Love just around the bend at Bella Madrona: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 17, 2014 For our final tour on the Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland last month, our bus stopped on a rural highway and deposited us in a field with a few pieces of rusty farming equipment strewn about. Not sure what to expect, I walked through open gates adorned ...
Checking out Chickadee Gardens: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 03, 2014 The Garden Bloggers Fling takes you to so many wonderful gardens that it would be understandable if you simply overloaded by the end of the day, unable to appreciate one more. Thankfully I find new gardens energizing, and when our bus pulled up at Portland blogger Tamara’s ...
Garden mementos on the windowsill
June 19, 2014 I have a nice view of the back patio through my office window, where I spend most of my time when I’m at home. But I’d never thought to decorate the windowsill until I visited designer/author Rebecca Sweet’s garden last summer. In her “chick shack,” a charming ...
Inspired landscape architecture at Cavalliere Park in Scottsdale
May 29, 2014 While touring low-water gardens in Phoenix and nearby Scottsdale, Arizona, in early April with my friend Noelle Johnson, aka AZ Plant Lady, we stopped at Cavalliere Park. Constructed in 2012, the park is a model of sustainability and is a 3-star SITES-certified project. Aside from all that, ...
New windows refresh house exterior
May 10, 2014 We continue to pick away at the dated and energy-inefficient features of our 1970s ranch. We’d put off replacing our paper-thin, single-pane, silver-aluminum windows — one with a BB-gun hole covered with a piece of Scotch tape — because of the expense. But now that it’s done, ...
Visit to Desert Botanical Garden and Chihuly Exhibit: Cactus and Succulent Galleries
April 28, 2014 The Chihuly exhibit at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona, is a huge draw for visitors, and it was for me too. When I visited on April 4th, I was keen to see the colorful glass sculptures in a desert setting after seeing them at Dallas Arboretum ...
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 ...
Wildflowers and more in bloom at the Wildflower Center
April 15, 2014 For Garden Bloggers Bloom Day let’s go to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center here in Austin. I visited on Sunday with family who were in town, hoping to see some bluebonnets. We saw a lot more than that, including these beautiful pink flowers that resembled apple ...
Winter berries, ghostly agaves, and early spring flowers at the Wildflower Center
March 06, 2014 I visited the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center yesterday for a media preview of the new children’s garden that will be opening in May (more to come soon), and I made a quick tour of the main gardens before heading out. All was quiet and still on ...
Warm up in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
January 07, 2014 Revisiting my trip to Beijing proved so enjoyable on a cold winter day that I’m continuing the travel theme. Next up: Mexico! In March 2006, just one month after I started this blog, my husband and I traveled to San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico. I ...
Chinese New Year? Remembering my Beijing visit, April 2005
January 04, 2014 While the garden sleeps I thought I’d start off the New Year with a post about the most foreign place I’ve ever visited: China. (Tanzania in Africa might have won that distinction but for the fact that I was on a guided tour and mostly in national ...
Fearless color in Keeyla Meadows Garden: San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling
August 01, 2013 Our 3rd stop on the final day of the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling was the garden of artist and garden designer Keeyla Meadows, a scene of riotous, exuberant color in both plants and structures. Keeyla is the author of Fearless Color Gardens, which I reviewed here ...
Gardens on Tour 2013: Highland Terrace West Garden
May 15, 2013 I used to walk by this house every day while picking up my son from kindergarten, and each time I’d gape at the lush, shade garden fronting the charming cottage with the welcoming front porch, wondering what the rest of the place looked like. Twelve years later, ...
Springtime visit to the Garden of Good and Evil
May 03, 2013 Last weekend Lori, a gardener in southwest Austin who blogs at The Gardener of Good and Evil, hosted a meet-up of local garden bloggers. It was my second visit. I’d seen her lovely garden three years ago and posted about it then. Lori loves roses, and in ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Garden of Jennifer and Fred Myers
November 04, 2012 On Saturday I joined several garden-blogging friends for the biennial Open Days tour, sponsored by the Garden Conservancy. I consider Open Days to be the best garden tour in Austin. You often see high-design gardens mingled with a gardener’s sensibility and creative, personal touches. This year’s Open ...
Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2012: Carolyn and Michael Williams Garden
October 14, 2012 The final garden I’ll show you on this sneak preview of the upcoming Inside Austin Gardens Tour, hosted by the Travis County Master Gardeners, is an inviting, lovely garden with a picture-perfect garden house, set in the hills above Lake Austin. This flagstone-and-gravel path leads along the ...
