Water conservation

November 26, 2011 Avoiding the Black Friday madness and taking advantage of a beautiful fall day in Austin, my family and I headed to the Wildflower Center for a post-lunch stroll yesterday. Since all the plants at the Wildflower Center are native to Texas, it’s illuminating to see what still ...

November 26, 2011 Avoiding the Black Friday madness and taking advantage of a beautiful fall day in Austin, my family and I headed to the Wildflower Center for a post-lunch stroll yesterday. Since all the plants at the Wildflower Center are native to Texas, it’s illuminating to see what still ...

November 18, 2011 Photo courtesy of Lee Clippard Are we brave enough to look the worst-case scenario in the eye? Let’s lay it out: the rains don’t return this winter, at least not sufficiently to ease our exceptional drought, and next summer Austin enters Stage 3 watering restrictions, in which ...

October 21, 2011 Sometimes you just luck into a great garden visit. Last weekend my family and I drove up to Dallas for the state fair, staying overnight at my father-in-law’s house in Richardson, a northern suburb. The day we left Austin I realized that we would be staying very ...

September 21, 2011 Now that the promise of fall is in the air (yeah, it’s only going to be 96 F today in Austin), you might be thinking about that dead strip of lawn along the street and what to do about it. How about ripping out your “hell strip” ...

September 19, 2011 Austin Home‘s design issue (Fall 2011) lists 22 hot trends, and one of them is growing agaves as a drought-surviving plant. In that vein, they also ran an article on local succulent and cactus guru Jeff Pavlat, and they published one of my photos of his garden ...

September 17, 2011 The approach of autumn is a hopeful time for the central Texas gardener. It means we’ve survived another long, hot summer and can enjoy being outdoors again. It means time for the rains to return to revitalize the summer-weary garden, replenish our aquifers and lakes, and offer ...

August 22, 2011 In the midst of a blazing summer, as we in central Texas and other drought-stricken parts of the country helplessly watch our lawns turn to straw and then dust, this month’s Garden Designers Roundtable topic of “Lawn Alternatives” is surely the most timely ever. Faced with increasingly ...

August 22, 2011 In the midst of a blazing summer, as we in central Texas and other drought-stricken parts of the country helplessly watch our lawns turn to straw and then dust, this month’s Garden Designers Roundtable topic of “Lawn Alternatives” is surely the most timely ever. Faced with increasingly ...

June 19, 2011 While visiting my dad in central North Carolina last week, I was invited to pop over to Raleigh blogger Helen Yoest’s garden after a morning visit to Plant Delights Nursery. My family and I spent several hours at Plant Delights and then had lunch, so by the ...

June 08, 2011 I came of age as a gardener when the native-plant movement was already well-established, in a progressive city that encourages its citizens to harvest rainwater, recycle yard trimmings through a city composting program, replace lawn grass with xeric plantings, and forgo weed-and-feed chemical treatments for their lawns ...

May 23, 2011 As if there weren’t enough garden tours in Austin this spring, I drove up to Dallas on May 21st for that city’s Open Days tour benefiting the Garden Conservancy, accompanied by my daughter. Undaunted by the 3-hour drive, we arrived first at the exotically named Blue Lotus ...

May 13, 2011 I was particularly interested to see Sheryl Williams’s garden during our sneak peek on Tuesday because she’s a fairly new Austin garden blogger, and, well, y’all know how I love our garden-blogging group. I’d met Sheryl before, but this was my first time to see her garden ...

May 12, 2011 Sue Nazar’s garden, which you can see Saturday on the Inside Austin Gardens Tour, is a lush, expansive oasis tucked in the hills of west Austin. I got a sneak peek on Tuesday, courtesy of the Travis County Master Gardeners, and I’m sharing it with you. Over ...

May 11, 2011 Wendy Brennan’s Zen-style garden, which you can see Saturday on the Inside Austin Gardens Tour, is the creation of her neighbor Link Davidson, whose own garden sits just uphill from Wendy’s. At her request, he continued the terracing from his own garden—designed to slow heavy runoff—with inexpensive ...

May 11, 2011 Whew, I just finished up a whirlwind of posting about last weekend’s Gardens on Tour 2011, and now I’m giving you a sneak peek into this Saturday’s Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2011, sponsored by the Travis County Master Gardeners Association. Hang onto your hats, and let’s go! ...