Winter bees and flowers
January 08, 2019 Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean bees disappear. Warm winter days draw them back into the garden, where cool-season flowers lure them with nectar and pollen. Mahonia flowers in the winter here in Texas. This is ‘Marvel’, a new-to-me mahonia I’m trialing from Southern Living Plant Collection ...
Waterwise beauty and metal animal safari in Linda Peterson’s San Antonio garden
December 05, 2018 An invitation to Linda Peterson’s garden in San Antonio proved too tempting a treat to resist on the day before Halloween. I arrived in San Antonio in time to tour the terrific new culinary and adventure gardens at San Antonio Botanical Garden before heading over to Linda’s mint-green ...
Oxblood lilies are baaaaack!
September 13, 2018 Five inches of rain soaked the soil last week, and the oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida) have raised their celebratory red flags in response. Popping up from dormancy seemingly overnight, they’ve splashed color along the front of the raised beds in the back garden. The herald of the ...
Playing in The Gardens on Spring Creek in Fort Collins
September 12, 2018 During our Great American West road trip last month, my daughter and I passed through charming Fort Collins, Colorado, and visited The Gardens on Spring Creek, the city’s community-oriented botanic garden. The entry garden was ablaze with late-summer flowers like purple coneflower, rudbeckia, and cleome. Pink cleome ...
Garden powers through a Texas heat wave
July 24, 2018 Arizona-level heat is plaguing us here in Austin this week. Temps reached 110 F (43.3 C) yesterday, and we’re cooling down to “only” 101-105 F all the rest of this week. The Death Star is on high beam! The garden must power through, as must we all, ...
New leaves coming up, old leaves coming down
March 16, 2018 Spring looks a lot like fall in my garden, as this photo shows: fresh green leaves surrounded by brown live oak leaves. Live oaks stay green all winter, like an evergreen tree, but come spring they do actually drop their leaves and swiftly leaf out again. Casting ...
Mowing the sedge, and other expressions of hope for spring
January 30, 2018 Central Texas gardens got walloped by Old Man Winter this year, and a lot of plants that normally contribute to Austin’s evergreen palette — bamboo muhly, sago palm, flax lily, even ‘Alphonse Karr’ bamboo — are sporting sad shades of tan or brown. With a garden tour ...
Protecting the garden from a Texas deep freeze — or not
January 05, 2018 We’ve just recovered from a bad case of winter here in Austin. From New Year’s Eve through Wednesday, a long deep freeze — by Central Texas standards, anyway — had us huddling by the fireplace night after night. Lows in the mid-20s rose only to around freezing ...
Fall color and grassy plumes for December Foliage Follow-Up
December 16, 2017 Despite our one-day snow last week, it still looks pretty autumnal in my garden this Foliage Follow-Up. The Japanese maple stubbornly refuses to acknowledge fall until December, when the Christmas lights go up on the house and red balls go up on the agave by the door ...
Snow day in Austin! It only takes a dusting
December 08, 2017 The flakes started hitting my windshield at 2:30 pm over in central-east Austin. By the time I got home I thought it was all over, but the heavy, gray sky and cold temps convinced me to start pulling pots of tender succulents up against the sheltering walls ...
Sedgey front garden and xeriscape terrace
December 06, 2017 For one West Austin homeowner, this is the view from her front door: an undulating, rhythmic front walk of poured-concrete pavers wending through a meadowy swath of Berkeley sedge, soap aloes, and purple heart, with a scrim of yaupon hollies shielding the view of the street. A ...
Hill Country style in Sitio-designed garden of architect Duke Garwood
November 27, 2017 A month ago I visited a Rollingwood garden designed by landscape architect Curt Arnette of Sitio Design. It’s owned by the architect of the contemporary Hill Country-style home, Duke Garwood, whom I also had the pleasure of meeting. Let’s start in back, where a limestone patio bordered ...
Waterwise drama in Lakemoore Drive Garden: Austin Open Days Tour 2017
November 20, 2017 Continuing my coverage of the November 4th Open Days tour, today I give you the Lakemoore Drive Garden. Regular readers may recognize this garden as one I blogged about, rapturously, in 2013. The outer garden, a sun-loving gravel garden with evergreen xeric plants like agave, yucca, prickly ...
Easy outdoor living in garden of designer B. Jane: Austin Open Days Tour 2017
November 15, 2017 For a refreshing contemporary design with fun colors and a restrained palette of tough-as-nails native plants, designer B. Jane‘s garden is the place to hang out. Her personal garden in Austin’s Brentwood neighborhood was featured on the Garden Conservancy-sponsored Open Days tour a couple of weeks ago ...
Autumn stroll around my garden
October 27, 2017 Autumn is my favorite season in the garden, when the Death Star abates and cool breezes blow in from the north, pushing that Gulf Coast humidity back to Houston where it belongs. The sky goes china blue, fall perennials burst into bloom, and fall-blooming grasses incandesce in ...
Linda Peterson’s green-walled xeriscape garden: San Antonio Open Days Tour
October 25, 2017 The highlight of the recent San Antonio Open Days garden tour, as I knew it would be, was Linda Peterson’s beautiful xeriscape and green-walled courtyard garden. Twice before I’ve had the pleasure of exploring Linda’s garden (in September 2015 and April 2016), and the artistry of her ...
