Visit to Denver Botanic Gardens: Plains Garden, Rock Alpine Garden & Dryland Mesa
July 18, 2012 The more naturalistic, dryland gardens were my favorite parts of Denver Botanic Gardens, which I visited earlier this month. By naturalistic I don’t mean, of course, that these gardens are any less designed. They are beautifully designed, and the high-country plants growing in them sparkled in the ...
Shelagh Tucker garden at Seattle Garden Bloggers Fling
August 07, 2011 Six Austin garden bloggers journeyed to Seattle for the Garden Bloggers Fling. That’s me on the left, Caroline of The Shovel-Ready Garden, Becky of Wolf’s Garden, Vicki of Playin’ Outside, Jenny of Rock Rose, and Diana of Sharing Nature’s Garden. Look! Scarves & cardigans in July! The ...
Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2011: Sheryl Williams garden
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 ...
Going to extremes at the Wildflower Center
April 24, 2011 Lace cactus in flower Gardening in central Texas is all about embracing extremes—of temperature, of rainfall, of summer’s brutal duration, and, most delightfully, of the contrast between soft and spiky. One element of good design is using contrasting forms, and our native plants offer many opportunities, as ...
Rosy in winter
January 07, 2011 The ‘Black Pearl’ ornamental pepper finally bit the dust after a couple of hard freezes. Although the withered plant is bent and droopy, I still like the bright-red berries and will leave it uncut for the time being. Maybe the birds will eat them. Maybe I’ll even ...
Talking possumhaws in Southern Living
November 20, 2010 Check out the December 2010 issue of Southern Living magazine, and you’ll find an article about possumhaw holly (Ilex decidua) with a couple of quotes from yours truly. I grew up reading Southern Living, so I’m delighted to have been contacted by its garden editor for information ...
Gardens of Lake Austin Spa
October 14, 2010 Yesterday the Director of Flora & Fauna at Lake Austin Spa, the talented Trisha Shirey, gave me an early morning tour of the spa’s gardens, which she has tended for more than 26 years. A staff of nine full-time gardeners assists her in organically maintaining and updating ...
Tropicals & more at Olbrich Botanical Gardens
September 22, 2010 Boy, was I surprised to see agaves in Madison, Wisconsin, at Olbrich Botanical Gardens on my recent visit. Well, sure, they’re in containers and must spend the winter in a greenhouse, but still it was fun to see these familiar faces out of context. This border surrounds ...
Wildlife garden instead of lawn
September 09, 2010 On Labor Day we spent the afternoon with my husband’s family in southwest Austin. My in-laws have a lovely native-plant garden designed to attract wildlife by providing food for butterfly larvae (i.e. caterpillars), nectaring plants for butterflies and bees, berrying plants for birds, and sheltering layers of ...
Camera practice at the Wildflower Center
September 07, 2010 Sea holly, or eryngo (Eryngium leavenworthii) I tried watching an instructional DVD about using my new camera on Sunday but fell asleep halfway through. When I awoke I decided a real-life test drive should be the first step, at least to try out the semi-automatic settings. So ...
The many faces of Black Pearl pepper
September 03, 2010 ‘Black Pearl’ ornamental pepper (Capsicum annuum) is intriguing in all its stages. Papery, dainty, purple flowers appear before the black pearl-shaped fruit… …which gives the plant its name. The black peppers eventually ripen to red… …and wrinkle up like prunes. The whole cycle is attractive and interesting ...
Garden Designers Roundtable: Gardening with Nature, Gardening for Wildlife
August 24, 2010 Just in from a morning stroll through my garden, and what delights I witnessed. A tiny, blurry-winged hummingbird making the rounds from Mexican oregano to flame-leaf acanthus to Turk’s cap to Agastache. Honeybees spelunking for pollen. A leggy, spotted fawn tucked into a stand of bamboo muhly ...
Goodbye, garden. Hello, Buffalo!
July 07, 2010 Pink rain lilies (Zephryanthes ‘Labuffarosea’) open their eager faces to the sky after a rain I’ve hardly been home lately, and I only unpacked my suitcase this time in order to do laundry. But I’ll be repacking it tomorrow because it’s time for the 3rd annual garden-blogger ...
Winter trees at the Wildflower Center
February 11, 2010 Shade trees in central Texas rarely grow into straight-trunked, towering giants. But what they lack in height they make up for in girth and character, like this twisting, spreading live oak at the Wildflower Center. Another look Smaller in stature but also full of character, this catclaw ...
Plant This: Possumhaw holly adds fire to winter landscape
January 20, 2010 Beaded with bright-red berries, possumhaw holly (Ilex decidua) really stands out amid the greenish-gray and tan winter landscape of Austin. I’ve driven past several of these native, deciduous hollies in my neighborhood for weeks, and I keep thinking they’re at peak beauty. And then I’ll drive by ...
Nuts & berries
December 18, 2009 Walking through the garden I came across several still-life arrangements of pyracantha berries and buckeyes from the Mexican buckeye tree. Who collected and arranged them so deliberately? No squirrel or raccoon, that’s for sure. My daughter and her friends like to make collections from the garden for ...
