October garden events in Austin: Save the dates!
October 06, 2009 October is a busy month for Austin gardeners. It’s prime planting season, the weather is cool enough to start those hardscaping projects we put off all summer, classes and presentations are happening left and right, and it’s garden-tour season again. Yippee! Mark your calendars and join me ...
Read This: The Hot Garden
April 14, 2009 “Get your desert eyes on,” Scott Calhoun urges in his new book The Hot Garden. In other words, see and appreciate the natural beauty of a country that is not lush, leafy, or green and that relies on rock and open space as much as plants for ...
Austin achieves Community Wildlife Habitat certification
March 13, 2009 Austin demonstrated yesterday that it’s pretty easy being green. The National Wildlife Federation certified our city as a Community Wildlife Habitat. Austin is the largest U.S. city and the first in Texas to achieve certification. As explained on the NWF’s website, “The Community Wildlife Habitat project is ...
Native and Adapted Landscape Plants: An Austin gardening resource
February 20, 2009 For everyone who has moved to central Texas from more-hospitable gardening climates, who has tried (as I did) to plant azaleas, hostas, or dogwoods because that’s what reminds them of home, and who thinks, “Hey, look! This Austin nursery sells this plant, so it must grow well ...
Wizzie’s a whiz with bugs
July 25, 2008 Wizzie also knows lizards, butterflies, ants, and other garden critters, as well as the down and dirty with plant diseases. Sharing her knowledge of integrated pest management on her new blog, Urban IPM, entomologist Wizzie (short for Elizabeth) Brown joins the ranks of Austin bloggers with her ...
Wizzie's a whiz with bugs
July 25, 2008 Wizzie also knows lizards, butterflies, ants, and other garden critters, as well as the down and dirty with plant diseases. Sharing her knowledge of integrated pest management on her new blog, Urban IPM, entomologist Wizzie (short for Elizabeth) Brown joins the ranks of Austin bloggers with her ...
How to plan and plant a school garden: Two years' progress
October 01, 2007 Gulf muhly grass glows pink against the setting sun in the school garden. Welcome to part two of “Growing a School Garden.” Click here to read part one. It takes vision to look at a dead courtyard like this and envision a garden. However, teachers tend to ...
How to plan and plant a school garden: Two years of progress
October 01, 2007 Gulf muhly grass glows pink against the setting sun in the school garden. Welcome to part two of “Growing a School Garden.” Click here to read part one. It takes vision to look at a dead courtyard like this and envision a garden. However, teachers tend to ...
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 ...
Getting rid of the lawn
August 11, 2007 One fearless Austinite’s grass-free, xeric front garden is featured here, on the City of Austin’s Green Garden website. Click on other addresses for more photos of water-conserving Austin gardens, most of which are less extreme than this one but just as interesting. Some are truly inspiring. I ...
Read This: The Landscaping Revolution
May 08, 2007 Last week a friend pulled this book off her shelf and insisted I read it, enthusing that it caused an awakening for her and changed the way she looks at traditional, lawn-centered landscaping. I’m glad she told me about it. It’s a highly persuasive and entertaining book—although ...
Rain gardens
June 23, 2006 Nursing my garden through Austin’s arid summers, I tend to go a little ga-ga over things like rain barrels, rain chains, and just rain in general. Now I’m excited about rain gardens. I have one, actually, but didn’t even know it until yesterday, when I picked up ...
