Steel walls and soft grasses in travel-influenced Mirador Garden
November 04, 2014 A week ago I had the opportunity to photograph another of landscape architect Curt Arnette‘s gardens. Frothy, rose-colored clouds of Gulf muhly, tawny spikes of Lindheimer muhly, and a chartreuse Habiturf lawn wrap the large front garden in a cozy quilt of softness that counterbalances the flat ...
Melody’s romantic garden of passalong plants in San Antonio
October 28, 2014 Last year Shirley of Rock-Oak-Deer blogged about the garden of her neighbor Melody. I had met Melody at talks I gave in San Antonio and Brenham, so I read about her garden with particular interest. And I was thrilled when Shirley and Melody arranged for me and ...
Visiting a San Antonio garden with rocks, oaks, and deer
October 25, 2014 Ahh, I’m back and enjoying our mellow Texas fall after a garden-visiting weekend in New York City, and guess what I’ve been doing since I got back? Yep! Visiting more gardens. Last Friday a few friends and I headed south to San Antonio to visit the gardens ...
Monarchs flutter into Dallas Arboretum on fall migration
October 09, 2014 We weren’t the only visitors to the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden last Sunday. Aside from all the human visitors, hundreds of monarch butterflies arrived on the north wind blowing into Texas and settled into the garden for a rest stop. I understand their fall migration is ...
A fanciful journey through art-filled Bedrock Gardens, part 1
September 19, 2014 Acres of poison ivy and scrub brush had overrun the old dairy farm in Lee, New Hampshire, when Jill Nooney and her husband, Bob Munger, purchased it in 1980. Undaunted, the couple began a decades-long process of clearing weeds and making planting beds, eventually creating a 20-acre ...
Garden magic and whimsy at Floramagoria: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 13, 2014 As we entered the intriguingly named Floramagoria garden on the recent Portland Garden Bloggers Fling, thunder rumbled and raindrops pelted our group of 40 or so bloggers. The reasonable — and hungry — among us ran for the two covered pavilions with box lunches in hand. The ...
The Dancing Ladies Garden of Linda Ernst: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 11, 2014 Do you ever fantasize about another gardener living right next door? Linda Ernst and Joanne Fuller are living the fantasy. Aside from being friends and next-door neighbors, they both love to garden, and each tends a beautiful space linked by a friendly gate in back and a ...
Drive-By Gardens: Lawn-gone curb appeal in Crestview, Brentwood and Allandale
June 27, 2014 Driving through the north-central Austin neighborhoods of Allandale, Brentwood, and Crestview yesterday, I noticed a number of face-lifted ranches and bungalows, freshened up with paint and/or reasonably sized additions and eye-catching, lawn-reducing landscaping. Let’s start this Drive-By with a charming, painted-brick ranch with a lime-green screen and ...
Shelley’s sunflower forest and neighbor-friendly patio
June 14, 2014 To celebrate her daughter’s graduation from high school last week, my dear friend Shelley threw a casual garden party. I enjoyed her garden so much that I popped back over yesterday afternoon to take a few pictures to share with you. Shelley and Isabel call this their ...
Cottage garden magic and art in sculptor Tom Ellison’s garden
May 20, 2014 In the one-more-reason-to-blog category, you meet the nicest people. A couple of years ago, while I was cruising the aisles at Barton Springs Nursery, Tom Ellison introduced himself as a Digging reader. We stayed in touch, and recently he let me know he’d started a website with information ...
Drive-By Gardens: Lawn-gone and neighbor-friendly in central Austin
May 12, 2014 Coming home from a garden tour last Saturday, I traded the backed-up traffic on MoPac for a meandering drive through the charming central Austin neighborhoods of Pemberton, Rosedale, and Allandale. I had my camera with me, and for your enjoyment I furtively snapped photos of front-yard gardens ...
Colorful desert garden of Noelle Johnson, Arizona Plant Lady
May 07, 2014 Last month I visited Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, to see how they’re gardening in a much drier climate than Austin’s. (Drought is much on our mind in Texas). I toured Desert Botanical Garden, which was amazing, saw a couple of Steve Martino’s beautifully designed gardens, and admired ...
Vicki Blachman likes playin’ outside in her rosy, leafy garden
May 05, 2014 I met Vicki Blachman, who blogs at Playin’ Outside, at the first Garden Bloggers Fling here in Austin in 2008. She’s been a warm, light-hearted, steady presence at the Fling and other local blogger events ever since, and I’m glad to know her — not least because ...
Sneak peek: Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2014, coming May 3rd
April 24, 2014 Garden-tour season in Austin is here, despite late freezes that set all our gardens back a few weeks. The Inside Austin Gardens Tour, sponsored by Travis County Master Gardeners, kicks things off on Saturday, May 3, from 9 am to 4 pm. The Austin garden bloggers were ...
Nursery visit: The Arbor Gate near Houston
April 13, 2014 My sister, who lives in Houston, expressed amazement at how many gardens I managed to squeeze into my visit to her city a couple of weekends ago. It’s true. I’ve shown you four Open Days tour gardens, plus four drive-by gardens that were pretty fabulous, plus a ...
Houston Open Days Tour 2014: West 11th Place Garden
April 07, 2014 Houston has one of the earliest Garden Conservancy-sponsored Open Days tours in the country. This year it was held on March 29, after a cold, drawn-out winter (by Texas standards) that saw two 20-degree dips even in subtropical Houston. I wondered how Houston would pull off a ...
