Lawn Gone! giveaway: And the winners are…
February 09, 2015To make a party of my new book announcement — The Water-Saving Garden: How to Grow a Gorgeous Garden with a Lot Less Water (coming spring 2016; follow on FB) — I’ve been running a giveaway of three copies of my book Lawn Gone! Low-Maintenance, Sustainable, Attractive Alternatives ...
The Water-Saving Garden and Southern Living Bloggers to Follow
February 03, 2015 Two really nice things happened yesterday. First I learned that Southern Living, a magazine I’ve been reading since I was a teenager, named me one of 30 Bloggers To Follow in 2015. “From food to home and everything in between, we share the list of bloggers that ...
A new book for 2016 and a Lawn Gone! GIVEAWAY
January 25, 2015The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.I have a big announcement, my friends! I’m writing a new book, a follow-up to Lawn Gone! that’s all about how to garden with less water. Or perhaps a better way of describing it is, it’s about ...
Heather’s Xericstyle garden in San Antonio
October 27, 2014 Last week I roadtripped south with a few friends to see the gardens of our San Antonio blogger friends, Heather Ginsburg of Xericstyle and Shirley Fox of Rock-Oak-Deer, plus Shirley’s neighbor and gardening friend Melody. I posted about Shirley’s garden here. Today I’ll show you Heather’s garden ...
Nonirrigated native plant garden of Lee Clippard is a foliage lover’s dream
October 16, 2014 Earlier this month I visited the East Austin garden of Lee Clippard, blogger at The Grackle, and his partner, John. The first fall rains had just arrived, following a relatively mild summer, so their foliage-centric garden of native plants was looking lush and green. I’d never have ...
Xeriscape is not a zeroscape: Scottsdale Xeriscape Garden demonstrates the beauty of saving water
May 09, 2014 It’s a common mispronunciation, but it’s also a bit of a Freudian slip: saying “zeroscape” instead of “xeriscape.” To xeriscape is to design a garden that conserves water through the use of drought-tolerant plants grouped according to water needs, water-collection systems, mulch, non-wasteful irrigation, and other rather ...
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 ...
Gorgeous gravel garden outshines former lawn in Lakewood garden
October 29, 2013 Whenever landscape architect Curt Arnette of Sitio Design invites me to see one of his gardens, I say, “I’ll be right there!” Last Saturday we toured a 1-year-old garden in the Lakewood neighborhood of West Austin that he designed and that his cousin John Gibson (of Gibson ...
How to plant a sedge lawn
August 23, 2013 If mowing once a year sounds good, if pouring less water on the ground is a goal, and if you appreciate or can tolerate a shaggy, meadowy look, a sedge lawn may be your perfect alternative to a thirsty, summer-crisped St. Augustine lawn. Sedges exist for seemingly ...
Water-saving, no-lawn garden of Cyndi Kohfield
June 21, 2013 When Cyndi Kohfield and her husband bought their northwest Austin home in late 2010, they inherited a tidy front yard of lawn accented by swaths of Asian jasmine and a couple of large sago palms. As she noted in a before-and-after post on her garden blog, Growing ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Garden of Christine Ten Eyck
November 06, 2012 My third stop on Saturday’s Open Days tour was probably the best known of the bunch, and one I’ve visited previously on the Wildflower Center’s 2010 Gardens on Tour. It’s the personal garden of landscape architect Christine Ten Eyck, which has appeared in the book Tomorrow’s Garden ...
Livestrong HQ garden a model of green landscaping
September 05, 2012 It’s not about the bike. What it’s about is this—cancer survivor, superstar bicyclist, and Austin resident Lance Armstrong put his fame and influence to good use in the fight against cancer, founding Livestrong (formerly the Lance Armstrong Foundation) in 1997 to improve the lives of those affected ...
Water as a "sacred element" in southwestern gardens
August 27, 2009 Softleaf yucca (Y. recurvifolia) I nearly always read the last page of a magazine first. So when my Garden Design (Sept/Oct 2009) arrived today I flipped to the back to read about Arizona landscape architect Christy Ten Eyck. I’ve seen her work featured in magazines, and I ...
Water as a “sacred element” in southwestern gardens
August 27, 2009 Softleaf yucca (Y. recurvifolia) I nearly always read the last page of a magazine first. So when my Garden Design (Sept/Oct 2009) arrived today I flipped to the back to read about Arizona landscape architect Christy Ten Eyck. I’ve seen her work featured in magazines, and I ...
A visit to Chanticleer: Gravel Garden and Ruin
July 23, 2008 Among all the beautiful, bold, and imaginative gardens at Chanticleer, why do I like the Gravel Garden best? It so resembles the dry gardens of west Austin that I feel a little sheepish to admit that in this lush, Pennsylvania garden I preferred the familiarity of home ...
Watersaver Lane at San Antonio Botanical Garden
September 11, 2007 Conserving water is integral to “green” gardening in central Texas. Although Austin receives an average of 32 inches of rain a year, much of our rainfall is concentrated in spring and fall and in heavy showers that run off quickly rather than soaking into the soil. Yet ...
