Plant This: Flipping for Philippine violet
November 05, 2015 Autumn is a boom time for most Austin gardens, with a spring-like explosion of flowering perennials like salvia, lantana, mistflower, and native daisies. Add Philippine violet (Barleria cristata) to the mix, and enjoy weeks of tubular purple flowers clustered on upright stems of glossy, green leaves. Native ...
Plant This: Bat-face cuphea, perfect for Halloween in Austin
October 30, 2015 Austin is home to 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats, which summer under the Congress Avenue bridge downtown and constitute the largest urban bat colony in North America. The bat is the unofficial mascot of the city, and the rest of Texas thinks liberal-hippie Austin is pretty batty ...
Fall flowers for a Texas garden
October 20, 2015 My shady, evergreen garden will never be showy with flowers. But I have pockets of seasonal blooms that brighten the garden for a week or two at a time and please me when they appear. Right now, Philippine violet (Barleria cristata) is one of these. I have ...
Oxblood lilies pop up after first fall rain
September 12, 2015 Maybe last week’s inch of rain — the first in two months — wasn’t technically the first fall rain. After all, it still sweltered into the 90s that day and the day after. But by the reckoning of the oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida), the soil is refreshed ...
Plant This: Inland sea oats
September 01, 2015 Are you hunting for a shade plant that looks good from April to January but especially shines during the challenging late summer? Try inland sea oats, also known as northern sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium), a grass that’s native to eastern and central North America, including central Texas ...
Plant This: Turk’s cap
July 21, 2015 Death Star-adapted plants tend to be small-leaved and airy, the better to retain precious water. But our native Turk’s cap (Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii) defies that expectation with vaguely heart-shaped leaves the size of a napkin scrounged out of your car’s glove box, and just as crinkled ...
Every picture tells a story, don’t it?
January 30, 2015 Poor grammar and all, Rod Stewart’s lyrics are in my head as I submit my entry for Gardening Gone Wild’s Picture This photo contest. Pro garden photographer Saxon Holt is judging, and he says he wants your best photo from 2014 that not only has “a strong ...
Plant This: Chile pequin will spice up your garden
December 11, 2014 Native perennial chile pequin (Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum) adds hot color to the fall garden with a profusion of tiny, red peppers held upright on rambling green stems adorned with chartreuse, spade-shaped leaves. And if you taste one, you’ll find it heats up your tongue as well! ...
Golden pomegranate is pretty wonderful for fall color
December 05, 2014 I know many of you have mentally moved on to Christmas. But Austin’s fall color comes late, and the golden leaves of my ‘Wonderful’ pomegranate keep catching my eye through the window while I try to work. So naturally, instead of closing the blind so as to ...
Fall foliage and waterfall along Bull Creek
November 27, 2014 Have you ever been surprised to discover something near your house that you’d never known was there? I was on Tuesday morning. Not five minutes from home, I noticed for the first time a narrow road paralleling busy Highway 360 just south of Spicewood Springs Road. On ...
Leaf peeping and Living a Great Story at Lady Bird Lake
November 25, 2014 After sightseeing and shopping on vibrant South Congress Avenue on Sunday, yesterday my dad and stepmother joined me for a post-lunch, 3-mile walk around Lady Bird Lake. Rusty orange bald cypress, golden cedar elm, and fiery red crepe myrtles have set the shore ablaze. This is as ...
Flowering maple keeps blooming after freeze
November 21, 2014 I’ll soon be posting pictures of my Japanese maple, as its leaves are starting to redden. But for now the flowering maples, aka abutilons, are stealing the show. A few light freezes don’t slow them down. Cool weather is their time to shine. This unnamed pink abutilon ...
Autumn amble at New York Botanical Garden
October 24, 2014 After touring Wave Hill on October 11, my daughter and I took the train to the New York Botanical Garden. Although both NYBG and Wave Hill are located in the Bronx, mass transit between the two ate up some time, and we had tickets to a Broadway ...
Visit to Wave Hill in New York City, Part 2
October 22, 2014 Wave Hill, an estate garden in the Bronx in New York City, which I visited on October 11, was romantically blowsy in the Pergola, Elliptical, and Flower Gardens near the entry. But it got a bit bolder, even Hollywood, in the Aquatic and Monocot Gardens. These two ...
Visit to Wave Hill, a Hudson River estate garden in New York City
October 20, 2014 I traveled to New York City with my daughter on October 10 to see public gardens. On Saturday, our first full day in New York, a chilly rain didn’t keep us from visiting Wave Hill, a 28-acre estate garden in the Bronx with a million-dollar view of ...
Monarchs flutter into Dallas Arboretum on fall migration
October 09, 2014 We weren’t the only visitors to the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden last Sunday. Aside from all the human visitors, hundreds of monarch butterflies arrived on the north wind blowing into Texas and settled into the garden for a rest stop. I understand their fall migration is ...
