Poppies a-popping at Antique Rose Emporium, plus Round Top shopping
May 10, 2022 A month ago it wasn’t blazing summer in Austin but gentle spring. Early April found me on a wildflower safari with Patterson Webster, visiting from Canada, and my friend Diana Kirby. The Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham We drove out to Brenham for lunch at Truth BBQ ...
Spring garden party at Lucinda’s purple casita
April 14, 2022 If I’m lucky, springtime means an invitation to Lucinda Hutson‘s festive garden. And last weekend I felt lucky indeed to be invited to her purple casita on a perfect spring day. Out front, pansies were still somehow hanging on, despite recent warm temperatures. Ready to take over, ...
Exploring Houston’s Centennial Gardens and Japanese Garden
March 08, 2022 During the Houston oil bust of the late 1980s, when I was a student at Rice University, I’d occasionally jog across Main Street to visit Hermann Park’s ancient-looking zoo or outdoor amphitheater. Those were hard times for Houston and its parks — though I was too young ...
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 ...
Plants hold court at Chanticleer’s Teacup and Tennis Court gardens
February 23, 2022 Teacup Garden in 2021 A teacup-shaped fountain in the entry garden at Chanticleer gives the Teacup Garden its name. Each year the plantings around the fountain are redesigned to create a bold, new theatrical vignette. I visited Chanticleer in Wayne, Pennsylvania, last October on my East Coast ...
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 ...
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 ...
Grand trees and pastoral views at Winterthur, part 1
February 02, 2022 Japanese maple I first visited Winterthur on a blustery June day in 2016. In mid-October last year, I returned to see the garden at the turn of a new season, its summer greens tinged with pale gold and rusty orange, berries and quince brightening bare branches, and ...
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 ramble, Part 2: Woodland garden, Yoko Ono sculpture, and Red Garden
January 06, 2022 When textile-artist Jack Lenor Larsen created his garden at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, New York, one of his goals, according to online interviews, was to encourage people to be nonconformist. He wanted to show that more can be done with a suburban backyard than the typical ...
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, part 2: Formal garden and iconic Chinese bridge
December 23, 2021 Continuing with my visit to Madoo, an artist’s garden in Sagaponack, New York, let’s head to the rear of the 2-acre property. A long rectangular section extends out from the main gardens, reaching toward agricultural fields beyond the fence line. An ornate blue gate opens to an ...
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 ...
Yucca and palm fantasyland at John Fairey Garden
December 17, 2021 I’d been to The John Fairey Garden (formerly Peckerwood Garden) a half-dozen times before my late-October visit with Loree Bohl of Danger Garden, who was in town to give a Garden Spark talk. Frustratingly, I’d never toured the dry garden, though I’d glimpse its bristling yuccas and ...
Fill up your cup at Innisfree Garden, part 1
December 08, 2021 “Pam, I hope you are planning a visit to Innisfree, the world’s greatest underrated and too little known garden.” So messaged James Golden of Federal Twist after I’d asked if I might visit his own increasingly well-known garden while on my Northeast road trip in October. As ...
