Water conservation

May 11, 2009 A carpet of silver ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea) sparkles like a stream in the Buckeye Trail garden. My pictures from this garden, our third stop on the Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour, don’t do it justice. The Buckeye Trail garden, located in Rollingwood, was my favorite of the ...

March 31, 2009 Several readers expressed interest in hearing more about the green roof atop the parking garage at Palisades West office complex that I visited last Friday. Developer Tim Hendricks of Cousins Properties came out to speak to a handful of visitors who’d jumped at the chance to see ...

February 10, 2009 I turned my face to the rain yesterday morning like a turtle in an old, dried-up mudhole. After fearing that rain would never fall again in parched central Texas, we awoke early Monday morning to the plink, plink of raindrops on the patio. The sound confused my ...

November 12, 2008 Watering new plants is pleasurable because it gives you a good excuse to be out there with them, making sure they’re settling in, admiring them once more. But watering established plants is a chore, and an increasingly expensive one at that. So I like to use drought-tolerant ...

July 27, 2008 Have the drought and summer’s heat got you down? Then check out the incredible collection of cacti and succulents at Oracle Gorge Nursery today, the final day of its mid-summer sale and open house. These babies need no babying, except perhaps from the cold—and who among us, ...

February 08, 2008 Rose hip, ‘Carefree Beauty’ Visit new garden blog Seeds, by Brianna in north Austin, for the latest perspective on gardening in the City of the Violet Crown. Yes, yet another Austin garden blogger. Welcome, Brianna! And check out Playin’ Outside, an Austin blog I’ve mentioned previously, for ...

February 08, 2008 Rose hip, ‘Carefree Beauty’ Visit new garden blog Seeds, by Brianna in north Austin, for the latest perspective on gardening in the City of the Violet Crown. Yes, yet another Austin garden blogger. Welcome, Brianna! And check out Playin’ Outside, an Austin blog I’ve mentioned previously, for ...

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 ...

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 ...

May 10, 2007 Does this look like Texas to you? More specifically, does it look like Austin? I hope so. I posted two days ago about The Landscaping Revolution, which proposes, among other things, that homeowners make their landscaping look less homogenous and more regionally diverse—and therefore more interesting—by using ...

May 10, 2007 Does this look like Texas to you? More specifically, does it look like Austin? I hope so. I posted two days ago about The Landscaping Revolution, which proposes, among other things, that homeowners make their landscaping look less homogenous and more regionally diverse—and therefore more interesting—by using ...

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 ...

March 13, 2007 Water flowing from the gutter into a rain barrel. The overflow spills into the wet-weather stream (dry creek), laid with New Mexico river rock, and is funneled into the rain garden. With all the talk about 10-year droughts at The Throbbing Thumb, Bill Lane’s Victoria, Australia, blog, ...

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 ...