Water and stone flow along Austin’s Bull Creek
February 26, 2016 Spring is springing all over Austin this week, with redbuds and Texas mountain laurels in pink and purple bloom. But last weekend things still looked a bit drab and wintry at Bull Creek west of N. Capital of Texas Highway, even though it was comfortably shorts weather ...
Belting It Out along the boardwalk on Lady Bird Lake
February 22, 2016 I’ve walked the hike-and-bike trail around Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin many times. But on Saturday, for the first time, I walked the relatively new boardwalk portion of the trail (completed in 2014), which starts east of the Congress Avenue Bridge and ends at International Shores ...
Creek hopping at St. Edward’s Park
January 31, 2016 Winter days in the upper 70s must not be squandered, as every Austinite knows. The tiny parking lot at St. Edward’s Park was overflowing yesterday morning, but the trails themselves were blissfully quiet, with only a few other hikers apparently willing to risk wet feet to cross ...
Drive-By Gardens: Xeriscapes taking off at Mueller neighborhood
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 ...
Public plaza at San Antonio’s Pearl, an urban re-use neighborhood
January 06, 2016 The old Pearl Brewery in San Antonio might have been razed, once its brewing days were over. Instead its century-old manufacturing buildings have been transformed into restaurants and even a boutique hotel and embraced by walkable streets lined with shops and apartment buildings. Public green spaces throughout ...
Friday fun, a garden gift, and a birth announcement
December 04, 2015 Here’s the fun! This giant steel spider sculpture — it’s friendly, I think; notice the leg wave — can be found at Mueller neighborhood’s Southwest Greenway, my in-laws’ new neighborhood (which means I’ll be doing garden drive-bys in Mueller a lot more often). With a bellyful of ...
Looking Up at Laguna Gloria and Austin City Hall
November 23, 2015 Last Saturday, a chilly, blustery day under a brilliant cobalt-blue sky, my dad and I attended two docent-led tours about the landscape architecture at cultural sites in Austin: one at Laguna Gloria, the other at Austin City Hall. Led by landscape architects who’ve restored or designed these ...
It’s not hard to enjoy the Big Easy
July 29, 2015 If you want to feel that you’ve traveled to a foreign city without leaving the country, visit New Orleans and stay in the historic French Quarter. We made the 8-hour drive from Austin a couple of weeks ago — our first stop on a family road trip ...
Evergreen Brick Works community greenspace: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 30, 2015 For nearly 100 years, Don Valley Brick Works supplied Toronto with masonry bricks and helped the city rebuild and grow after a devastating fire. By 1984, however, the kilns were closed down, and the factory buildings languished. Urban explorers and partying teens found their way in, and ...
Fall foliage and waterfall along Bull Creek
November 27, 2014 Have you ever been surprised to discover something near your house that you’d never known was there? I was on Tuesday morning. Not five minutes from home, I noticed for the first time a narrow road paralleling busy Highway 360 just south of Spicewood Springs Road. On ...
Leaf peeping and Living a Great Story at Lady Bird Lake
November 25, 2014 After sightseeing and shopping on vibrant South Congress Avenue on Sunday, yesterday my dad and stepmother joined me for a post-lunch, 3-mile walk around Lady Bird Lake. Rusty orange bald cypress, golden cedar elm, and fiery red crepe myrtles have set the shore ablaze. This is as ...
The High Line park in NYC, a skyline promenade, part 2
October 19, 2014 At the end of Part 1 of my post about visiting the High Line in New York City last weekend, we’d just entered Chelsea Market Passage. After the dimness of the passageway, you exit into bright sunlight on the aptly named Sun Deck. Wooden lounge chairs resembling ...
Up on the High Line, a skyline promenade
October 19, 2014 Have you ever flown across the country to see one garden? I did last weekend. Rapturous articles and blog posts about the High Line, New York City’s garden-park conversion of an abandoned elevated rail line through the city’s old Meatpacking District, had seduced me for 5 years ...
Exploring outside Portland: Columbia River Gorge, lavender farm on the Fruit Loop, and Cannon Beach
August 20, 2014 Before the Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland, Oregon, last month, my husband and I took a few days to explore the city and surrounding region. On our last day we rented a car and drove east along I-84 to see the majestic Columbia River Gorge. Vista House, ...
Inspired landscape architecture at Cavalliere Park in Scottsdale
May 29, 2014 While touring low-water gardens in Phoenix and nearby Scottsdale, Arizona, in early April with my friend Noelle Johnson, aka AZ Plant Lady, we stopped at Cavalliere Park. Constructed in 2012, the park is a model of sustainability and is a 3-star SITES-certified project. Aside from all that, ...
Xeriscape is not a zeroscape: Scottsdale Xeriscape Garden demonstrates the beauty of saving water
May 09, 2014 It’s a common mispronunciation, but it’s also a bit of a Freudian slip: saying “zeroscape” instead of “xeriscape.” To xeriscape is to design a garden that conserves water through the use of drought-tolerant plants grouped according to water needs, water-collection systems, mulch, non-wasteful irrigation, and other rather ...
