Splendor in the grass at Rhone Street Gardens: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 07, 2014 The 3rd and final day of touring on the recent Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland, Oregon, dawned cool and misty — exactly what Portland should be, at least according to heat-shunning me. After two days of unusual heat, I was thrilled, even when it started to thunder ...
JJ De Sousa’s bold garden digs: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 31, 2014 What’s black and white and red-orange all over? The stylishly mod yet playful garden of JJ De Sousa, that’s what. Owner of Digs Inside & Out home-and-garden shop, which I visited pre-Fling, JJ has an enviable talent for creating inviting, colorful garden rooms, perfect for entertaining, which ...
Loree Bohl’s Danger Garden: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 27, 2014 One of the most anticipated gardens on the 2014 Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland, Oregon, recently was Danger Garden, the plant-lustful playground of one of our hosts, Loree of Danger Garden blog fame. With an adoration for spiny, spiky, and bold-foliage plants and an artistic eye for ...
Coneflower and tower power at the Wildflower Center
June 18, 2014 Evening hours last Thursday at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center drew me to the gardens like a moth to flame. And flaming hot it was too — about 97 F (36.1 C) when I arrived at 5 pm. You may already know this about me: despite ...
Coneflower cornucopia and other garden delights
June 12, 2014 The garden photobomber strikes again, this time peeking out of a bower of purple coneflower and ‘Color Guard’ yucca. A wider view shows that I was being watched as I photographed the pond garden. Early summer is a pretty time here, as the coneflowers color-coordinate with the ...
New perspective on the stock-tank pond garden
May 30, 2014 I don’t think I’ve ever shown this view of the stock-tank pond garden and shed. I shot it through the living-room windows, which is why the colors are a bit dark and green-tinged. But it’s fun to study an elevated long view of what I normally photograph ...
All-American blue and red in my garden
May 26, 2014 I threw a little soiree in honor of an out-of-town friend last week and got my garden all spruced up for the occasion. The last of the live oak leaves — or as close to last as I’m going to get — were finally banished, chairs and ...
Gardens on Tour 2014: Tait Moring’s garden on Bee Caves Road
May 14, 2014 Here’s a garden I’ve shown you twice before, but I never get tired of touring it. Beautifully designed, inviting, with whimsical and personal vignettes, landscape architect Tait Moring‘s personal garden on Bee Caves Road has been previously featured on the Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour. (So were ...
Screech owlet in the house
May 13, 2014 We’d seen glimpses of two owlets in the owl box — a couple of fuzzy heads jostling when Mom or Dad swooped in with dinner — but yesterday was my first clear sighting of one of the screech owl babies. He or she perched confidently in the ...
Garden walk as spring – and live oak leaf drop – begin
March 14, 2014 My sore muscles today are payment for a beautiful gardening day yesterday. I puttered about, hefting bags of mulch and decomposed granite, repotting a few containers, planting a couple of mahonias (after 5 months in nursery pots in my back yard — the shame!), pruning, and generally ...
Plant This: ‘Winter Gem’ boxwood
February 18, 2014 Winter is when you really appreciate the evergreens in your garden, even in green-winter places like central Texas. While I rely heavily on non-shrub evergreens like agave, yucca, and sotol, I also have a soft spot for oh-so-English boxwood, specifically the cultivar ‘Winter Gem’ (Buxus sinica var ...
Evening in the garden after the late-winter cut-back
February 17, 2014 We woke to fog yesterday, and in the soft light and early morning chill, I got started on the garden’s annual cut-back of perennials and grasses. Six hours later, with muscles aching but the garden cleaned up for spring, I called it a day. I had much ...
Support Your Independent Nursery Month: A visit to Vivero Growers
October 01, 2013Support your local nurseries, y’all! October is Support Your Independent Nursery month — or so I’ve declared for the past several years. Every October I write a post or even a series about some of Austin’s locally owned nurseries, and I encourage other bloggers to do the same ...
Autumn light and a morning garden stroll
September 24, 2013 October has arrived early in Austin. Since Saturday we’ve all been thrilling to temperatures in the 80s and low 90sF, with a dry, northerly breeze. While those temps may sound summery to some of my readers — those who do not live and garden under the Death ...
Plant This: Crinum procerum
September 10, 2013 Hot-climate gardens need a water feature to counteract summer’s heat with a feeling of cool wetness. My stock-tank pond serves that purpose in my garden, plus it gives me a chance to grow a few plants that like wet feet, like this Crinum procerum ‘Splendens’. With burgundy, ...
Potted plants and stripey leaves for Foliage Follow-Up
June 16, 2013 It’s so simple, but I really enjoy this collection of potted plants on my back steps. I can see them from my bedroom and living room windows, and they’re a focal point when sitting outside on the upper patio. I just chose single plants to pot up ...
