Evergreen foundation garden for Foliage Follow-Up
November 16, 2014 What won’t block the windows and grows no taller than 3 feet? What remains evergreen? What can live in shade? What won’t the deer eat? These are the foundation-planting questions that haunt generations of gardeners (or me anyway), especially those in the South, where we expect the ...
Visiting a San Antonio garden with rocks, oaks, and deer
October 25, 2014 Ahh, I’m back and enjoying our mellow Texas fall after a garden-visiting weekend in New York City, and guess what I’ve been doing since I got back? Yep! Visiting more gardens. Last Friday a few friends and I headed south to San Antonio to visit the gardens ...
Waiting for autumn’s reviving touch
August 24, 2014 Whew! After writing 16 posts about Portland gardens, each containing scads of photos of summer-lush and richly blooming borders, I’m somehow ready for a return to my own Death Star-blasted garden. August is my least favorite gardening month here in Austin. I’m over the heat. I’m over ...
Not voting these survivors off the island garden
June 10, 2014 Summer’s heat entices chaste lilac, or vitex (Vitex agnus-castus), to send up an explosion of purple spires, adding a dash of rich color to the xericsaped island bed in the circular driveway. This bermed garden bed, shaded all morning by live oaks and hit with late-afternoon sun, ...
Darn deer! Why I cage woody plants in fall and winter
December 19, 2013 My 6-year-old nephew, who was here for Thanksgiving dinner, asked why I’d put cages around some of my plants. Isn’t it the silliest looking thing? Wire cages are not exactly my idea of fine garden decor. But short of ditching agaves, yuccas, and other stiff-leaved or woody ...
Drab fall? Not in this colorful streetside garden
October 09, 2012 Cool weather might make some people think of brown leaves and shriveling plants, but not me. October is, I think, the best garden season—both for planting and photographing—in central Texas. Certainly my streetside garden is fuller and more flowery than at any other time of year. The ...
Twin fawns in the neighborhood
July 21, 2012 Each evening, two spotted fawns lounge or browse in my neighbors’ front lawns at the end of my street. Sometimes a slightly older fawn, still young enough to be spotted, joins them. Their mother leaves them to go browsing for dinner among neighborhood shrubs, and the fawns ...
Rocky Mountain National Park: Bear Lake, wildlife, and tundra
July 12, 2012 My family and I recently enjoyed a nearly two-week vacation in Colorado, and I’d love to share some photos from Rocky Mountain National Park, a favorite destination for this Texan looking to escape the heat for a little while. Bear Lake Trail is an easy hike around ...
Streetside garden is greening up and filling in
April 09, 2012 After last summer’s heat and drought, many local readers, I suspect, are ripping out burned-up lawn along the street and replacing it with drought-tolerant plants and hardscaping. That’s what I did a year ago with my own curbside lawn, putting in a decomposed-granite parking strip edged with ...
Canyons, river, and sky: Big Bend country (Days 2-3)
March 20, 2012 Following up on my overall impressions of Big Bend National Park, today I’ll take you on a tour of the sights. Our first morning we drove up into the Chisos Mountains to hike the Chisos Basin Loop Trail. At an elevation of 4,500 feet over the desert ...
Sharing a garden with a neighbor and ripping out lawn
February 03, 2012 “After” pics—I’ve got some! When I was having some grass ripped out recently, my neighbor Donna wanted in on the action and took out this big chunk of drought-weary St. Augustine grass at the corner of her driveway, next to my yard. We edged it like mine, ...
Garden Designers Roundtable: Gardening with Deer in Central Texas
December 13, 2011 If only all deer were as welcome in our gardens as Santa’s… But they’re not—at least not for most of us who want an attractive, diversely planted landscape around our home. Despite Bambi’s cuteness in the wild, in the garden deer are chomping and antler-rubbing pests that ...
Visit to Big Red Sun’s reopened boutique nursery in Austin
November 10, 2011 Like a go-go dancer at a small-town prom, Big Red Sun‘s theatrical streetside display garden stood out from the crowd of surrounding businesses at its original location on E. Cesar Chavez. Its gift shop—jammed with garden books, hip furniture, clothes, jewelry, and home decor—was as enticing as ...
Flower pop! Hope blooms with the promise of fall
September 29, 2011 Another 100-degree day (37.7 C), and still no rain. But over the past couple of weeks we’ve heard actual thunder, spotted clouds (clouds!) in the sky, and occasionally seen temps dip into the lower 90s. A “cold” front tonight is supposed to bring us 90-degree days through ...
Deer-resistant cottage garden of Freda Cameron
June 23, 2011 During my recent vacation in North Carolina, my dad and I had the pleasure of visiting the garden of Freda Cameron and her husband in Chapel Hill. I’ve long been a reader of Freda’s blog, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel, which is a great source of ...
Dad’s deer-proof, lawnless courtyard garden
June 18, 2011 I just returned from a vacation in North Carolina with my kids. We drove out to visit my dad and stepmother at their Pittsboro home, near Chapel Hill, which has a lovely courtyard garden out front in place of a big lawn. The wonderful thing about enclosing ...
