East meets Midwest in the garden of Linda Brazill and Mark Golbach, Part 1
July 06, 2022 Back in 2010, my husband traveled to Madison for the IRONMAN Wisconsin race (which he finished!), and I tagged along as cheerleader. Oh and also to see gardens. I was a big fan of the design-focused blog Each Little World by Linda Brazill and Mark Golbach and ...
Kicking off Madison Fling: People, badgers, barns, and a bountiful rooftop garden
July 04, 2022 Farm country scenery at the Flower Factory near Madison In late June I joined approximately 50 garden bloggers, Instagrammers, podcasters, and YouTubers in picturesque Madison, Wisconsin, for the 13th annual Garden Bloggers Fling. After a COVID hiatus of two years, and a heroic display of patience, stamina, ...
In the night garden
June 06, 2022 The night garden in early summer glows with spires of creamy, bell-shaped blossoms. ‘Bright Edge’ yucca sends up these towers of flowers, perfect for a moonlight garden. Paleleaf yucca (Y. pallida) gets in on the act too, sending up its own tall flower spike over powder-blue leaves ...
Back to the garden of good and evil
May 25, 2022 My friend Lori of The Gardener of Good and Evil is always in the middle of a project. I don’t know how she finds the time and energy after working on other people’s gardens all day, but Lori leaps into projects in all seasons, never shying away ...
Low-water natives in front, party in the back
May 21, 2022 The southwest Austin home my friend Laura Wills and her husband, Eric, share isn’t in the country, but it feels semi-rural thanks to a 2-acre yard and out-of-sight neighbors. The front yard alone is enormous, and most people would sod it with turf grass and spend hours ...
Heart of stone: Tait Moring’s garden
May 18, 2022 Amid the flurry of gardens I had the pleasure of visiting in late April, landscape architect Tait Moring‘s garden stands out, as always, for its evocative stonework and a magpie collection of found objects, boyhood collections, and castoffs from clients’ gardens, which Tait assembles into art for ...
Spring in plant collector John Ignacio’s garden
May 13, 2022 Last October I had the pleasure of visiting John Ignacio’s northwest Austin garden, a treasure box of rare plants that John has collected (including on a plant-hunting expedition with the late John Fairey) and hybridized. I returned this April to see it at the beginning of the ...
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 ...
Coleson Bruce’s crevice garden in spring flower
May 04, 2022 Two weeks ago Coleson Bruce invited me back to his garden to see it in spring flower. I’d first visited Coleson’s garden last fall — a garden unlike any other I’ve seen in Austin or even Texas. Colorado-style crevice gardens are unusual here, and Coleson’s is not ...
Gathering spaces in Ruthie Burrus Garden, part 2
May 02, 2022 In my last post I hope I wowed you — as I was wowed — by the colorful wildflower meadow and textural spiky-soft shade garden of Ruthie Burrus. If you missed it, check out Part 1 of my visit to Ruthie’s West Austin garden. Today we’ll explore ...
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, ...
Blue trees in Austin’s Pease Park spotlight tree loss around the world
April 11, 2022 If you’ve visited Kingsbury Commons at Austin’s Pease Park lately, you may have encountered a startling and surprisingly beautiful sight: clusters of trees with Majorelle blue trunks and limbs. The Blue Trees is a temporary environmental art installation by New Zealand artist Konstantin Dimopoulos. It brings our ...
Comings and goings in the spring garden
March 30, 2022 She ran late by a week or two, but Spring finally made up her mind and sprung. Last week ornamental trees like Mexican plum (Prunus mexicana) flushed into flower as live oaks overhead began their annual mass shedding of “evergreen” leaves. It’s autumn and spring all at ...
Come hear a talk about using art to enhance a garden, plus all about Garden Spark
March 23, 2022 Five years ago I started a speaker series about garden design, asking designers and landscape architects I admired, garden authors I found interesting, and other design thinkers to come share their ideas. I called it Garden Spark, with the tagline “garden design talks for thinking gardeners.” It ...
I painted my brick house white for a fresh look
March 12, 2022 Let me join the throngs of bloggers writing about painting dated brick houses white or off-white. After years of mulling it over, we took the leap of painting our brick a few weeks ago, and I’m loving the fresh, clean, more modern look. Before Since moving into ...
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 ...
