Garden marries home at destination nursery/garden shop Terrain
June 20, 2016 Anthropologie meets Flora Grubb Gardens? Yes, please! While in the Brandywine Valley outside of Philadelphia earlier this month, I was eager to visit Terrain, a nursery, home and garden shop, and restaurant located in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. (There’s a second location in Westport, Connecticut.) Founded by the ...
Dogwood enchantment and a wild windstorm at Winterthur Gardens
June 16, 2016 The Brandywine Valley of Pennsylvania has been calling my name since 2008, when I passed through during a family road trip and fell in love with the rolling, wooded countryside, its charming villages and Revolutionary War history, and numerous estate gardens that make it a garden traveler’s ...
Drive-By Gardens: Contemporary curb appeal in Shoalwood
May 17, 2016 Last week, while cruising around north-central Austin’s Shoalwood and south Allandale neighborhoods, I noticed a trend: contemporary curb appeal with gravel and concrete-paver paths, low walls and fences to separate public and private areas, and turf reduction in favor of lower-water plants. Take this 1950s ranch, for ...
Foliage in full spring swing: May Foliage Follow-Up
May 16, 2016 The day after Bloom Day is Foliage Follow-Up, a day to give foliage plants their due. This month I’m leading with the fresh spring greens of ornamental grasses, like shade-loving inland sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium). Their “oats” are just forming, and by mid-summer will turn from apple ...
Dry-garden lushness: Linda Peterson’s San Antonio garden
April 18, 2016 Rooftop view of the walled courtyard and front garden. Not a blade of lawn grass anywhere, nor is it missed. Seeing one of my new favorite gardens requires an hour-and-a-half road trip to San Antonio, but it’s worth every trafficky mile. Linda Peterson, whose dreamy garden I ...
Dreamy blues and a few surprises in the garden of Lori Daul
March 29, 2016 When a gardener urges you to come over to see something in bloom, you know you better say yes. Lori Daul of The Gardener of Good and Evil tempted me into a quick visit last Saturday — not with an apple but with “the last of the ...
Spring blooms and greens
March 26, 2016 My only Texas bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) this year is a volunteer that popped up in a decomposed-granite path next to the driveway. I should just seed this whole path with bluebonnets and enjoy the show next year. The live oaks that shade my entire garden recently dropped ...
Fresh greens and purple power for Foliage Follow-Up
March 16, 2016 Chartreuse and dark gray make a trendy combo that’s as pleasing in the garden as in the home. Evergreen Texas sedge (Carex texensis) practically glows in spring with the addition of nubby seedheads. A wider view shows purple heart (Tradescantia pallida) romping through the sedge, with the ...
Dining on Vinaigrette’s garden patio in South Austin
February 21, 2016 I’m not a foodie, and I don’t get too excited about new restaurants opening on a daily basis here in Austin. And yet something about salad bistro Vinaigrette caught my attention when author Amy Stewart shared (from Eureka, CA!) an Austin Eater article about its recent opening ...
Aloe from the other siiiiiide
February 02, 2016 With apologies to Adele and her earworm of a song, aloes are still saying hello in my garden this mild winter with spring-like flowering. I find their leaves equally eye-catching, with white spots reminiscent of disco-ball light effects. Believe it or not, this is the same aloe ...
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 ...
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 ...
Grasses and deer-smashes for December Foliage Follow-Up
December 16, 2015 A hard freeze has not yet walloped my garden, but even if it had I’d still be able to enjoy the plants I’m showing today for Foliage Follow-Up. Take pearl millet, aka ‘Vertigo’ grass (Pennisetum purpureum ‘Vertigo’), for example. This was the most-asked-about plant on my garden ...
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 ...
Modern courtyard garden at South Congress Hotel
November 20, 2015 Last weekend I met a friend for drinks at the beautiful new South Congress Hotel bar. (A word of advice: never, ever order the Pink Flamingo, which tasted exactly like a burning tire. After a few grimace-inducing sips, I deemed it undrinkable — my friend agreed — ...
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), ...
