Home gardening inspiration, plus a boxwood garden and Chinese garden: Missouri Botanical Garden, part 4
June 27, 2021 Visiting Missouri Botanical Garden (MOBOT) earlier this month for the first time, I expected to breeze through the Center for Home Gardening and get on to more interesting parts of the garden. Instead I found myself poking around this space for close to an hour. I was ...
Climatron tropical house, origami sculpture, and more: Missouri Botanical Garden, part 1
June 22, 2021 A week ago today I road-tripped with my mom through Arkansas up to St. Louis to visit Missouri Botanical Garden, which I’d long wanted to see. I’d always thought of St. Louis as being not that far away from Austin. After all, Missouri is part of the ...
Heart eyes for heartleaf skullcap and more
May 26, 2021 A blue haze has settled over the driveway-island bed, the silvery blue flowers of heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata). I find myself stopping to admire them every time I step outside. It fills in nicely around a ‘Vanzie’ whale’s tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia), ‘Vertigo’ pennisetum grass, Mexican oregano ...
Early spring blooms and Athena the owl at Wildflower Center
March 20, 2021 When they’re offered, I take advantage of late-admission hours to gardens. The light is better for photography in the early evening, and you have a better chance of seeing wildlife. On Thursday our local native-plant botanical garden, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, stayed open late, and ...
Octopus joins fantastical creatures at Mueller parks
January 06, 2021 A giant purple octopus wraps its tentacles around the restrooms at brand-new Jessie Andrews Park in Austin’s Mueller development. Like the monsters in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Lord of the Rings, this supersized sea creature menacingly creeps close, ready perhaps to grab someone or wrench ...
Origami sculpture in the Culinary and Adventure gardens at San Antonio Botanical Garden
December 10, 2020 Part 3 of my recent visit to San Antonio Botanical Garden to see the Origami in the Garden exhibition by Santa Fe artist Kevin Box takes us through the relatively new Culinary and Family Adventure gardens. Two festive Christmas trees greeted me just inside the entrance. Zachry ...
Colorful fall foliage at the Wildflower Center, part 1
November 17, 2020 Fall pounced on Austin quickly this year, then retreated for nearly a month, and then dashed back in, ushering in a brief flare of color. We’d planned to visit Lost Maples this month in hopes of seeing the bigtooth maples flaming red and orange, but we missed ...
Michael McDowell’s front-yard prairie garden
October 16, 2020 How can it have been 9 years since I first visited Michael McDowell’s front-yard prairie garden? Michael’s garden lives large in my memory, alight with morning sunlight and festive fall color (click for my 2011 tour), and it inspires daily via his blog Plano Prairie Garden and ...
In for a rose, out for a garden visit at Antique Rose Emporium
October 01, 2020 I passed through Brenham on the way home from Houston two weekends ago. Naturally, I stopped at The Antique Rose Emporium nursery, ostensibly to search for another ‘Icecap’ rose to replace one that croaked after the summer, but really to check out the gardens. They were in ...
Tropicalesque Tanglewild, where bananas and palms grow big and bold
September 17, 2020 With the arrival of cooler weather it’s garden visiting season, and I’ve started calling on gardening friends who are willing to have me over for a socially distanced, masked, outdoor visit. How I love touring gardens! This week’s tour is at Tanglewild Gardens, a 1.7-acre garden in ...
Circle Garden’s shades of green
August 18, 2020 Our elevated deck offers a nice overhead view of the Circle Garden. And as I recently discovered, when you climb a stepladder on the deck, you can get almost the whole garden in the frame, including the new rose and salvia planting at the base of the ...
Reopening at San Antonio Botanical Garden, part 2
May 21, 2020 A wildflower meadow studded with Yucca rostrata in bloom — yes, please! Let’s continue with last week’s visit to San Antonio Botanic Garden and this path into the cactus and succulent garden. More flowering yuccas! And more, with shiny-leaved palm trees and a blue, blue sky. And ...
San Antonio Botanical Garden reopening, part 1
May 19, 2020 After a month and a half self-isolating at home, I was craving a garden visit when I got the news that both the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and San Antonio Botanical Garden were opening back up at limited capacity. I immediately went online and secured tickets ...
April visit to Antique Rose Emporium garden
May 10, 2020 In early April I took a wildflower-hunting drive through the country east of Austin. I ended up driving out to Brenham and past The Antique Rose Emporium, which was open to visitors, so I stopped for a quick tour of the gardens, socially distanced of course. The ...
Mexico City: Bosque de Chapultepec botanical garden and more
April 05, 2020 One morning during our stay in Mexico City we explored the city’s “lungs”, the Bosque de Chapultepec, or Chapultepec Forest. At 1,695 acres, it’s one of the largest city parks in the Western Hemisphere. Chapultepec means “grasshopper hill” in the Aztec language, and in fact the park ...
Modern-rustic dining patio at Texas French Bread
December 04, 2019 All you really need for a garden, as Phoenix landscape architect Steve Martino says, are a tree, a chair, a wall, and a little water. The rustic-modern patio at Texas French Bread reminded me of this when I stopped by for lunch yesterday. Designed by Christy Ten ...
