Chanticleer Garden is my cup o’ tea
December 29, 2023 The enchanting Chanticleer was worth two visits during September’s Philadelphia Area Fling tour. I flew in early from Texas in order to spend an entire day exploring Chanticleer, knowing I’d see it again for a few hours on Day 2 of the tour. More is more! This ...
Tropical terraces, color, and meadow at Owl Creek Farm
October 30, 2023 One of my favorite private gardens at the Philadelphia Area Fling back in September was Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm. It’s not really a farm, so far as I could tell. The Hutton garden is sizeable, though, and its rural setting in West Chester, Pennsylvania, ...
Homey fall garden at Brandywine Cottage
October 19, 2023 Tropical Storm Ophelia swept across the Philadelphia region during late September’s Philly Area Fling. But Flingers shall not be deterred! On we Flung in raincoats, ponchos, umbrellas, and waterproof shoes — or in sopping wet pants and socks. Our group arrived at plantsman and designer David L ...
Making the scene at Create A Scene garden
October 11, 2023 In their home garden, Create A Scene, floral designer Michael Bowell and the artist Simple express their humor and place-making through plants and garden art. Their irreverent, enveloping garden in Malvern, Pennsylvania, was one of the stops on the Philadelphia Area Fling last month. Their plant-stuffed and ...
Flamboyant flower borders and containers at Longwood Gardens
October 05, 2023 Longwood Gardens is a showplace of plants designed to wow, and wow it did during the Philadelphia Area Fling tour in late September. Today I’ll show the most crowded — and likely most popular — part of the garden, the Flower Garden Walk and Compartment Gardens. As ...
Magical children’s garden and plant displays at Longwood’s conservatory
October 01, 2023 This is how happy you feel exploring Longwood Gardens on the first day of the Philadelphia Area Fling, an annual garden tour held in a different city each year for garden bloggers and Instagrammers and others publicly sharing about gardening online. Longwood’s conservatory manager, Karl Gercens, hosted ...
Orchids, silver garden, and living walls at Longwood Gardens conservatory
September 30, 2023 Feathery Acacia leprosa climbing the walls The first time I experienced the over-the-top plant showmanship that is Longwood Gardens was in 2016. I returned last week during the Philadelphia Area Fling, a 3.5-day garden tour hosted by Longwood’s conservatory manager, Karl Gercens. In honor of Karl, I ...
Philadelphia Area Fling and Andrew Bunting’s Belvidere
September 28, 2023 A gravel garden in the front yard of Andrew Bunting’s Belvidere I spent all last week in the beautiful countryside around Philadelphia for the 14th annual Fling (formerly known as Garden Bloggers Fling), touring private and public gardens with around 100 other garden writers, bloggers, Instagrammers, YouTubers, ...
Shangri La Botanical Gardens, a garden fairy tale
December 15, 2022 Dancing Sisters bottle tree sculpture at Shangri La Sleeping Beauty has nothing on Shangri La Botanical Gardens & Nature Center. Located in the small town of Orange, Texas, just across the Sabine River from Louisiana, Shangri La’s very existence is in some ways as fantastical as the ...
Thai sala and tropicalesque garden at Olbrich Botanical Gardens
August 19, 2022 For my final post about the Madison Fling back in June, I’ll share the Thai Garden, a surprisingly exotic-looking space at Olbrich Botanical Gardens. First, that glimmering golden pavilion! Called a sala, such a pavilion “is a common structure in Thailand generally used as a shelter from ...
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 ...
Tropicalismo drive-by garden
June 01, 2022 Driving through the South Austin neighborhood where my friend Lori lives, I passed this exuberant, tropical-style front garden. I immediately swung around and lurked at the curb to take in all the color and ka-pow energy of bananas and crinums and poppies, oh my. Under the shade ...
Heart of stone: Tait Moring’s garden
May 18, 2022 Amid the flurry of gardens I had the pleasure of visiting in late April, landscape architect Tait Moring‘s garden stands out, as always, for its evocative stonework and a magpie collection of found objects, boyhood collections, and castoffs from clients’ gardens, which Tait assembles into art for ...
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 ...
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 ...
