dove or ...
Chilly October excursion to the Hamptons
December 15, 2021 Cooper’s Beach in Southampton Before I trekked to the eastern end of Long Island during my Northeast road trip, all I knew about the Hamptons and Montauk was from Sex and the City (drunken beach parties in the Hamptons) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (an ...
A plant-collector’s jungle garden of palms, sotol, and more
December 14, 2021 Like a Mayan ruin — except not crumbling and with a fresh coat of white paint — John Ignacio’s house near Bull Creek in northwest Austin stands amid a jungle-evoking garden of palms, bamboo, and other bold foliage. I’d been introduced to John by a mutual friend, ...
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 ...
Autumn asters, garden rooms in Michael Gordon’s New Hampshire garden
November 29, 2021 Michael Gordon’s garden in early October is aster-licious Through phone interviews for magazine assignments, I’ve gotten to “know” many interesting gardeners around the country. One of these is Michael Gordon of Peterborough, New Hampshire, whose garden I wrote about for Country Gardens in 2019. An optometrist by ...
