The Water-Saving Garden book party and giveaway!
February 29, 2016The Water-Saving GardenMy new book, The Water-Saving Garden: How to Grow a Gorgeous Garden with a Lot Less Water, is officially published! To celebrate, I’m throwing a book-release party, and you’re invited! Six garden blogging friends are joining me today to host on our blogs 7 giveaways that ...
Come to my water-saving talk Saturday morning
February 26, 2016 It’s a beautiful day, and our gardens here in central Texas will be green, lush, and flowery again in a matter of weeks, if not days. Now’s a great time to plan for the hot, dry summer! Join me this Saturday morning, February 27, at 10 am ...
My new book is here! Plus Digging is up for BHG Blogger Award
February 23, 2016 After two years in the making, my new book is released today! To celebrate, I offer you a big bouquet of Texas mountain laurel (Sophora secundiflora) blossoms. Just sprinkle a little grape Kool-Aid powder on your screen, and breathe in — that’s what it really smells like ...
I’m on Central Texas Gardener talking about water-saving gardens
February 05, 2016 I’m on Central Texas Gardener this week! Huge thanks to producer Linda Lehmusvirta and host Tom Spencer for having me on to talk about my new book. The show airs on KLRU, Austin’s PBS station, this Saturday at noon and 4 pm and again on Sunday at ...
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 ...
Watch my teaser trailer for The Water-Saving Garden
December 28, 2015 In-between Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Joy, Spotlight, and your other big-screen viewings this week, take 60 secs to watch my fun new book trailer for The Water-Saving Garden. I packed as much eye candy as I could into it, so enjoy! You’ll even see a couple ...
Drive-By Gardens: Desert-style garden in Wells Branch
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 ...
Smart, water-saving landscaping at UT’s Dealey Center
December 08, 2015 On a chilly, rainy Saturday in mid-November — a quiet traffic day — I headed to the University of Texas campus and actually found street parking at the G. B. Dealey Center for New Media (renamed from the Belo Center in 2021), whose landscaping I’ve wanted to ...
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 ...
Drive-By Gardens: A new lawn-gone garden in my neighborhood
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), ...
Blowsy autumn beauty at Rollingwood Waterwise Garden
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 ...
Evening photo shoot at The Huntington Gardens: GWA Pasadena
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 ...
Dry and Mighty: How to design a dry garden
October 26, 2015 If gravel accented with a few lonely cacti and a cow skull is all that comes to mind when you think of a dry garden, it’s time to update this dusty Old West vision. Drought across the western U.S. and widespread interest in gardening more sustainably, with ...
Come see my garden on tour this Saturday, Oct. 17th
October 12, 2015 After a year of preparation, it’s finally here: my first participation in a garden tour! This Saturday, October 17, from 9 am to 4 pm, my garden will be open to the public, along with 6 others, for the Inside Austin Gardens Tour. On the website, you ...
Falling for the Folly Bowl, a garden amphitheater
October 07, 2015 Twelve years ago, Los Angeles garden designer Susanna Dadd and her husband, artist James Griffith, built a back-yard amphitheater in a ravine alongside their Altadena home. Dubbing it The Folly Bowl, they’ve been hosting free, or nearly free, public concerts each summer, choosing unique performers that will ...
