Plant This: Yellow spider lilies
October 19, 2019 Golden hour is a lot more golden when yellow spider lilies (Lycoris aurea) are blooming. Even after a hot, dry summer, these tough but glorious bulbs popped up right on schedule with our first fall rain. Each day brings new flowers as tardier blossoms continue to unfurl ...
Plant This: Dwarf Barbados cherry
October 11, 2019 Are you looking for a native Texas shrub (native to South Texas) that stays 3-to-4 feet tall, attracts pollinators with pretty pink-and-cream flowers in spring and early fall, produces small red fruits that birds love, and is evergreen in mild winters? Oh, and did I mention that ...
Provence lavender fields and rosy Roussillon
August 14, 2019 Summer in Provence — what do you think of? Fields of lavender and sunflowers, sun-washed hill towns, buzzing cicadas, hot days and cool nights, a glass of wine at a small table along a cobblestone street? Yes, yes, and yes. Years after falling for the region’s rugged ...
Datura superbloom
August 07, 2019 From such little seeds, what a profusion of flowers! Two evenings in a row this week, my seed-grown datura (Datura wrightii) unfurled more than two dozen blossoms, which shine like spotlights through the night and into the next morning. It’s a superbloom! Here’s how they look as ...
Plant This: ‘Purple Pillar’ Rose of Sharon
August 05, 2019 Do you ever come home with a plant you don’t know what to do with and just stick it in the most neglected, out-of-the-way place, dust off your hands, and say, “Well, little plant, good luck”? I know you do. All gardeners do this. That’s what I ...
Welcome to Colorado and High Plains Environmental Center: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
June 23, 2019 Just two hours away by plane but a mile high in altitude, Denver is a world away from subtropical Austin thanks to its short growing season (freezes can occur as late as June and as early as September), low humidity (ahhh!), and aridity (just 15 inches of ...
Moon flowers and sun flowers
June 19, 2019 I returned home Monday afternoon from five marvelous days of garden touring and sightseeing in the Denver area, where I attended the annual Garden Bloggers Fling. Night-blooming datura (Datura wrightii) greeted me when the sun went down. As dusk fell, it unfurled platter-sized, white blossoms with a ...
Wild for wildflowers at Mueller’s Southwest Greenway
June 10, 2019 A week ago I buzzed around Mueller, a sustainable, mixed-use neighborhood built on the site of Austin’s old Mueller Airport. When the concrete runways and asphalt parking lots were jackhammered out, acres of blackland prairie soil saw the sun for the first time in decades. What an ...
Cat’s pollinator garden with a canyon view
May 16, 2019 Three years ago my friend Cat Jones (check out her IG and blog) and her husband, Derrick, newly empty nesters, sold their house and Cat’s lovely garden and moved to a different home in their Steiner Ranch neighborhood, not to downsize but — fellow gardeners, can you ...
Springtime in Mom’s garden
May 11, 2019 Clematis ‘Jackmanii’ in full flower is like a constellation of purple stars. While strolling through my mother’s north Austin garden between rain showers last week, I was bowled over by the display. This is the best I’ve ever seen her clematis bloom. Adding more purple to the ...
Cactus bloom for my garden class
May 05, 2019 Just 8 hours before my garden class/tour began (the first Garden Spark Tour, a new offering from Garden Spark), the sky was falling in parts of Austin, dumping up to 7 inches of rain in just a few hours and washing out low-water crossings. Thankfully, here in ...
Spring flowers and foliage at Dallas Arboretum
April 25, 2019 At Dallas Arboretum last week, masses of foxgloves were blooming throughout the gardens. Hot pink is lovely… …but I like even better these lilac and mauve foxgloves planted under gnarled vitex trees. Pretty from any angle Honeybees enjoy the freckled flowers too. We stopped in A Woman’s ...
Wildflowers and Succulents: A Texas-English garden, part 2
April 11, 2019 Doorways in chunky stucco walls frame vista after flowery vista in the garden of Jenny Stocker, also known as Rock Rose, the title of her blog. I showed you half of her Austin garden yesterday. Today I’ll lead you through the rest, starting with the sunken garden ...
Hill Country bluebonnet drive
April 05, 2019 Bluebonnets peak a little later in the Hill Country than in Austin and San Antonio. The superbloom I photographed south of San Antonio two weeks ago whetted my appetite for more, and since Austin’s roadside ‘bonnets have faded, I headed into the Hill Country on Wednesday. Cruising ...
Spring evening at home
March 28, 2019 This has been the most beautiful week of spring, with soft, warm days, cool breezes, and wildflowers galore, including a patch of Texas bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis) in my gravel front walk. Orange creamsicle flowers on gray globemallow (Sphaeralcea incana) Pink cascade on the weeping ‘Traveller’ redbud (Cercis ...
Wildflowers for the dead at Sutherland Springs Cemetery
March 24, 2019 How did I forget the name Sutherland Springs? While passing through this town of 600 people on my wildflower drive last Thursday, a riotous carpet of flowers caught my eye. I hit the brakes and pulled into Sutherland Springs Cemetery, then got out of my car to ...
