Garden art

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 ...

July 04, 2010 Though shadier than it once was, Mom’s Tulsa garden has always been loaded with iris, daylilies, and hollyhocks—all cottage-garden favorites. I can grow the first two in Austin, but those elusive hollyhock towers—they always grab my attention. The morning we were packing the car to go, I ...

June 09, 2010 Ivette Soler—L.A. garden designer, fellow agave nut, blogger extraordinaire at The Germinatrix, soon-to-be-published author, and an altogether delightful, adventurous, and generous person—visited Austin today for a meet-up with blogging friends. It was so great to meet her after following her blog for several years, a little like ...

June 09, 2010 Ivette Soler—L.A. garden designer, fellow agave nut, blogger extraordinaire at The Germinatrix, soon-to-be-published author, and an altogether delightful, adventurous, and generous person—visited Austin today for a meet-up with blogging friends. It was so great to meet her after following her blog for several years, a little like ...

June 01, 2010 Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) must always have a place in my garden. It’s one of the happiest summer flowers, with cottage charm and prairie toughness. Plus, those spiky orange coneheads are mesmerizing in close-up and offer vibrant contrast to hot-pink petals. Butterflies adore it, and small spiders ...

May 13, 2010 I saved these images from a recent visit to the Wildflower Center because they are inspiring me to think about placing art in my garden in new ways. These flying birds are part of a sculpture display, and I was really taken by the lighthearted design and ...

May 12, 2010 The final garden I visited last Saturday on Gardens on Tour 2010 is a large rural property tucked at the end of a long, gravel drive off Highway 45 South, not too far from the Wildflower Center. Wildflower meadows surround the home and nearby guest house/retreat center ...

May 06, 2010 Faces of stone, metal, and bronze greeted me at the Wildflower Center on Monday—part of a sculpture show on display throughout the gardens. I’ve photographed her before. I think she’s part of the garden’s permanent collection. A pensive face for a green glade near the stream. Jumping ...

May 04, 2010 One of my favorite Austin garden tours occurs this Saturday, May 8: Gardens on Tour, produced by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I’m pleased to offer you a sneak preview of one of the gardens on the tour, the Reynosa Drive garden, which I’m particularly fond ...

April 29, 2010 Taffy by TerraSculpture When concrete donkeys and St. Francis of Assisi statues won’t do (and no disrespect intended toward either; they have staying power!), TerraSculpture fills a stylistic void with a line of contemporary sculpture pieces that would look great in just about any kind of garden ...

April 28, 2010 While my dad was in town last week, I invited us over to Jenny Stocker’s garden for a visit, knowing that it would be spectacular at this time of year. Jenny, who blogs at Rock Rose, kindly overlooked the pushiness of my request by not only welcoming ...

April 28, 2010 While my dad was in town last week, I invited us over to Jenny Stocker’s garden for a visit, knowing that it would be spectacular at this time of year. Jenny, who blogs at Rock Rose, kindly overlooked the pushiness of my request by not only welcoming ...

April 26, 2010 Today I join 10 designers from Garden Designers Roundtable in posting about focal points. (Photo: English Walled Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden) Placing a focal point in your garden is like wielding a magic wand to cast a spell over your visitors. A well-placed object has the power ...

March 22, 2010 Over spring break we drove 3,200 miles (5,149 km) round-trip to Florida, with stops in Orlando, Miami, Everglades National Park, the Keys (all the way to Key West), and finally Naples to see the brand-new botanical garden there. Planted last August and opened to the public in ...

February 16, 2010 Today is Foliage Follow-Up, a day for garden bloggers to celebrate foliage after admiring flowers for Bloom Day. In my freeze-recovering garden, spring has been slow to make an appearance, which is why my favorite greenery right now is brand-new. Here is fresh new growth on one ...

February 10, 2010 The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center‘s name can be misleading. Its native-plant gardens do not exclusively or even predominantly feature wildflowers. Hearing about the place, one might reasonably imagine sunny meadows colored by Texas bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and coreopsis, and the Wildflower Center does grow them. But ...