I’m a sucker for squid agave
June 11, 2025 Do you enjoy squid games? I sure do — if they involve one of my favorite agaves, the gloriously tentacled squid agave (Agave bracteosa). One look at its curvy, balletic “arms,” and I think, “That’s ink-redible!” Here in my Central Texas garden, squid agave is heat proof, ...
Garden scenes before the Memphis Fling
June 05, 2025 Ghost plant I’m off to Memphis for the Garden Fling, an annual meetup of people who “garden” on social media! I’ve attended every Fling since it began in Austin in 2008, and I’m excited to see Memphis Fling gardens and meet the other attendees from all over ...
Agaves, salvias, and wildflowers going strong
May 22, 2025 Early summer is a good time in the garden, with late wildflowers in bloom and foliage still fresh and green. I’ve mostly been standing under the owl tree lately, but I do walk around to see what’s new in the garden too. Let’s start in the Circle ...
More fox and owl action in the garden
May 12, 2025 I’d seen her, but my husband hadn’t. So yesterday evening, we did a fox stakeout. As the sun went down, we parked ourselves on the front patio, watching and listening. Then — a scratching sound behind us. We turned to look, and there she was, perched atop ...
Owls, lizards, finches, and fox at home in my garden
May 11, 2025 It’s Wild Kingdom in my garden right now. Watching wild creatures make their homes, hunt, and raise their young in the garden hugely motivates my gardening efforts. There’s nothing better than watching a hummingbird zoom in to sip from a salvia, or a bumblebee bob among skullcap ...
Lawn-free prairie garden of Native Son’s Danny Bravens
May 07, 2025 This spring, Danny Bravens, owner of Native Son Gardens, gave a Garden Spark presentation about replacing traditional thirsty turf with low-water, densely planted, native prairie plants — the kind of transformational work he does every day for homeowners (and for schools through the nonprofit Plant Community). The ...
Screech owl in the box and garden anoles
May 04, 2025 Over the last few weeks I’ve been keeping an eye on the screech owl box in the front yard. A nesting pair has chosen it, and even though I haven’t seen owlets yet, I believe they’re in there. The mother owl spends more time in the doorway, ...
Tank ponds and spring blooms in Lori’s garden
May 02, 2025 In mid-April I popped over to my friend Lori Daul‘s garden in South Austin, bringing with me a small posse of visiting garden writers and editors. Any excuse for another visit to Lori’s pond-a-licious garden! Her front-yard stock-tank pond was abloom with starry pink and yellow waterlilies ...
Found-art sculpture, bejeweled gnome village in Tom’s garden, Part 2
April 27, 2025 In my last post I showed Tom Ellison’s front-yard cottage garden, which includes a large raised pond along with a majestic sycamore and flowering sweet peas, spuria iris, and pickerel weed. Now let’s step into the back garden to see the rest. Tom favors pops of red ...
Cactus flowers, lizards, and another owl sighting
April 23, 2025 It may be peanuts, but that’s a good thing when it comes to peanut cactus. My peanut (Echinopsis chamaecereus) erupted with starry orange flowers last week, and they’re still going strong. They are eye-poppingly orange-red, like molten lava. Cacti have such stunning flowers. This one was a ...
Hopping over to Ruthie’s hilltop garden
April 14, 2025 Last week, I hopped over to Ruthie Burrus’s garden in the Rollingwood neighborhood for a spring visit. Ruthie kindly opened her garden to me and my out-of-town guest Lisa Negri of SummerHome Garden. As always, the gardens surrounding Ruthie’s hilltop home enchant with a textural mix of ...
Not feeling cross about crossvine in bloom, and more!
March 31, 2025 When it goes, it goes. Ka-boom! An explosion of orange trailing along the coyote fence. ‘Tangerine Beauty’ crossvine is one of my favorite vines for spring color. It’s native, semi-evergreen, attractive to pollinators, vigorous but not invasive (unlike similar-looking trumpet vine — avoid!), and tough as nails ...
Spring flowers and fab foliage a-popping
March 16, 2025 Late last week, while I was under the weather and holed up on the couch watching Wicked, winter turned into spring. Yesterday I woke up feeling like myself again and noticed a text from my neighbor, thanking me for the beauty of my Mexican plum, which stretches ...
Exposed limestone and winter foliage in my garden
February 11, 2025 The exposed limestone slabs in the lower garden have always been one of the most remarked on features of my garden. New visitors often ask me if I brought them in. After all, moving limestone boulders around is a big part of landscape design here. We love ...
Late-winter mosey around the garden
January 31, 2025 The side garden — not the side with trash bins and potting bench but the far side, with a tree-hung chair half-hidden from the street — is a favorite destination of mine in winter. Tentacle-limbed live oaks gain even greater presence when the rest of the garden ...
A limestone entry walk with agaves and yucca
January 28, 2025 A front garden with a limestone entry walk and terracing caught my eye in Austin’s Tarrytown neighborhood last weekend. Whale’s tongue agaves, both in-ground and potted, and a shaggy-trunked beaked yucca say hello as you arrive, drawing you toward the steps and inner garden of sedge, giant ...
