Virtual book tour for Indoor Plant Decor, plus a Bonsai Tool Set Giveaway
May 06, 2013 My friends Kylee Baumle (Our Little Acre) and Jenny Peterson (J Peterson Garden Design) have co-authored a brand-new book called Indoor Plant Decor: The Design Stylebook for Houseplants. To celebrate and help publicize its release, I’m participating in their cyber book party. And you know what a ...
Read This: Yards and Fine Foliage
April 08, 2013 Two new books from St. Lynn’s Press are well worth some of the precious real estate on your bedside table as you start making plans for your garden this spring. I’ve followed Santa Barbara, California, landscape architect, garden writer, and funny guy Billy Goodnick online for several ...
Giveaway: The Drunken Botanist and seeds to grow your own cocktails
April 01, 2013Cocktail time!“Every great drink starts with a plant,” writes Amy Stewart in her new book The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World’s Great Drinks. “If you’re a gardener, I hope this book inspires a cocktail party.” Stewart, a former Austinite, often writes about the intersection of ...
Why Grow That When You Can Grow This? review & giveaway
December 11, 2012Why Grow That…You can’t help but feel curious about a gardening book titled as provocatively as this one. Why Grow That When You Can Grow This? 255 Extraordinary Alternatives to Everyday Problem Plants is the work of Andrew Keys, a blogger at Garden Smackdown, the creator of Garden ...
Read This: Agaves: Living Sculptures for Landscapes and Containers
December 04, 2012 Do you have an agave lover on your holiday shopping list? Or do you want to know more about these marvelous, architectural plants yourself? Or maybe, just maybe, you fantasize about plant hunting on rocky, treacherous hillsides in remote Mexico? Then check out Greg Starr’s Agaves: Living ...
Read This: The Gardener’s Guide to Cactus
July 09, 2012 Cactus is one of those categories of plant that is either hated or adored. One either shuns cactus altogether or turns into a cactus nut, acquiring as many species as possible, filling one’s garden with spiny specimens, and building greenhouses (always more than one) to house freeze-tender ...
Read This: The Undaunted Garden, 2nd edition
July 07, 2012 In 1994 my husband and I bought our first home in Austin, and I wanted to make a garden. Along the driveway a large, triangular bed, outlined by flat pieces of limestone, had already been carved out of the lawn by the previous owners. By the time ...
Gardening is a dialogue: Reading Joe Eck’s Elements of Garden Design
February 13, 2012 I just finished reading Elements of Garden Design by Joe Eck, a delightful series of essays on the theory and practice of garden design. It’s a wonderful book for beginners and experienced gardeners alike, and should be read while curled up on the couch during these last ...
Read This: Handmade Garden Projects
January 11, 2012 “A collection of plants, however choice and brilliantly well-tended, doesn’t become a real garden until it takes on the character and personality of the gardener behind it. The best gardens—those we fall into for hours, appearing new with every visit—are ones in which the owners are telling ...
Read This: Waterwise Plants for Sustainable Gardens
January 03, 2012 The ongoing drought in Texas has focused the attention of gardeners, and homeowners in general, on making smarter, more sustainable choices in the garden: using plants that need less water, reducing or eliminating thirsty lawns, and embracing a more open, xeric aesthetic. These considerations, while vital here, ...
Read This: Concrete Garden Projects
September 24, 2011 Are you looking for a fun garden project this fall? A way to add clean-lined flair to your garden? I have just the book recommendation for you. Concrete Garden Projects: Easy & Inexpensive Containers, Furniture, Water Features & More by Camilla Arvidsson and Malin Nilsson is a ...
Giveaway! The Edible Front Yard
June 13, 2011 My friend and colleague Ivette Soler, aka The Germinatrix, has just published her first book, The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden (Timber Press, 2011). I’m so happy for her accomplishment and am certain her book will do well. Ivette has ...
Read This: Tomorrow’s Garden
June 08, 2011 I came of age as a gardener when the native-plant movement was already well-established, in a progressive city that encourages its citizens to harvest rainwater, recycle yard trimmings through a city composting program, replace lawn grass with xeric plantings, and forgo weed-and-feed chemical treatments for their lawns ...
Read This: Chanticleer, a Pleasure Garden
June 06, 2011 I stumbled upon Chanticleer Garden by happy accident while on a driving trip down the East Coast during the summer of 2008. It was, and still is, the most engaging, playful, and beautiful garden I’ve seen. (Click here for the first of my six posts about Chanticleer.) ...
Read This: Armitage’s Vines and Climbers
May 04, 2011 Vertical gardening has gotten a lot of attention lately (see my recent review of Garden Up!), and deservedly so. While gardeners have always planted vines and greened up their walls, a renewed interest makes sense for those of us who garden on tight urban or fenced-in suburban ...
Garden Up! Vertical gardening cyber book party & giveaway
March 14, 2011 Today is the official launch of Garden Up! Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spaces, a new book by Susan Morrison and Rebecca Sweet, my friends and colleagues at Garden Designers Roundtable. To celebrate, Rebecca and Susan are hosting a cyber book party with 7 great ...
