Julie Clark and Mae Sanchez’s desert-inspired garden
October 15, 2024 I wasn’t in town for the Leaf Landscape Tour on October 5th, and one garden I was sad to miss belongs to two talented gardeners and knowledgeable plantswomen, Julie Clark and Mae Sanchez. Julie is the owner of Stronger Than Dirt Gardens, a fine garden maintenance company ...
Early taste of fall so I’m back in the garden
September 10, 2024 The weather gods gave Austin a month-early taste of fall over the past few days. Summer returns this week, but wow, what a delight it’s been to step outside in the morning to temps in the low 60s with low humidity! All day yesterday I tidied up ...
More exuberance at the Sparler-Schouten Garden, part 2
September 01, 2024 There was too much garden goodness and exuberance to contain in one post about Daniel Sparler and Jeff Schouten’s Garden of Exuberant Refuge, which I visited on the Puget Sound Fling. Here’s Part 1, if you missed it. Today, Part 2 starts on the back patio of ...
Exploring the Garden of Exuberant Refuge, part 1
August 30, 2024 If there was one garden that really spoke to my own sensibilities at the Puget Sound Fling last month, it was the Garden of Exuberant Refuge, the happy creation of Daniel Sparler and Jeff Schouten in Seattle. Colorful, quirky, irreverent, playful, and rewarding to the observant visitor, ...
Hanging on in the late summer garden
August 28, 2024 August can’t end soon enough for my crispy Texas garden and my own crispy self. But we had a little reprieve in the form of a cloudburst that dropped a quarter inch of rain a couple days ago. Temps have dropped below 100 F too. What is ...
Colorful garden with a view of Puget Sound
August 23, 2024 After leaving Heronswood, a public garden that was originally the private home garden of plantsman Dan Hinkley and architect Robert Jones, the Fling buses headed for Dan and Robert’s new garden, Windcliff, in Indianola. Because there were 100 of us on the Puget Sound Fling tour and ...
Evening stroll around the garden
July 18, 2024 Last week we had a surprise rain shower — what joy! Afterward I walked through the garden, imagining the plants were feeling the joy too. In the side garden, the string lights on the fence came on as daylight faded away. Golden thryallis makes a bushy, flowering ...
Profusion of pink cactus flowers
July 06, 2024 When the heat is on in a Texas summer, I love it when this little mammillaria cactus on the deck puts on a crown of candy-pink, satin-petaled flowers. This collection of small agaves and cacti lives on the deck table, eating up the sunshine and 100-degree temps ...
Early summer garden scenes in Austin
June 17, 2024 On my walks around the neighborhood, I’m admiring Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima), the star of Austin’s summer gardens. It’s so beautiful, both leaves and flowers. For whatever reason, I haven’t been able to get it established in my own garden, darn it. It loves heat and ...
Drive-By Gardens: Contemporary, lawn-gone front yard
June 12, 2024 I walked by this home in my northwest Austin ‘hood the other day and — bam! — the landscaping stopped me in my tracks. A silver-green planting of whale’s tongue agave, woolly stemodia, and grassy Lindheimer nolina (I think) makes a textural, deer-resistant welcome to this 1970s ...
Early summer flowers popping, deer fawning
May 20, 2024 Before the stifling heat dome settles over Texas later this week from now until October, I’ve been racing from one garden to the next across Austin and beyond, from San Antonio to Blanco to Dallas. Fun? Absolutely! But also, my gosh, I have a ton of pictures ...
Wildflowers, edibles, and hibiscus-munching tortoise at Teresa Garcia’s garden
May 17, 2024 A colorful patch of native Texas wildflowers greeted me in Teresa Garcia’s garden on the Inside Austin Gardens Tour last weekend. Ka-pow! Like Katie Bird Farm in my last post, Teresa’s garden is large (one acre) with extensive gardens, and located in southwest Austin. Let’s start our ...
A sheep pen turned country garden in Blanco
May 06, 2024 A year ago I received an invitation to visit a unique garden in Blanco, a small town an hour west of Austin in the Texas Hill Country. Because I was working nonstop on my book, I took a rain check until this spring. Recently I drove out ...
Blue magic in Lori Daul’s garden
April 27, 2024 I returned to one of my favorite Austin gardens last weekend, the South Austin garden of designer Lori Daul. It’s an oasis with, by our count, ten water features including multiple stock-tank ponds, birdbaths, and ground-level saucers tucked into groundcovers. The color blue unites everything, adding to ...
Circling back to my garden
April 24, 2024 I’ve been running around visiting gardens in Austin and beyond this spring, but every day I stop and breathe deep in my own garden, taking in the green freshness of the season. The Circle Garden view from the deck makes me particularly happy right now. Its graphic ...
A curbside garden for pollinators and all-year interest
April 06, 2024 Yellow sulphur butterflies flitted among zexmenia (Wedelia hispida) flowers last evening in this curbside garden in Austin’s Tarrytown neighborhood. Yellow on yellow! Honeybees joined the pollinator party too. Behind all the activity, an architectural whale’s tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia) made a powder-blue backdrop. What a beauty of ...
