Prairie/Meadow

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 ...

April 09, 2016 When the universe offers a weekend of perfect weather, don’t squander it. Central Texans, if you’re looking for something to do outside this weekend, head on over to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Their spring native-plant sale is being held both Saturday and Sunday, so you ...

April 14, 2015 For my third and final post about last Saturday’s visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, I’ll lead with the state flower and inducer of innumerable spring photo ops: the Texas bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis), pictured here with a smattering of Indian paintbrush (Castilleja indivisa). Flower peeping ...

April 14, 2015 For my third and final post about last Saturday’s visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, I’ll lead with the state flower and inducer of innumerable spring photo ops: the Texas bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis), pictured here with a smattering of Indian paintbrush (Castilleja indivisa). Flower peeping ...

September 19, 2014 Acres of poison ivy and scrub brush had overrun the old dairy farm in Lee, New Hampshire, when Jill Nooney and her husband, Bob Munger, purchased it in 1980. Undaunted, the couple began a decades-long process of clearing weeds and making planting beds, eventually creating a 20-acre ...

July 23, 2014 Both buses filled with 80 hot, tired bloggers bumped into a lavender field at the end of the first touring day of the Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland, Oregon, in mid-July. I tiredly thought, “How nice, a lovely field of lavender.” But what I didn’t realize was ...

September 12, 2012 Michael of Plano Prairie Garden, this is for you. Now that purple pineapples in spiky ballerina skirts and crowns are dancing in my garden, I have Michael to thank. During my visit to his garden last October, he gave me some seedheads from Eryngium leavenworthii, the native ...

October 22, 2011 Saxon Holt, judge of this month’s photo contest at Gardening Gone Wild, says to tell a story with your photo, including no more and no less than what’s needed to convey that story. October’s theme for the contest is “Fill the Frame,” and this is my entry, ...

October 21, 2011 Sometimes you just luck into a great garden visit. Last weekend my family and I drove up to Dallas for the state fair, staying overnight at my father-in-law’s house in Richardson, a northern suburb. The day we left Austin I realized that we would be staying very ...

January 22, 2011 In this age of lawn bashing, let me say this: I am not anti-lawn. Lawn is useful for picnicking, playing sports, throwing a ball for the dog, sunbathing, and providing a restful bit of green amid a garden. A lawn of needed size, maintained without dumping chemicals ...

October 12, 2009 The world is full of beautiful places, and proclaiming one the most beautiful is, I’ll admit, as capricious as crowning one person the most lovely. Still, Yosemite National Park has to rank near the top. My husband and I visited in October of 1995, on a side ...

September 28, 2009 Stalking the urban prairie high atop eight metal legs, her bulbous abdomen glittering with blue and green gazing balls, this 23-ft. tall Shelob-sized spider by Houston artist Dixie Friend Gay (titled ‘Arachnophilia’) is one of three larger-than-life sculptures placed amid native plants and crushed-granite jogging trails at ...

September 28, 2009 Stalking the urban prairie high atop eight metal legs, her bulbous abdomen glittering with blue and green gazing balls, this 23-ft. tall Shelob-sized spider by Houston artist Dixie Friend Gay (titled ‘Arachnophilia’) is one of three larger-than-life sculptures placed amid native plants and crushed-granite jogging trails at ...

October 11, 2007 Cloud Gate, popularly known as the Bean, in Millennium Park I would return to Chicago for the gardens alone. From street-corner planting boxes filled with tumbling perennials and annuals to prairie-style Lurie Garden to the vast Botanic Garden, Chicago had my head swiveling to take it all ...

May 17, 2007 I’d never seen a green roof before, and as this is the first one in Austin I didn’t want to miss my chance. So mom and I drove down to southwest Austin’s Circle C neighborhood, which is near the Wildflower Center, the sponsor of this tour and ...