Lawn Gone

May 02, 2016 New Jersey gardener and author Mike “The Gardener” Podlesny interviewed me recently for his popular Vegetable Gardening Podcast, and you can listen to it here (scroll to bottom). Despite the veggie-centric podcast title, Mike interviews all kinds of gardeners about any gardening topic you might imagine. I’m ...

April 18, 2016 Rooftop view of the walled courtyard and front garden. Not a blade of lawn grass anywhere, nor is it missed. Seeing one of my new favorite gardens requires an hour-and-a-half road trip to San Antonio, but it’s worth every trafficky mile. Linda Peterson, whose dreamy garden I ...

April 13, 2016 Last Wednesday, KUT’s “Morning Edition” host Jennifer Stayton interviewed me for a podcast as part of the Coffee with the Author series at Holy Grounds, a coffee shop/bookstore/gift shop located downtown in St. David’s Episcopal Church. I was honored to join their author series, which is held ...

April 13, 2016 Last Wednesday, KUT’s “Morning Edition” host Jennifer Stayton interviewed me for a podcast as part of the Coffee with the Author series at Holy Grounds, a coffee shop/bookstore/gift shop located downtown in St. David’s Episcopal Church. I was honored to join their author series, which is held ...

April 12, 2016 Last Saturday I joined Jenny of Rock Rose for a road trip to San Antonio. We rumbled down there in her pickup truck, making a quick detour to a San Marcos stoneyard, where she picked up a half-yard of gravel for her garden. Could there be a ...

April 08, 2016 Many times over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Lucinda Hutson‘s purple cottage in the Rosedale neighborhood of central Austin. It’s always a riot of flowers and festive decor. On Tuesday I stopped by to visit again and am so glad I did. Butter-yellow blossoms ...

March 26, 2016 My only Texas bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) this year is a volunteer that popped up in a decomposed-granite path next to the driveway. I should just seed this whole path with bluebonnets and enjoy the show next year. The live oaks that shade my entire garden recently dropped ...

February 02, 2016 With apologies to Adele and her earworm of a song, aloes are still saying hello in my garden this mild winter with spring-like flowering. I find their leaves equally eye-catching, with white spots reminiscent of disco-ball light effects. Believe it or not, this is the same aloe ...

January 11, 2016 A mild winter makes flowering maple (Abutilon) happy, and that makes me happy. I adore its pink-veined, balloon-skirted flowers. Here you see it in the foreground, part of the stock-tank pond garden. Let’s walk up the hillside path, shall we? But first, check out how big the ...

January 08, 2016 On New Year’s Day, we took a stroll through Mueller neighborhood, a New Urban community in east-central Austin. Built on the site of the old airport, where acres of runways and parking lots once sprawled, attractive homes and row houses in a mix of different styles (no ...

December 21, 2015 Lucinda Hutson‘s purple cottage in the Rosedale neighborhood of central Austin is a wonderland of Mexican folk art, colorful furnishings, and brightly painted walls. I had the pleasure of re-visiting last Friday, and brought along new friend Paula Panich, a Los Angeles writer and teacher of garden ...

December 21, 2015 Lucinda Hutson‘s purple cottage in the Rosedale neighborhood of central Austin is a wonderland of Mexican folk art, colorful furnishings, and brightly painted walls. I had the pleasure of re-visiting last Friday, and brought along new friend Paula Panich, a Los Angeles writer and teacher of garden ...

December 19, 2015 In the Wells Branch neighborhood just north of Austin, on the way to my mom’s house, I regularly drive past this desert-style, no-lawn front garden. I’ve watched it evolve from a few tiny plants dotted across an expanse of decomposed granite to its current lusher look, softened ...

November 19, 2015 Bravo to my neighbors, who’ve ripped out their front lawn and replaced it with native groundcovers woolly stemodia (Stemodia lanata) and sedge (probably Carex texensis), accented with xeric specimen plants like Agave parryi var. truncata, gopher plant (Euphorbia rigida), Wheeler sotol (Dasylirion wheeleri), squid agave (Agave bracteosa), ...

November 18, 2015 Last Saturday, a drizzly, cool day, I returned to the West Austin neighborhood of Rollingwood to see how the waterwise garden at city hall had fared over the summer. Designed by Scott Ogden and Lauren Springer Ogden, the garden was installed two years ago. Following an initial ...

October 29, 2015 The Huntington gardens near Los Angeles have, for years, been on my wish list of botanical gardens to visit. So I was thrilled to see an afternoon visit and after-hours photoshoot offered on the itinerary of the Garden Writers Association symposium on September 20. Unfortunately, it was ...