Shrubs

April 24, 2020 Y’all may get weary of seeing my garden each week while I hole up at home during the pandemic. While I’m missing all the gardens I’m usually able to visit and photograph — and share here at Digging — I am enjoying the time spent in my ...

April 19, 2020 I’m not a big seed sower. A well-mulched, shady garden isn’t really conducive to growing plants from seed. But last fall, having pulled out a few under-performing plants from the back garden’s raised beds, I had a few square feet of bare soil at my disposal. Fishing ...

April 09, 2020 Spring bounds ahead as we confine ourselves at home, waiting for the corona specter to pass us by. I spent an unproductive couple of hours late last night googling how to cut my own hair and watching makeup tutorials promising to make me look 10 years younger ...

March 30, 2020 The garden reemerged last weekend, after copious raking and blowing and bagging, from the annual spring deluge of last season’s live oak leaves and subsequent pollen catkins. I ran around with the camera, capturing the gorgeousness of new flowers and fresh foliage, like this pretty combo of ...

March 25, 2020 Before Austin’s shelter-in-place (i.e., stay-at-home) order went out yesterday, I grabbed my camera and hopped in the car with our Italian high-school exchange student to find a nice field of bluebonnets a friend had told me about. We soon located a denim-blue field of dreams. As it ...

November 25, 2019 ‘Strawberry Fields’ gomphrena blazes with color amid bold agaves and barrel cactus. While driving through West Austin on the Open Day garden tour earlier this month, I had a sixth-sense feeling that a garden was calling my name. Oh yes, I thought, remember the xeriscape garden at ...

October 31, 2019 Given 3-1/2 acres of cow pasture in North Texas, it turns out you can do quite a lot with it. Continuing with my mid-October visit to Weatherford’s Chandor Gardens (click for part 1 of my visit), here’s more of the romantic English-Chinese garden that portraitist Douglas Chandor ...

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 ...

October 25, 2019 North Austin gardeners have been under-served in the retail business for years. I’m grateful for the excellent Hill Country Water Gardens and Nursery in Cedar Park and Green ‘n Growing in Pflugerville, both just north of Austin, as well as Shoal Creek Nursery in midtown. But compared ...

October 20, 2019 With the Death Star at bay and a little rain last week, the plants are rejoicing with a flush of flowers. It’s a second spring for us Texas gardeners. Being mostly shady, my garden isn’t exactly a flower-lover’s paradise. It’s all about foliage and texture and, frankly, ...

October 11, 2019 Are you looking for a native Texas shrub (native to South Texas) that stays 3-to-4 feet tall, attracts pollinators with pretty pink-and-cream flowers in spring and early fall, produces small red fruits that birds love, and is evergreen in mild winters? Oh, and did I mention that ...

October 01, 2019 I am not, in general, a plant collector. I rarely make impulse buys at the nursery. And yet a few plants (agave, mangave, and Turk’s cap come to mind) have captivated me enough to try different varieties, even if I don’t exactly need or have space for ...

July 15, 2019 Rob Proctor has been showing Coloradans how to garden for decades. A former director of horticulture at Denver Botanic Gardens and the author of 17 gardening books, he also appears weekly on Denver’s channel 9 news for a gardening segment called “Proctor’s Garden.” When we arrived at ...

July 11, 2019 A “designer showpiece” garden conveys a grand gesture, expensive hardscaping, and maybe not much in the way of plants. At the home garden of Scott Deemer in Niwot, Colorado, a grand-gesture fireplace and beautifully designed hardscaping create a wow moment as soon as you step onto the ...

July 07, 2019 A copper tree, its muscular branches devoid of leaves, stands as an organic sculpture in the Boulder, Colorado, rock garden of Linda Boley. The painted Japanese lilac caught my eye as soon as our bus arrived during the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling tour (June 2019). It signaled ...

May 01, 2019 I haven’t done a photo tour of my own garden in a while, so let’s go, starting with a new planting of Gulf Coast penstemon (Penstemon tenuis) and winecup (Callirhoe involucrata), both Texas natives. Along with an artichoke — I’ve always wanted to try one — they’re ...