Snapshots from Olbrich Botanical Gardens’ meadow, event, and herb gardens
August 12, 2022 Coneflowers at the entrance to Olbrich While in Madison for the Fling back in June, I had time for a pre-Fling visit to Olbrich Botanical Gardens, and then of course the garden was on the official tour schedule as well. Double Olbrich! I first visited this fine ...
Hot summer garden before it got super hot
June 29, 2022 I returned yesterday from the Madison Garden Bloggers Fling, and I’m already missing Wisconsin’s cooler summer climate. But dark clouds greeted me when I got home and then RAIN! An inch fell on my parched and heat-stressed garden, refreshing everything and sparing me from having to do ...
Back to the garden of good and evil
May 25, 2022 My friend Lori of The Gardener of Good and Evil is always in the middle of a project. I don’t know how she finds the time and energy after working on other people’s gardens all day, but Lori leaps into projects in all seasons, never shying away ...
Spring in plant collector John Ignacio’s garden
May 13, 2022 Last October I had the pleasure of visiting John Ignacio’s northwest Austin garden, a treasure box of rare plants that John has collected (including on a plant-hunting expedition with the late John Fairey) and hybridized. I returned this April to see it at the beginning of the ...
Coleson Bruce’s crevice garden in spring flower
May 04, 2022 Two weeks ago Coleson Bruce invited me back to his garden to see it in spring flower. I’d first visited Coleson’s garden last fall — a garden unlike any other I’ve seen in Austin or even Texas. Colorado-style crevice gardens are unusual here, and Coleson’s is not ...
Wildflower-palooza at Ruthie Burrus Garden, part 1
April 30, 2022 I first photographed Ruthie Burrus’s garden 8 years ago, when she emailed an invitation to come visit. I was wowed by her wildflower meadow, textural foliage garden at the front door, giant rainwater cisterns, charmingly rustic garden haus, and skyline view. Here’s her garden haus in spring ...
Peacocks and giants: Visiting Mayfield Park and Laguna Gloria
April 27, 2022 In early April I visited Mayfield Park for the Trowel & Error gardening talks. Of course if you visit Mayfield Park you’re going to see peacocks. Mayfield Park Two dozen of these beautiful birds — peacocks and peahens — roam the grounds. Unafraid if a little wary, ...
Wildflower Center abloom in early April
April 23, 2022 Claret cup cactus flowering at the top of the Wildflower Center tower I’m overdue for a visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center — and it’s only been two weeks since I was there! But a lot happens in April and May. What was blooming two ...
Spring garden party at Lucinda’s purple casita
April 14, 2022 If I’m lucky, springtime means an invitation to Lucinda Hutson‘s festive garden. And last weekend I felt lucky indeed to be invited to her purple casita on a perfect spring day. Out front, pansies were still somehow hanging on, despite recent warm temperatures. Ready to take over, ...
Houston Botanic Garden edibles, water wall, and end-of-winter gardens
April 04, 2022 In early March, on a quick trip to Houston, I returned to Houston Botanic Garden for an end-of-winter visit. HBG is still a new garden — it opened in September 2020; click for my visit — and the culinary garden with its massive, aqua-tiled water wall is ...
Exploring Houston’s Centennial Gardens and Japanese Garden
March 08, 2022 During the Houston oil bust of the late 1980s, when I was a student at Rice University, I’d occasionally jog across Main Street to visit Hermann Park’s ancient-looking zoo or outdoor amphitheater. Those were hard times for Houston and its parks — though I was too young ...
Flowery meadow instead of lawn at Chanticleer’s house garden
February 26, 2022 You’d expect a garden surrounding an estate house to be formal, restrained, with neat lawns and containers that serve to frame the grand structure. The house garden at Chanticleer, a Pennsylvania “pleasure garden” I visited during my East Coast road trip last October, upends this convention through ...
Plants hold court at Chanticleer’s Teacup and Tennis Court gardens
February 23, 2022 Teacup Garden in 2021 A teacup-shaped fountain in the entry garden at Chanticleer gives the Teacup Garden its name. Each year the plantings around the fountain are redesigned to create a bold, new theatrical vignette. I visited Chanticleer in Wayne, Pennsylvania, last October on my East Coast ...
Autumn meadows and monarchs at Wildflower Center
February 07, 2022 The Center’s iconic lookout tower, which doubles as a water-collecting cistern When Loree of Danger Garden came to Austin last October, we visited the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on her last day. I was happy she got to see it a second time, particularly since her ...
Water feature magic in Lori Daul’s garden
January 24, 2022 My friend Lori Daul‘s garden in South Austin has evolved, over the many years I’ve visited, from a sunny, romantic space filled with roses to a shadier yet still lush paradise where bold blue agaves and black elephant ears get equal billing, where dry gardens meet water ...
A Texas-style crevice garden – and neighborly collaboration – brings midcentury Austin home to vibrant life
January 18, 2022 At the end of October, when Loree of Danger Garden was in town for her Garden Spark talk, we finagled an invitation to the tropicalesque garden of John Ignacio. John in turn introduced us to his friend and neighbor Coleson Bruce, who kindly allowed a couple of ...
