Color

February 24, 2014 I’m not normally drawn to massive displays of crayon-bright bedding annuals, preferring instead the seasonal beauty and interplay of texture and form provided by perennials, shrubs, and trees. But this winter has been, by Texas standards, rather long and chilly, so when I heard that Dallas Arboretum‘s ...

January 07, 2014 Revisiting my trip to Beijing proved so enjoyable on a cold winter day that I’m continuing the travel theme. Next up: Mexico! In March 2006, just one month after I started this blog, my husband and I traveled to San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico. I ...

August 08, 2013 The San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling wrapped up on June 30 with a cocktail party at Flora Grubb Gardens, a chic garden center named for its owner — and, yes, that’s really her name. Flora is a rock-star nursery owner, her image and her garden style recommendations ...

August 01, 2013 Our 3rd stop on the final day of the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling was the garden of artist and garden designer Keeyla Meadows, a scene of riotous, exuberant color in both plants and structures. Keeyla is the author of Fearless Color Gardens, which I reviewed here ...

June 06, 2013 As we charged into Santa Barbara, California’s Lotusland, knowing we had a limited amount of time and wouldn’t be able to see everything, my first must-see areas were the oft-photographed Aloe Garden and the Blue Garden. Luckily both are fairly close to the visitor’s center. A kidney-shaped, ...

April 24, 2013Lucinda Hutson’s festive home and garden in AustinMy friend Lucinda Hutson invited me over to her purple cottage on Sunday to see her angel’s trumpets in bloom, plus all the rest of her exuberant, flowery garden. Lighting up her quiet Rosedale neighborhood street like a fiesta in full ...

April 24, 2013Lucinda Hutson’s festive home and garden in Austin My friend Lucinda Hutson invited me over to her purple cottage on Sunday to see her angel’s trumpets in bloom, plus all the rest of her exuberant, flowery garden. Lighting up her quiet Rosedale neighborhood street like a fiesta in ...

October 25, 2012Rhapsody in blue What do you expect to see when you visit a desert garden? Cactus, of course, in all its architectural, spiny splendor. I recently attended the annual Garden Writers Association Symposium, held this year in Tucson, Arizona. We were bused to three private gardens, along with ...

October 11, 2012 I’m continuing my sneak preview of the upcoming Inside Austin Gardens Tour, hosted by the Travis County Master Gardeners. In my last post I showed you Donnis Doyle’s colorful, whimsical garden. This garden belongs to her next-door neighbors, Ann and Robin Matthews, and they’ve been friends and ...

October 10, 2012 The Austin garden bloggers recently got a sneak preview of the upcoming Inside Austin Gardens Tour, hosted by the Travis County Master Gardeners. We visited 5 gardens, and I hope to be able to show them all to you before the tour date on October 20th. I’ll ...

July 17, 2012 The Romantic Garden at Denver Botanic Gardens, which I visited earlier this month, is not festooned with the traditional roses, wisteria, and clematis. In dry, high country style, feathery grasses mingle with aromatic salvias, prairie wildflowers, and felt-leaved lamb’s ears. Accenting the garden beds stand a handful ...

May 07, 2012 The Dallas Arboretum is abloom through November 5 with renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly’s colorful, nature-inspired glass sculptures. My family and I visited yesterday, on opening weekend, and were wowed both by the beauty of the pieces and their careful placement in the gardens, sometimes as dramatic ...

May 03, 2012 If you’ve always thought bigger is better where a garden is concerned, think again. This week I spent a little time in East Austin’s Mueller neighborhood, a planned community (on the site of Austin’s old airport) built to encourage a sense of community with houses close to ...

April 08, 2012 Author and designer Lucinda Hutson‘s gabled purple cottage and garden in the Rosedale neighborhood of Austin is as colorful as a basket of Easter eggs… …but even better because it contains scented petals, billowy texture, and something blooming at every turn, like this ‘Julia Child’ rose. When ...

February 21, 2012 I just potted up a purple oxalis in a pretty blue pot for the porch. It really pops against the bronze pots I have there. Glass bead “mulch” is the finishing touch. Hello, spring! All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited ...

January 01, 2012 Do you ever think about what a garden blog requires? Entertaining and informative writing, arresting images, and, for fodder, all those hours spent gardening or visiting other gardens. Keeping a garden blog “fed” regularly is like working a part-time job—for free. It’s also, of course, a creative ...