Desert retreat in Steve Martino-designed Quartz Mountain Garden
April 21, 2014 The second garden I visited with Phoenix landscape architect Steve Martino was familiar to me from a magazine or garden book I’d read. Peer recognition, including an ASLA design award in 2006, has also been bestowed on Steve’s design for this Paradise Valley, Arizona, home. It’s a ...
Houston Open Days Tour 2014: 3640 Del Monte Drive Garden
April 10, 2014 The last stop on my recap of the Garden Conservancy-sponsored Houston Open Days tour on March 29th is a New Orleans-esque mansion in the tony River Oaks neighborhood. From the front walk you see a veranda with wisteria dripping from the wrought-iron railing and a narrow foundation ...
Houston Open Days Tour 2014: Jungle safari at Del Monte Drive Garden
April 09, 2014 Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! On March 29, my friend Diana and I traveled to Houston for the Garden Conservancy-sponsored Open Days tour. Del Monte Drive in the posh River Oaks neighborhood was home to two of the gardens, starting with a surprising “safari garden” ...
Houston Open Days Tour 2014: West Lane Garden
April 07, 2014 The West Lane Garden, one of six private gardens on tour during the Garden Conservancy-sponsored Houston Open Days on March 29, is a showcase of contemporary design, which nicely complements the low-slung, renovated, mid-century modern house it frames. Organized around straight-line axes, with garden views that carry ...
Houston Open Days Tour 2014: West 11th Place Garden
April 07, 2014 Houston has one of the earliest Garden Conservancy-sponsored Open Days tours in the country. This year it was held on March 29, after a cold, drawn-out winter (by Texas standards) that saw two 20-degree dips even in subtropical Houston. I wondered how Houston would pull off a ...
Drive-By Gardens: Aloes abloom in modern dry garden of Karen Lantz
April 03, 2014 ‘Blue Elf’ aloes, purple prickly pear, gold sedum, and smooth sotol and silver ponyfoot in the steel ring, with an Opuntia “tree” behind I’m hearing from many of you how much you enjoy my Drive-By Gardens posts, and so I’m pleased to offer a third this week ...
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 ...
Tanzanian safari: Maasai school and Lake Manyara National Park
January 12, 2014 On our fourth day in Tanzania (June 2007) we visited a local school on the way to Lake Manyara. An English-language world map was painted on the school building. The only city noted on it is New York, which is of course how New Yorkers see the ...
California living in the Testa-Vought Garden: San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling
July 26, 2013 Our 5th stop on the 2nd day of the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling was the Bernard Trainor-designed Testa-Vought Garden in Palo Alto. Out front, a contemporary gravel garden greets you, but the real excitement begins when you enter a walled courtyard and begin discovering a series ...
Gardens on Tour 2013: Bonnell Garden
May 19, 2013 Our final stop last Saturday on the Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour was the Curt Arnette-designed Bonnell Garden in west Austin. If it looks familiar, yes, I posted about it last fall after the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Tour; check out my earlier post for images of ...
Gardens on Tour 2011: Stratford Drive garden
May 09, 2011 Imagine a steep, overgrown hillside of invasive nandina, bamboo, and ligustrum. That’s what the homeowners on Stratford Drive looked out on after building a contemporary, 5-star green home (as rated by the Austin Energy Green Building program) in the Rollingwood neighborhood of west Austin. According to the ...
On top of Austin at the Austonian
June 06, 2010 I enjoyed a bird’s-eye view of Austin last Wednesday from the top of the Austonian, Austin’s newest, tallest, and surely most luxurious condominium tower. My friend Terry Mitchell, a member of the marketing and public relations team, and his wife kindly offered me and my husband and ...
Jenny’s flower-licious walled garden
April 28, 2009 After visiting Jill Nokes’s walled garden last Sunday, the Austin garden bloggers drove to fellow blogger Jenny/Lancashire Rose‘s walled garden. Although differentiated by geography—Jill gardens on black gumbo clay in central Austin, Jenny on thin limestone “soil” and gravel in southwest Austin—they have much in common, including ...
Jenny's flower-licious walled garden
April 28, 2009 After visiting Jill Nokes’s walled garden last Sunday, the Austin garden bloggers drove to fellow blogger Jenny/Lancashire Rose‘s walled garden. Although differentiated by geography—Jill gardens on black gumbo clay in central Austin, Jenny on thin limestone “soil” and gravel in southwest Austin—they have much in common, including ...
Rocks and trees: My new garden-to-be
October 08, 2008 With temps in the 50s this morning, milder afternoon heat (80s), and even an inch and a half of rain yesterday, it’s feeling autumnal. I can never resist a hint of fall, so I abandoned my unpacking to take some photos and show you my new garden-to-be ...
