Trolls, grasses, and a storybook children’s garden at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
November 03, 2021 We traveled north in early October to enjoy fall foliage in New Hampshire, stopping first in Maine for a couple of days. A garden on my must-see list: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, a 300-acre public garden in Boothbay. Here’s part 2 of my visit; click here for ...
Rainbow of dahlias and mangaves wow at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
November 02, 2021 My Northeast road trip in early October wasn’t only about seeing fall foliage. Naturally it included lots of garden visits too, starting with Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. Only 17 days remained until the garden closed for the season (what a strange concept for this Southerner), ...
Betty Ford Alpine Gardens grows high in the Rockies
August 05, 2021 At 8,200 feet above sea level, Betty Ford Alpine Gardens in Vail, Colorado, claims bragging rights as the highest botanical garden in North America. It’s named, of course, in honor of the former first lady, who along with her husband, former President Gerald Ford, was a beloved ...
Tour of P. Allen Smith’s Moss Mountain Farm: Terrace Garden and Sister Oak
July 07, 2021 After St. Louis, Mom and I headed back to Texas via Little Rock, Arkansas. On the morning of June 17th, we wound our way into the hills northwest of the city and joined 80 others with a reservation for lunch and a tour of Moss Mountain Farm, ...
Home gardening inspiration, plus a boxwood garden and Chinese garden: Missouri Botanical Garden, part 4
June 27, 2021 Visiting Missouri Botanical Garden (MOBOT) earlier this month for the first time, I expected to breeze through the Center for Home Gardening and get on to more interesting parts of the garden. Instead I found myself poking around this space for close to an hour. I was ...
Climatron tropical house, origami sculpture, and more: Missouri Botanical Garden, part 1
June 22, 2021 A week ago today I road-tripped with my mom through Arkansas up to St. Louis to visit Missouri Botanical Garden, which I’d long wanted to see. I’d always thought of St. Louis as being not that far away from Austin. After all, Missouri is part of the ...
Wildflowers, water features, and flying pigs add charm to no-lawn garden in Cedar Park
June 10, 2021 Whenever I see a no-lawn, front-yard garden in suburbia, I know a daring and enthusiastic gardener lives there. Such is the case with Cedar Park homeowner Frances Fortanely, whose garden I had the pleasure of seeing last week. Pulling up to the curb, I was greeted by ...
Early spring blooms and Athena the owl at Wildflower Center
March 20, 2021 When they’re offered, I take advantage of late-admission hours to gardens. The light is better for photography in the early evening, and you have a better chance of seeing wildlife. On Thursday our local native-plant botanical garden, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, stayed open late, and ...
Cowboy pool, colorful outdoor living: Lorie and Michael Kinler’s Fort Worth Garden
March 05, 2021 Last fall, during a weekend trip to Dallas, I was invited to visit the Fort Worth garden of Lorie and Michael Kinler. The Kinlers are the design duo behind Redenta’s Landscape Design Kinler Landscape Architecture (renamed in 2022), formerly affiliated with Redenta’s Garden nursery in Dallas. A ...
Colorful fall foliage at the Wildflower Center, part 1
November 17, 2020 Fall pounced on Austin quickly this year, then retreated for nearly a month, and then dashed back in, ushering in a brief flare of color. We’d planned to visit Lost Maples this month in hopes of seeing the bigtooth maples flaming red and orange, but we missed ...
Houston Botanic Garden’s surprising cactus garden and more – part 2
September 25, 2020 During my inaugural visit to the brand-new Houston Botanic Garden last weekend, my eyes widened when I rounded a bend and saw this — a rocky garden of agave, yucca, and cactus. After all, this is Houston, city of sauna-like summers and 50 inches of annual rainfall ...
Water, water everywhere in Cat’s wildlife-friendly garden
September 22, 2020 Every time I visit my friend Cat Jones‘s garden, it’s lovelier than the time before. Over the past 4 to 5 years she’s been busily making her Steiner Ranch garden, which overlooks a wildflower meadow and a wooded canyon, into a retreat for her and her family ...
Oxblood lilies cavort with agaves in Tom Ellison’s garden
September 10, 2020 A couple days ago, between rainstorms, I returned to Tom Ellison’s garden to see his crop of oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida). Austin’s gardens, especially in older neighborhoods like Tom’s own Tarrytown, blaze with diminutive red flags after the first good rain of late summer. Although the oxblood ...
Reopening at San Antonio Botanical Garden, part 2
May 21, 2020 A wildflower meadow studded with Yucca rostrata in bloom — yes, please! Let’s continue with last week’s visit to San Antonio Botanic Garden and this path into the cactus and succulent garden. More flowering yuccas! And more, with shiny-leaved palm trees and a blue, blue sky. And ...
Mexico City: Bosque de Chapultepec botanical garden and more
April 05, 2020 One morning during our stay in Mexico City we explored the city’s “lungs”, the Bosque de Chapultepec, or Chapultepec Forest. At 1,695 acres, it’s one of the largest city parks in the Western Hemisphere. Chapultepec means “grasshopper hill” in the Aztec language, and in fact the park ...
Mexico City: Frida Kahlo’s Blue House and garden
March 23, 2020 Bird of paradise flower at Frida Kahlo’s Blue House Before the scope of the coronavirus crisis had crystallized, my husband, daughter, foreign exchange-student daughter, and I made an early spring-break trip to Mexico City. Had we known how fast the situation would escalate at home, I don’t ...
