Trellis

July 24, 2013 Our 4th stop on the 2nd day of the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling was the Los Altos garden of designer, author, and blogger Rebecca Sweet. I’ve admired her garden not only on her blog, Gossip in the Garden, but in magazines like Sunset, so I already ...

July 16, 2013 We stopped for shopping and lunch on the 1st day of the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling at Annie’s Annuals & Perennials, a retail and mail-order nursery tucked behind high, wire-topped fences in a blighted neighborhood. “Plant heaven in the ‘hood,” adorable owner Annie cheerfully dubbed it ...

April 21, 2013 April is high season for wildflowers in Texas, and if you can’t get out for a country drive to admire them in meadows and fields, an Austinite can always get a fix at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I stopped by for a wildflower stroll on ...

January 23, 2013 I’m starting a new feature called Drive-by Gardens to show some of the many interesting gardens I see while driving around Austin on a daily basis to meet clients. Today I spotted three lawn-gone or reduced-lawn gardens that look pretty darn good for mid-winter, so let’s have ...

November 20, 2012 Last month I had the pleasure of meeting Mark Word, a highly regarded residential and commercial designer here in Austin. Thanks to his work designing unique and memorable gardens for Liz Lambert’s boutique hotels, including uber-hip Hotel San Jose and the more luxurious Hotel Saint Cecilia, Mark’s ...

November 05, 2012 My second stop on Saturday’s Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour was the courtyard garden of Yvonne Tocquigny and Tom Fornoff, located in West Austin’s tony Tarrytown neighborhood. Elegant but relaxed and beautifully designed, this garden has a secret-garden aspect, with green walls erected in front and in ...

October 31, 2012 I don’t remember how I acquired Yard Full of Sun, Scott Calhoun’s 2005 memoir about making a garden that honors its desert setting. As soon as I read the first pages, his story, told with humor, crisp writing, and enticing photos, hooked me. Since then I’ve read ...

September 05, 2012 It’s not about the bike. What it’s about is this—cancer survivor, superstar bicyclist, and Austin resident Lance Armstrong put his fame and influence to good use in the fight against cancer, founding Livestrong (formerly the Lance Armstrong Foundation) in 1997 to improve the lives of those affected ...

August 22, 2012 Lovely strolling gardens wrap all sides of the country inn at Fearrington Village, near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which I visited earlier this month. I spent a happy hour early one morning exploring its grounds, which include an English-style white garden, an herb garden, shrub borders, and ...

July 19, 2012 It seems kind of stay-at-home-ish to admit that my absolute favorite garden at Denver Botanic Gardens, which I visited earlier this month, is the one that looks almost like it could be in central Texas—with the addition of conifers and an intensity of color that we rarely ...

July 17, 2012 The Romantic Garden at Denver Botanic Gardens, which I visited earlier this month, is not festooned with the traditional roses, wisteria, and clematis. In dry, high country style, feathery grasses mingle with aromatic salvias, prairie wildflowers, and felt-leaved lamb’s ears. Accenting the garden beds stand a handful ...

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 ...

May 12, 2012 My third stop on the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour last weekend was the garden of Paul and Kay Passmore, whose new home of stone, steel, and glass is surrounded by a one-year-old, wildlife-attracting, native-plant garden. Here’s the official description: The gardens surround a new contemporary house ...

May 11, 2012 My second stop on the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour last weekend was the Middleton Farm Garden, a contemporary home with homesteading flair in suburban north Dallas. Here’s the official description: A suburban oasis loosely composed as three distinct aspects. A casual, manicured space of green lawn, ...

April 04, 2012 My next stop on the Houston Open Days tour on March 24 was the clean-lined Lofgren-Bayer Garden, also located in the close-in Montrose neighborhood. Pictured above is a lovely dining patio in the rear garden. The official description of the garden: A stately live oak dominates this ...

March 25, 2012 On our way home from Big Bend last weekend, we cruised through Marfa for lunch and a quick look around town. When we spotted the Thunderbird Hotel’s Capri Lounge, an event space and former Army storage hangar, we stopped to tour the Christy Ten Eyck-designed garden surrounding ...