Rockin’ Demonstration Gardens at the Wildflower Center
November 27, 2011 Friday’s blue skies enticed me outdoors and down to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center for a stroll. For yesterday’s post about the entry courtyard, woodland garden, and Hill Country Stream, click here. A limestone wall separates the woodland garden from the sun-drenched demonstration garden, which opens ...
Rockin' Demonstration Gardens at the Wildflower Center
November 27, 2011 Friday’s blue skies enticed me outdoors and down to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center for a stroll. For yesterday’s post about the entry courtyard, woodland garden, and Hill Country Stream, click here. A limestone wall separates the woodland garden from the sun-drenched demonstration garden, which opens ...
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 ...
Edible wall! Cinderblock wall vegetable garden wows at Big Red Sun
November 08, 2011 The cinderblock wall planter idea just keeps getting bigger and better. At Big Red Sun‘s recently reopened boutique nursery in east Austin, I spotted this edible wall planted in artistically stacked concrete blocks—a riff, perhaps, on the succulent wall at Potted that inspired my own succulent wall? ...
Jenny Stocker’s English Texas gravel garden
November 03, 2011 My friend Jenny Stocker, who blogs at Rock Rose, has shared her garden with me many times over the years. Each time I am struck anew by the beauty of her English-style xeric Texas garden, which shows many native plants to advantage in gravel-mulched, walled courtyards surrounding ...
Fairy tale Halloween at Dallas Arboretum pumpkin patch
October 31, 2011 Happy Halloween! How do you like these warty, spooky, gray pumpkins? These and many, many more are on display now through November 23 at the Dallas Arboretum’s Autumn Festival, a fantasyland of pumpkins and pumpkin houses that attracts hordes of camera-snapping moms and dads and costumed tots ...
The garden loves late October, and so do I
October 30, 2011 Is April the best month in the garden? May? No, surely it’s October, when the Death Star shifts its beam to the Southern Hemisphere, nights offer cool relief, and we even get an occasional rain shower. The garden, released from its summer thrall, responds with elation, bursting ...
Support Your Independent Nursery Month & Giveaway — last day to enter!
October 26, 2011 It’s Support Your Independent Nursery Month! Each Wednesday in October I’ve posted about one of my favorite independent garden centers in the Austin area, including Barton Springs Nursery (where I photographed the chalkboard pictured above!), The Natural Gardener, and The Great Outdoors. Today I’m shining a spotlight ...
Support Your Independent Nursery Month: The Great Outdoors
October 19, 2011It’s Support Your Independent Nursery month! Each Wednesday in October I’m posting about one of my favorite independent garden centers in the Austin area. Today I’m shining a spotlight on The Great Outdoors, located just south of the hip strip known as SoCo on South Congress Avenue. (This ...
Support Your Independent Nursery Month: The Natural Gardener
October 12, 2011 It’s Support Your Independent Nursery month! Each Wednesday in October I’m posting about one of my favorite independent garden centers in the Austin area. Today I’m shining a spotlight on The Natural Gardener, located at 8648 Old Bee Cave Road, just past the “Y” in Oak Hill ...
Getting the blues in the garden
October 08, 2011 A few more long views of the garden reveal just how blue and silver all my accessories are. I used to lean more to browns, golds, and rust, but perhaps I’m trying to visually cool things down these days. I even have a lot of blue and ...
Support Your Independent Nursery Month: Barton Springs Nursery
October 05, 2011 It’s Support Your Independent Nursery month! Each Wednesday in October I’m posting about one of my favorite independent garden centers in the Austin area. Today I’m shining a spotlight on Barton Springs Nursery, located on Bee Caves Road between MoPac and Highway 360. BSN is a great ...
Read This: Concrete Garden Projects
September 24, 2011 Are you looking for a fun garden project this fall? A way to add clean-lined flair to your garden? I have just the book recommendation for you. Concrete Garden Projects: Easy & Inexpensive Containers, Furniture, Water Features & More by Camilla Arvidsson and Malin Nilsson is a ...
The long view: Reflections on Austin’s drought
September 17, 2011 The approach of autumn is a hopeful time for the central Texas gardener. It means we’ve survived another long, hot summer and can enjoy being outdoors again. It means time for the rains to return to revitalize the summer-weary garden, replenish our aquifers and lakes, and offer ...
Tiny Fern bamboo for Foliage Follow Up
September 16, 2011 Not that it’s been the easiest summer to try a new bamboo, a thirstier plant than I usually bother with, but they provide such leafy, touchable, evergreen texture in the garden that I’m willing to give ’em a little extra love, i.e., water. No thirsty annuals or ...
A hellish summer but the garden still lives
September 12, 2011 The most difficult gardening summer I’ve ever experienced is stuttering to an end. We still have triple digit temperatures. We still have no rain. We have smoky skies from devastating wildfires. And yet the garden continues to give joy. It helps that I’ve planted a lot of ...
