Rock Rose garden abloom before the hailstorm
April 27, 2015 Two weeks ago my friend Jenny Stocker, blogger at Rock Rose and gardener extraordinaire, offered me a division of a water iris for my pond. When I arrived, mid-morning on a sunny, warm day, Jenny gave me a tour and then kindly set me loose to wander ...
The art-adorned, water-saving garden of Mireille Engel
April 24, 2015 Last week I had the pleasure of visiting a new garden, that of Mireille Engel, a French-speaking Swiss native turned Texan and longtime gardener, whose garden helper, Kathy Christian, introduced me and gave me a tour. Located in the Cuernavaca neighborhood and perched on the edge of ...
Debuting the painted stucco walls
April 10, 2015 Damn the live oak pollen, full speed ahead…with the reveal of the painted stucco walls. (Really, though, the live oak pollen is out of control. I took this picture about 4 hours after completely blowing clean the patios.) After weeks of construction last fall, sampling a fiery ...
Evergreens, color, and hardscape carry garden through winter into spring
March 11, 2015 A recent conversation on Linda Lehmusvirta‘s Facebook page got a few Austin gardeners talking about winter interest. Tracie, a local gardener, wrote that her mostly native garden looks great spring through fall but is “asleep” in winter, and she wanted ideas. Lori at The Gardener of Good ...
Still musing on wall color
November 17, 2014 The color saga continues, with no progress but lots of reader suggestions and various inspiration since my first attempt at choosing colors for my new stucco walls. (Click and read the comments on that post if you’re into color discussion!) My first stab at a red was ...
New orange Hover Dish is sedged up
November 07, 2014 I planted up my birthday-present orange Hover Dish, but not with succulents. I went with a grassy mix of Texas sedge (Carex texensis) and yellow columbine (Aquilegia hinckleyana), with pink rain lilies (Zephryanthes ‘Labuffarosea’), divided from elsewhere in my garden, mixed in for good measure. All should ...
Steel walls and soft grasses in travel-influenced Mirador Garden
November 04, 2014 A week ago I had the opportunity to photograph another of landscape architect Curt Arnette‘s gardens. Frothy, rose-colored clouds of Gulf muhly, tawny spikes of Lindheimer muhly, and a chartreuse Habiturf lawn wrap the large front garden in a cozy quilt of softness that counterbalances the flat ...
Hill Country style and a downtown view in the garden of Ruthie Burrus
October 30, 2014 I see a lot of gardens on public tours, which I enjoy tremendously. But being invited for a private tour of a new-to-me garden is a special treat, especially if the garden happens to belong to an avid gardener making the most of a beautiful, hilltop site ...
Melody’s romantic garden of passalong plants in San Antonio
October 28, 2014 Last year Shirley of Rock-Oak-Deer blogged about the garden of her neighbor Melody. I had met Melody at talks I gave in San Antonio and Brenham, so I read about her garden with particular interest. And I was thrilled when Shirley and Melody arranged for me and ...
Stuck on my stucco walls
October 01, 2014 I’m in love with the new walls. They’re not even painted yet (the stucco has to cure for a few weeks first), and I love them. I love their sturdy form and embracing curves. Swoop! The culvert-pipe yucca is being moved, by the way. Man, it’s heavy ...
Walls going up and paths going down
September 26, 2014 As with all landscaping projects, the stucco wall construction is taking longer than I expected, partly for the happy reason that we’ve had some rain, so no complaints about that. I am delighted with the work so far. The cinderblock walls have been mortared in place on ...
Construction in the garden and other happenings
September 17, 2014 It was a one-two punch, seeing colorful stuccoed walls in Phoenix and Tucson in April and then in Portland in July. Unable to resist the siren song of structure, functionality, and color, I’ve hired a mason to build some walls in the back garden. Two days ago ...
Mid-century house inspires Palm Springs-style garden in Austin
September 01, 2014 Charlotte Warren, a photographer and former co-chair of the local Garden Conservancy tour, inherited a steeply sloping, west-facing zoysia lawn when she moved into her home in the hills of West Austin. Aside from requiring lots of water and regular mowing, the lawn offered zero privacy for ...
Inspiration for my new bottle tree comes from the desert
August 28, 2014 When it’s too hot to plant, consider planting a bottle tree. It’ll never need watering, and the more the Death Star shines on it, the better it looks. I made a simple, post-style bottle tree 5 years ago. But the cedar post was rotting, and it was ...
Westwind Farm Studio: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
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 ...
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 ...
