A sun-to-shade retreat in the garden of Rita Thomas
July 25, 2022 “The garden has been my retreat, my laboratory, and my playground,” Rita Thomas told us at the Madison Fling, a 3-day tour for gardeners on social media, held last month in and around Madison, Wisconsin. For 35 years, Rita has been playing in her Fitchburg garden, learning ...
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 ...
In the night garden
June 06, 2022 The night garden in early summer glows with spires of creamy, bell-shaped blossoms. ‘Bright Edge’ yucca sends up these towers of flowers, perfect for a moonlight garden. Paleleaf yucca (Y. pallida) gets in on the act too, sending up its own tall flower spike over powder-blue leaves ...
Gathering spaces in Ruthie Burrus Garden, part 2
May 02, 2022 In my last post I hope I wowed you — as I was wowed — by the colorful wildflower meadow and textural spiky-soft shade garden of Ruthie Burrus. If you missed it, check out Part 1 of my visit to Ruthie’s West Austin garden. Today we’ll explore ...
The yellow glow of late fall
December 02, 2021 Cool, blue-sky weather has me spending more time in the garden, having friends over, and tinkering with planting beds. It’s kind of glowing out there. Why? Yellow is the color of fall in my garden, starting with the wonderful forsythia sage (Salvia madrensis), which lights up the ...
Autumn asters, garden rooms in Michael Gordon’s New Hampshire garden
November 29, 2021 Michael Gordon’s garden in early October is aster-licious Through phone interviews for magazine assignments, I’ve gotten to “know” many interesting gardeners around the country. One of these is Michael Gordon of Peterborough, New Hampshire, whose garden I wrote about for Country Gardens in 2019. An optometrist by ...
At Juniper Hill Farm, a country garden gets structure from formal design
November 23, 2021 Connections to gardeners I’ve made as a writer often lead, like beads on a string, to new introductions and far-flung garden visits. In such a roundabout way I had the pleasure last month of meeting photographer Joe Valentine and his wife, Paula, for a personal tour of ...
Tour of P. Allen Smith’s Moss Mountain Farm: Terrace Garden and Sister Oak
July 07, 2021 After St. Louis, Mom and I headed back to Texas via Little Rock, Arkansas. On the morning of June 17th, we wound our way into the hills northwest of the city and joined 80 others with a reservation for lunch and a tour of Moss Mountain Farm, ...
Bee balm, daylilies, and fawn season
June 13, 2021 I’m grateful for the past two weeks of off-and-on rain, which helped my garden rebound from the epic February freeze. Early June may be hot and muggy now, but the garden is full and flowery. And the driveway border is back, baby! ‘Peter’s Purple’ bee balm (Monarda ...
A week of bloom spikes and rain
May 22, 2021 We had such prolonged rain this week that I lost track of how many inches it came to — 4 inches for sure if not 5. The garden responded to the extra water and mild May temps with a profusion of growth, including bloom spikes on yuccas, ...
Modern ranch garden embraces water collection and wildflowers in New Braunfels
May 17, 2021 Last spring Cody and Michelle Koehler finished their garden installation at their home in New Braunfels, Texas. Less than a year later, February’s epic freeze killed most of their large specimen plants, including Weber agaves, olive and palo verde trees, and toothless sotol. Like everyone else in ...
Farewell, fall flowers; hello, first freeze
December 01, 2020 So long, ‘Grapes’ gomphrena. It’s been a grand fall. But with a first freeze of 29F predicted early this morning, I expect your button-like flowers will soon look pale and freeze-dried. Well, it was time, I guess. Sayonara, forsythia sage. You were absolutely beautiful for two solid ...
Tropicalesque Tanglewild, where bananas and palms grow big and bold
September 17, 2020 With the arrival of cooler weather it’s garden visiting season, and I’ve started calling on gardening friends who are willing to have me over for a socially distanced, masked, outdoor visit. How I love touring gardens! This week’s tour is at Tanglewild Gardens, a 1.7-acre garden in ...
Circle Garden’s shades of green
August 18, 2020 Our elevated deck offers a nice overhead view of the Circle Garden. And as I recently discovered, when you climb a stepladder on the deck, you can get almost the whole garden in the frame, including the new rose and salvia planting at the base of the ...
Revamping the Circle Garden, again
July 29, 2020 The summer doldrums, I call it. When it feels like a sauna outside, and it won’t rain, and yet the plants and especially the weeds grow like Jack’s magical beanstalk until the garden feels suffocated by vegetation. That’s where I was a couple weeks ago, with tree ...
Dusky blues in the garden
June 10, 2020 While photographing the owls and beating away mosquitoes a few evenings ago, I pointed my lens at the Circle Garden for the umpteenth time. This view makes me so happy! ‘Sterntaler’ coreopsis (foreground) is beginning to flag in the near-100-degree heat we’ve had all week. Who can ...
