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 ...
Fall at Denver Botanic Gardens: Pond, prairie garden, and Victorian garden
January 10, 2025 One of my favorite places within Denver Botanic Gardens‘ 24 acres is the naturalistic Gates Pond. Half-hidden in a back corner, the pond is bordered on one side by a prairie garden, on the other by a piney woodland bluff. This is Part 5 of my tour ...
Fall at Denver Botanic Gardens: Entry and Water-Smart Garden
January 06, 2025 As much of the country, including Texas, tucks into flannels and wool socks to stay warm this week, let’s float back in time to the golden days of a Colorado autumn. In late September last year, I made two visits to Denver Botanic Gardens, one of my ...
Lori’s blue fantasia garden
January 04, 2025 I popped over to my friend Lori Daul‘s house on Thursday, craving one more garden visit before the Arctic barrels down to Austin and brings our long growing season to an end. At Lori’s, fountains still trickle, ponds reflect sky, and plants sprawl luxuriantly. The garden echoes ...
Thankful for fall flowers, cool temps, not deer
November 27, 2024 Fall was slow to arrive this year. Autumn rainfall has been tardy too, just a smattering here and there. But there’s plenty to be thankful for in the garden, as always. I’m grateful for cooler, yet frost-free temps and the fullness of the autumn garden. Hooray for ...
A collector’s garden of rare palms and cactus
November 21, 2024 Amber and Jason Schoneman, owners of garden design biz Dwarf Palmetto Design, nurture a fascination with palms, cactus, and other low-water plants. Avid collectors, they know the provenance of every plant in their garden. They also propagate plants for their private plant sales. In short, they are ...
Cold-hardy cactus and more at plantsman Kelly Grummons’s garden
November 12, 2024 While in Denver this fall, I found Colorado gardeners to be warm and generous about sharing their creations and eager to make introductions to other gardeners they admire. That’s how I came to meet plantsman Kelly Grummons, co-owner of specialty nursery Prairie Storm Nursery. How, exactly? After ...
After derecho devastation, a garden blazes beautifully
November 08, 2024 The derecho in Houston last May snapped in half a tall tree that shaded my sister’s tiny Heights backyard. Miraculously, while it caused some damage, the broken tree didn’t take out the house, swimming pool, or patio seating on the way down. And now there’s a bonus ...
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 ...
