Plant This: Paleleaf yucca shines in dry shade
August 04, 2017 Like a woman who’s grown tired of covering up the gray, I’m letting my silver self shine — in the garden, that is. Instead of bemoaning the dominant silver-green to olive-green palette that comes so naturally to Austin’s hot, often droughty climate, I’m letting it rip. And ...
Plant This: Pale pavonia, or Brazilian rock rose
July 28, 2017 Even in gentler months, my shady garden is not particularly flowery, and in the heat of summer those perennials that do flower — salvias, mistflowers, cupheas — tend to hunker down until fall. One happy exception is pale pavonia, also known as Brazilian rock rose (Pavonia hastata), ...
Summer-tough Foliage Follow-Up
July 16, 2017 Summer is my most challenging season as a gardener. Yes, really — not winter. I don’t care at all for hot weather, so I retreat indoors and don’t venture outside much until that first hint of cooler air and lessening of the Death Star that typically occurs ...
The whimsical woodland garden of Ellen Ash: Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling
July 11, 2017 Although the tree-shaded entrance to this Great Falls, Virginia, garden was elegant and restrained, I knew the owner would be a gardener with a sense of humor. How? Because at the driveway’s end I spotted, atop a pilaster, a statue wearing actual sunglasses. It was the first ...
Log slices, twig spheres, and other natural art in garden of Debbie Friedman: Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling
July 09, 2017 Though she lives and gardens in Maryland, Bethesda designer Debbie Friedman told us that she uses log slices, granite stones, and other natural accents to evoke the spirit of Mount Desert Island, Maine, where she enjoys vacationing. I visited her suburban garden during the recent Capital Region ...
Southern Gothic garden of Jeff Minnich: Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling
July 09, 2017 I didn’t expect to see a banana tree and sago palm in any of the gardens we visited during the Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling last month, but Arlington, Virginia, designer Jeff Minnich‘s garden is full of surprises. Reminiscent of a New Orleans cottage garden with picket ...
Peg Bier’s woodland garden of discovery: Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling
July 05, 2017 Near Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, during the recent D.C.-area Garden Bloggers Fling, we toured the garden of Peg Bier, who’s been designing and experimenting with plants here for 40 years. Peg’s charming yellow house comes into view at the end of a well-screened driveway. Plenty of sun gives ...
Visit to Plant Delights Nursery and Juniper Level Botanic Garden: Shade & bog gardens
June 22, 2011 Juniper Level Botanic Garden, a 5-acre display garden at Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, N.C., is roughly divided in two parts: the sunny, newer gardens surrounding owner Tony Avent’s house, and the shady, older gardens surrounding the house in which the business is run. In this post ...
In the garden of Each Little World
September 17, 2010 Each Little World is one of my regular reads. Written by Linda Brazill and illustrated with gorgeous photos by her husband, Mark Golbach, their blog gives me tantalizing glimpses into the green, serene garden they’ve created together in Madison, Wisconsin. When the garden blogger meet-up was held ...
Buffalo Garden Bloggers Fling: First day impressions
July 13, 2010 Sweet-smelling, freckled lilies. Crimson bee balm as tall as myself. Soft-textured lawn grass spangled with white clover, so different from Austin’s coarse, shaggy St. Augustine and so much more inviting. Tall, brick Victorian homes standing shoulder-to-shoulder on streets shaded by goth-cloaked Norway maples. A city eager to ...
Plant This: Sparkler sedge brightens the shade
July 01, 2009 Carex phyllocephala ‘Sparkler’ brightens the shade with creamy, striped foliage and a starburst shape reminiscent of a child’s sparkler firework. I brought a large clump of sparkler sedge with me when I moved and spaded it into three divisions, which I planted under live oaks near the ...
