Revisiting Biltmore Gardens at Asheville Garden Bloggers Fling
May 31, 2012 The “big” garden visit on the recent Garden Bloggers Fling in Asheville, North Carolina, was, of course, the Biltmore House gardens. I took a lot of photos of the gardens almost exactly a year ago, on a less-crowded and less-sunny morning (links at the end of this ...
Houston Open Days Tour 2012: Wolf Residence Garden
April 06, 2012 My next stop on the Houston Open Days tour on March 24 was an Old World-style home in the well-heeled River Oaks neighborhood. While their garden included the sweeping lawns, classic hedging, and emphasis on outdoor architecture commonly seen on this tour, I have to admit that ...
Jenny Stocker’s English Texas gravel garden
November 03, 2011 My friend Jenny Stocker, who blogs at Rock Rose, has shared her garden with me many times over the years. Each time I am struck anew by the beauty of her English-style xeric Texas garden, which shows many native plants to advantage in gravel-mulched, walled courtyards surrounding ...
Fairy tale Halloween at Dallas Arboretum pumpkin patch
October 31, 2011 Happy Halloween! How do you like these warty, spooky, gray pumpkins? These and many, many more are on display now through November 23 at the Dallas Arboretum’s Autumn Festival, a fantasyland of pumpkins and pumpkin houses that attracts hordes of camera-snapping moms and dads and costumed tots ...
Visit to Biltmore House: Walled Garden & Conservatory
June 29, 2011 As always when visiting a beautiful garden, time was short, so the Walled Garden and conservatory were our final stop at Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina, earlier this month. The grounds slope steeply down from the grand house, through the Italian Garden and Shrub Garden, leading ...
Dallas Open Days Tour 2011: Rister-Armstrong garden
May 24, 2011 Our second stop on the Dallas Open Days tour last Saturday was the Anglophile garden of Alan Rister and Greg Armstrong in the Knox/Henderson neighborhood. Beautifully crafted formal hardscaping by landscape architect Susi Tompson is softened by lavish plantings designed and maintained by the owners. Anchoring the ...
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 ...
Deskbound view of the garden
January 13, 2011 I’ve been away from the garden lately, fortunate to be busy with design work just now, and feeling disinclined to venture into the cold, gray weather of the past week. Here’s where I’m spending much of my time, at my drafting table, next to my shelves of ...
Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2009: Cheryl Goveia's garden
October 24, 2009 The fall Travis County Master Gardeners tour today featured six gardens that fit the theme of “Sustainable Gardening for Urban Wildlife.” Three of them are the creations of Austin garden bloggers. Each one offered something unique and personal. But by far the most colorful and fun-loving garden ...
Visit to Dallas Arboretum
February 14, 2008 Taiwanese pear in full bloom at the Dallas Arboretum After a 3-hour landscape design class at the Dallas Arboretum yesterday, and before the 3 1/2-hour drive back home, I took a quick stroll through the gardens, which I’d never seen, despite having stayed over in Big D ...
Amsterdam in bloom
July 17, 2007 Traveling home from Tanzania, my dad and I stopped for two nights in Amsterdam to have a look around, as we were passing through and neither of us had been to the Netherlands before. What a change from dusty, dry-season Tanzania. Surrounded by water and picturesquely built ...
