Books

October 13, 2016 It’s back-to-the-garden time in Texas, and it’s also garden-talk season! I’m making a few appearances around Texas this fall (see below), and you can also catch me this weekend on Austin’s own Central Texas Gardener TV show. Last fall, right before my garden was on tour, CTG ...

October 13, 2016 It’s back-to-the-garden time in Texas, and it’s also garden-talk season! I’m making a few appearances around Texas this fall (see below), and you can also catch me this weekend on Austin’s own Central Texas Gardener TV show. Last fall, right before my garden was on tour, CTG ...

October 10, 2016 Our gardens tell our stories. The plants we choose, the features we create, the very layout is an autobiography of our passions, fancies, and personality. That’s why the most inspiring gardens spring from impassioned and artistic minds. The Ruth Bancroft Garden near San Francisco is a perfect ...

September 24, 2016 The illustrious British gardening magazine Gardens Illustrated gave The Water-Saving Garden a nice mention in its September 2016 issue! “…without costing the earth” — I love that bit of Brit-speak. Thank you, Gardens Illustrated! I welcome your comments; please scroll to the end of this post to ...

September 18, 2016 Lately I’m taking as many garden photos with my phone as with my “real” camera, and these often get posted to my Instagram. But not all of them, and sometimes I like to share them on my blog too. So here’s some cool stuff I spotted last ...

July 28, 2016 When you live on Walden Road and you’re creating a garden, you can do a lot worse than take inspiration from Thoreau. This woodsy, serene garden was on the Master Gardeners tour that we saw on day two of the Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling, held earlier this ...

July 24, 2016 I’m dubbing this summer Escape to the North. In the space of two months I’ve made three trips to the northern, cooler half of the U.S., starting with the Philadelphia area; then Providence, Rhode Island; and finally Minneapolis, where the 9th annual Garden Bloggers Fling was held ...

July 14, 2016 Just before our picnic on the comfy stone sofa (no, really!), Diana and I explored the Ruin Garden at Chanticleer, a “pleasure garden” in Wayne, Pennsylvania. The Ruin is a folly resembling an old, crumbling house that’s being overtaken by sapling trees, vines, and shrubs — the ...

June 29, 2016 When the Death Star really starts blazing during the summer, we gardeners in the South and Southwest put down our shovels and trowels, do a little weeding or watering in the early morning hours, and mainly try to stay in the shade or a swimming hole until ...

June 19, 2016 What a treat to have two treasured magazines arrive in the mailbox, one containing an article I’ve been working on, the other with a nice mention of my new book! In the July 2016 issue, Southern Living garden editor Steve “Grumpy Gardener” Bender recommends my book The ...

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 ...

June 03, 2016 Seeing a positive review of my new book, The Water-Saving Garden, makes me so happy. After all, selling a book takes such a different skill set than writing it, and so much material competes for our limited reading time. Reviews — whether by editors in magazines and ...

May 24, 2016 It’s an exciting day when you see that Ken Druse, a superstar in the garden-writing world, has reviewed your book. I picked up the the current issue of Country Gardens magazine (Summer 2016) at Barnes & Noble over the weekend… …and was thrilled to discover my book ...

May 24, 2016 It’s an exciting day when you see that Ken Druse, a superstar in the garden-writing world, has reviewed your book. I picked up the the current issue of Country Gardens magazine (Summer 2016) at Barnes & Noble over the weekend… …and was thrilled to discover my book ...

May 12, 2016 Have you ever dawdled over the pages of a book because you didn’t want it to end? Vivian Swift’s Gardens of Awe and Folly: A Traveler’s Journal on the Meaning of Life and Gardening (Bloomsbury, 2016) is one of those books. I find that I’m poring over ...

April 20, 2016 Last night I was sprawled on the couch reading the new issue of Better Homes and Gardens (May 2016). Halfway through the magazine, I turned the page and saw the cover of my new book, The Water-Saving Garden, pictured along with four other gardening titles. “Our favorite ...