European formality with relaxed Texas style in Ware Garden: San Antonio Open Days Tour
October 18, 2017 Last Saturday I road-tripped to San Antonio for the Open Days garden tour, sponsored by the Garden Conservancy. Shirley Fox of Rock-Oak-Deer was one of the organizers this year, and I was eager to see the gardens that she’d chosen for the tour. The Ware Garden is ...
Potted patio where succulents rule
August 08, 2017 Shaded by a big live oak, our back patio stays relatively cool, even on hot days. That shade also makes it a good spot for a variety of potted plants, especially succulents that prefer bright shade in our blistering climate. Agave parryi var. truncata is one of ...
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 ...
English garden in Virginia horse country: Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling
June 29, 2017 Attending Garden Bloggers Fling is always a whirlwind of garden touring and socializing with other bloggers. I come home with ideas bouncing around in my head, as well as a sense of new connections made and friendships renewed — not to mention hundreds of photos to sort ...
Life is beautiful at Moroccan-inspired Tanglewild Gardens
May 25, 2017 As we roll toward summer here in Austin, this gardener begins to fantasize about decamping for cooler climes, like the Pacific Northwest, a gardener’s paradise. So it was surprising and enlightening to hear Skottie O’Mahony and Jeff Breitenstein, longtime Seattle residents who are now cultivating an exotic, ...
Modern, easy-care garden of Austin designer B. Jane
May 22, 2017 I’ve long admired designer B. Jane‘s contemporary-style gardens here in Austin, including one I wrote about for Austin Home last year. Last week I visited B.’s personal garden in Central Austin’s Brentwood neighborhood and fell hard for her lawn-free, block-planted front yard. A straight walk of Lueders ...
Easter Sunday Foliage Follow-Up
April 16, 2017 I’m imagining my blog feed filling up with pictures of pastel Easter eggs and white lilies. But here at Digging, in spite of a flurry of kitchen activity (I’m making Tex-Mex deviled eggs and a lemon cake), it’s still Foliage Follow-Up. Let’s start with the stock-tank pond ...
Let’s take a walk around the garden
April 10, 2017 Live oak leaf and pollen season is finally over, and the patios are clean again, hallelujah! This calls for a spring garden stroll, so let’s go. I’ve been playing with a squid theme on one wall of the upper patio. A couple of tentacle pots from Tentacle ...
Early flowerliciouness in Austin this spring
February 23, 2017 Purple oxalis flowers delicately echo its purple leaves Texas redbuds, Texas mountain laurel, spiderwort, and even some bluebonnets are surprising Austinites this spring with early blooming. I can usually count on sniffing the grape Kool-Aid-scented blossoms of Texas mountain laurel well into mid-March, but they may be ...
Book Review Week: The Garden Bible
January 23, 2017 I’m kicking off Book Review Week here at Digging (yes, I had time to read a few gardening books over the holidays and want to share my faves) with The Garden Bible: Designing Your Perfect Outdoor Space (2016, Images Publishing) by Barbara Ballinger and Michael Glassman. While ...
Come to my free talk at Antique Rose Emporium this Saturday
November 03, 2016Texas gardeners, come on out to The Antique Rose Emporium Fall Festival in Brenham, Texas, this weekend for entertaining and educational garden speakers, beautiful display gardens, and fun! I’ll be speaking this Saturday, November 5th, from 1:30 to 2:30 pm. My talk, with plenty of eye-candy photos, is ...
Spooky garden visitors
September 28, 2016 It’s not even Halloween month yet, and we’ve had a few spooky garden visitors…or should I say, spooky residents? Exhibit A: a coral snake in the swimming pool. I heard my husband’s startled reaction as he reached into the skimmer yesterday afternoon and found himself hand-to-face with ...
West Texas sky-gazing at McDonald Observatory and Davis Mountains, plus swimming at Balmorhea Pool
August 30, 2016 The last two days of our Southwestern road trip took us through West Texas and the surprisingly green and scenic Davis Mountains, where we visited McDonald Observatory. A land of big sky, low humidity, and dark nights is the perfect place for gazing at stars and planets ...
Visiting Layanee’s ledge and garden in Rhode Island
July 21, 2016 Wherever I travel these days, I seem to know a garden blogger who lives there. That’s partly because I’ve been blogging and reading blogs for a decade and partly because I’ve gotten to know lots of bloggers in person through years of attending the annual Garden Bloggers ...
Stock-tank pond garden is cool even in summer’s heat
July 16, 2016 Mid-summer is all about foliage in my garden. The spring flowers are long gone, but evergreen plants like ‘Winter Gem’ boxwood, ‘Color Guard’ yucca, bamboo muhly grass, and squid agave look good even when the Death Star’s on full blast. The stock-tank pond helps the garden feel ...
Hot flower border, meadowy lawn at Chanticleer's House Garden
July 01, 2016 The sun was high when Diana and I exited the Teacup Garden and began to explore Chanticleer‘s House Garden, which unfolds with a view across a tidy croquet lawn. No sign of croquet today — just one cute-as-a-button little girl. The house itself — the summer home ...
