Wildflowers and Succulents: A Texas-English garden, part 2
April 11, 2019 Doorways in chunky stucco walls frame vista after flowery vista in the garden of Jenny Stocker, also known as Rock Rose, the title of her blog. I showed you half of her Austin garden yesterday. Today I’ll lead you through the rest, starting with the sunken garden ...
Foxgloves and cacti: A Texas-English garden, part 1
April 09, 2019 Ah, let us return to the always-stunning garden of Jenny Stocker, aka Rock Rose. Born and raised in England, Jenny and her husband, David, years ago adopted Texas as their home. Jenny’s garden, a series of stucco-walled courtyards surrounding their contemporary house, reflects her English roots but ...
Streetside gardens, colorful murals on Austin’s South Congress Ave
January 12, 2019 South Congress Avenue, SoCo, a street of eclectic shops and restaurants just south of downtown that epitomizes “weird,” welcoming Austin and converts tourists into residents. Fewer and fewer of those shops remain now that Austin has grown so expensive, but it’s still a playful, appealing, and increasingly ...
Dia de los Muertos in Lucinda Hutson’s festive home and garden
November 05, 2018 As a native of border city El Paso and a veteran traveler throughout Mexico, Lucinda Hutson has long embraced Mexican culture and traditions like Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. She recently hosted a small gathering in honor of the holiday, which is a ...
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 ...
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 ...
Bloggers soaked up Austin at Garden Bloggers Fling
May 11, 2018 For 11 years I’ve traveled to cities around North America to attend Garden Bloggers Fling, and I’ve helped organize two Flings held in Austin — in and again last weekend. Normally I take hundreds of pictures of the gardens I visit. (Go to Categories in my sidebar ...
Glorious wildflowers and agaves in Jenny Stocker’s garden
April 20, 2018 Spring in Austin is glorious this year, and especially so in my friend Jenny Stocker’s garden. The Rock Rose blogger cultivates a gravel garden of mostly Texas native wildflowers and grasses sown among woody lilies like agave and yucca, accented with structural rockwork she and her husband, ...
The twinkliest town in the Hill Country
December 22, 2017 If you want to see trees made of light and a charmingly illuminated main square, go visit Johnson City, a small town of 2,000 residents, located about an hour west of Austin. Every December they turn their town into a beautiful spectacle of light — called Lights ...
Fall color and grassy plumes for December Foliage Follow-Up
December 16, 2017 Despite our one-day snow last week, it still looks pretty autumnal in my garden this Foliage Follow-Up. The Japanese maple stubbornly refuses to acknowledge fall until December, when the Christmas lights go up on the house and red balls go up on the agave by the door ...
New Central Library – “Austin’s front porch” – boasts rooftop garden and more
December 15, 2017 Austin is head over heels in love with our new Central Library, a marvelous civic structure by Lake|Flato that is much more than a library. It’s a community space for all of Austin in a prime location on Cesar Chavez Street near Austin City Hall and across ...
Snow day in Austin! It only takes a dusting
December 08, 2017 The flakes started hitting my windshield at 2:30 pm over in central-east Austin. By the time I got home I thought it was all over, but the heavy, gray sky and cold temps convinced me to start pulling pots of tender succulents up against the sheltering walls ...
Sharing nature’s beauty in the garden of Diana Kirby
December 03, 2017 I’ve enjoyed many a visit at the garden of my good friend Diana Kirby, designer at Diana’s Designs, garden columnist at the Austin American-Statesman, and publisher of the blog Sharing Nature’s Garden. But inexplicably I’ve never done a photo tour of her lovely garden, and I’m remedying ...
Canyon-side garden of Tait Moring: Austin Open Days Tour 2017
November 25, 2017 The final garden from the Austin Open Days Tour earlier this month is landscape architect Tait Moring‘s personal garden, which perches on a canyon’s rim just off Bee Caves Road. His entry garden is an appealing mix of formality (boxwood hedging, geometric raised pond, fig ivy neatly ...
Water-saving Ridgewood Road Garden: Austin Open Days Tour 2017
November 22, 2017 The talented Annie Gillespie of Botanical Concerns designed the water-saving garden at Ridgewood Road, the next garden in my recap of Austin’s recent Open Days Tour. From the street you’re invited to stroll through a low-water garden of oaks, grasses, agave, and yucca to reach the house ...
Garden of Jackson Broussard: Austin Open Days Tour 2017
November 10, 2017 For landscape architect Jackson Broussard, you really can go home again. He was raised in this modest ranch house in east-central Austin, and after he took ownership he freshened up the house and leased it out and built himself a detached, two-story addition in the back yard ...
