Sculpted berms at Bouldin Castle inspired by land art and Kauai
November 04, 2024 If you’ve ever driven past Bouldin Castle in South Austin, you probably hit the brakes and craned your neck for a second look. Crenellated towers, a windowed turret, layered limestone, and wattle made of shaggy cedar posts give this former Catholic church — built in 1940 and ...
Boots on the ground in Mike Kintgen’s Denver garden
October 30, 2024 Cactus-planted boots in Mike’s garden I met Mike Kintgen, curator of the alpine collections at Denver Botanic Gardens and a super nice guy, when he came to Austin a few years ago. Mike must have a LOT of energy because he manages not only the large Rock ...
Falling for SummerHome Garden, Part 2
October 21, 2024 In my last post I shared the genesis of SummerHome Garden, a privately owned garden and public park in Denver’s Washington Park neighborhood. I visited in late September and spent a couple of hours early one morning taking pictures. The garden was so beautiful that I couldn’t ...
Fall at SummerHome Garden, Part 1
October 19, 2024 When I told gardening friends I’d be in Denver in late September, many urged me to visit SummerHome Garden. It was already on my list. SummerHome has had glowing media attention since its creation in 2020, and I’d read about it in Visionary and Shrouded in Light ...
Julie Clark and Mae Sanchez’s desert-inspired garden
October 15, 2024 I wasn’t in town for the Leaf Landscape Tour on October 5th, and one garden I was sad to miss belongs to two talented gardeners and knowledgeable plantswomen, Julie Clark and Mae Sanchez. Julie is the owner of Stronger Than Dirt Gardens, a fine garden maintenance company ...
A peek at Lauren Springer’s undaunted garden
October 09, 2024 I got the jump on fall by spending two weeks in Denver in late September/early October. And an excellent decision it was, too, with aspens yellow as butter in the mountains and gardens sparkling with flowering grasses. Case in point: plantswoman Lauren Springer’s personal garden on the ...
The elegant Pepper Garden with a water view
September 07, 2024 By lunchtime, we’d already visited four gardens on the bonus Seattle day of the Puget Sound Fling. Three more to go! Our next stop was an elegant home right on Lake Washington, with welcoming owners Vangie and Daniel Pepper. Let’s start in the back garden and work ...
Playfulness and planters in the garden of Richard Hartlage
September 06, 2024 One garden I was eager to see during the Puget Sound Fling (on the bonus day in Seattle) was that of Richard Hartlage, head of design firm Land Morphology. I interviewed Richard years ago for an article in Garden Design and follow his work. To my delight, ...
Hanging on in the late summer garden
August 28, 2024 August can’t end soon enough for my crispy Texas garden and my own crispy self. But we had a little reprieve in the form of a cloudburst that dropped a quarter inch of rain a couple days ago. Temps have dropped below 100 F too. What is ...
Exploring Dan Hinkley’s Windcliff, part 2
August 27, 2024 Agapanthus and grasses When you’ve read about a garden and then visit in person for the first time, it can feel both strangely familiar and a little disorienting. As you walk around, you recognize certain features — plants, art, viewpoints — but you also don’t really know ...
Colorful garden with a view of Puget Sound
August 23, 2024 After leaving Heronswood, a public garden that was originally the private home garden of plantsman Dan Hinkley and architect Robert Jones, the Fling buses headed for Dan and Robert’s new garden, Windcliff, in Indianola. Because there were 100 of us on the Puget Sound Fling tour and ...
Camille Paulsen’s Tahoma-flora garden
August 11, 2024 One of my favorite gardens on the Fling tour last month was that of Camille and Dirk Paulsen. As one of the co-planners of the Puget Sound Fling, Camille not only devoted a year of volunteer effort to bring Flingers to her region, but she managed to ...
Toad-henge sculpture is king of the hill in garden made for entertaining
August 05, 2024 Steep lots, rocks, lush plantings, and mountain views were a running theme at the Puget Sound Fling last month. The garden of Meagan Foley and Mac Gray fit right in thematically, but it also had us exclaiming wow as we walked around the house and spotted this ...
A woodland art collector’s garden on Vashon Island
August 02, 2024 While touring the Carhart Garden at the Puget Sound Fling last month, I met one of the owners, Mary Carhart, who upon learning I was from Texas enthusiastically told me that she is from Texas too. Decades ago, she and husband Whit moved to Washington for work ...
Love letter to Puget Sound Fling, starting with Halstead-Robinson Garden
July 28, 2024 Every year since 2008, I’ve been lucky enough to attend the annual Garden Fling, a gathering of bloggers, Instagrammers, YouTubers, and other gardeners on social media, held in a different city each year, where for 3-1/2 days we tour gardens, socialize, get a flavor for a new ...
Evening stroll around the garden
July 18, 2024 Last week we had a surprise rain shower — what joy! Afterward I walked through the garden, imagining the plants were feeling the joy too. In the side garden, the string lights on the fence came on as daylight faded away. Golden thryallis makes a bushy, flowering ...
