Containers

November 01, 2010 The new-baby garden is growing by leaps and bounds. My garden is two years old now. A year ago, I marked Tecolote Hill’s 1st birthday with a series of before-and-after pictures, which helped me see what I’d accomplished and what I wanted to do next. (You can ...

November 01, 2010 The new-baby garden is growing by leaps and bounds. My garden is two years old now. A year ago, I marked Tecolote Hill’s 1st birthday with a series of before-and-after pictures, which helped me see what I’d accomplished and what I wanted to do next. (You can ...

October 22, 2010 Like a contemporary fairy-tale cottage, the home of James David and Gary Peese is glimpsed through the embrace of the surrounding garden: a fascinating, wow-inducing, richly planted—and richly hardscaped—yet intimate and surprisingly unpretentious garden. This was my final stop on last Saturday’s Open Days garden tour. James ...

October 21, 2010 Continuing my westward route across Austin on Saturday’s Open Days tour, I headed to the Westlake garden at the Jones residence multimillion-dollar, 11,000 square foot mansion (as per Trulia). This is the view from their elevated front terrace. What? Those buildings? Downtown Austin, of course. I was ...

October 20, 2010 Deborah Hornickel added on to her charming Bryker Woods home a couple of years ago, extending its footprint into her back garden, which you can see pre-remodel in my Open Days 2006 post about Deborah’s garden. Visiting post-remodel on Saturday’s Open Days tour, I found it to ...

October 19, 2010 My third stop on Saturday’s Garden Conservancy tour took me to the elegant, hilltop garden overlooking downtown Austin. Surrounding a New Orleans-style Pemberton Heights home and shaded by majestic live oaks, the garden felt lush, green, and classically serene. Pictured above, a cut-stone path edged in dwarf ...

October 18, 2010 There was plenty of Patch magic to go around during the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour last Saturday. Designer Philip Leveridge, who blogs about his garden at East Side Patch, his wife Leah, and their two young children seem to derive much enjoyment from their enticing, lawn-free ...

October 17, 2010 ‘Sharkskin’ agave and ‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave at the Utility Research Garden The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Austin tour was held yesterday, with 6 private gardens open to the public. My first stop was the ambiguously named Utility Research Garden, which I imagined to be an experimental garden ...

October 14, 2010 Yesterday the Director of Flora & Fauna at Lake Austin Spa, the talented Trisha Shirey, gave me an early morning tour of the spa’s gardens, which she has tended for more than 26 years. A staff of nine full-time gardeners assists her in organically maintaining and updating ...

October 11, 2010 Afternoon is the golden time in my garden. Morning light only briefly touches it. Agaves, yuccas, bamboos, and grasses are clustered on the west end of my garden because it gets the most sun, and they look illuminated from within as the setting sun shines through their ...

October 09, 2010 A toy dump truck has to be the most unusual planter I’ve ever seen, and this golden barrel cactus looks right at home in it. I spotted this playful combo parked on the front lawn of an Allandale home yesterday. Towering on either side of it were ...

September 29, 2010 Blissful weather has this Austin gardener walking on air. Summer is banished this week, with dry, cool air from the north and highs in the lower to mid-80s, and lows in the upper 50s giving us a little nip in the air in the morning. The garden ...

September 22, 2010 Boy, was I surprised to see agaves in Madison, Wisconsin, at Olbrich Botanical Gardens on my recent visit. Well, sure, they’re in containers and must spend the winter in a greenhouse, but still it was fun to see these familiar faces out of context. This border surrounds ...

September 21, 2010 Architecture in the garden makes me happy, especially when I’m taking pictures. It can be used to frame a view, like this series of doorways. Walls are nice too, and they don’t have to be made of stone. The courtyard garden at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, ...

September 16, 2010 During our visit to Madison, Wisconsin, last weekend, I noticed that big, bold tropical plants were used everywhere to great effect far from their natural climate. For this month’s Foliage Follow-Up, I’ll show you what caught my eye at Allen Centennial Gardens on the University of Wisconsin ...

September 07, 2010 Sea holly, or eryngo (Eryngium leavenworthii) I tried watching an instructional DVD about using my new camera on Sunday but fell asleep halfway through. When I awoke I decided a real-life test drive should be the first step, at least to try out the semi-automatic settings. So ...