Cottage garden charm in Tom’s Tarrytown garden, Part 1
April 25, 2025 Spring is when I get invited — or invite myself — into gardens all around Austin. It’s a rush to see as many as I can before summer and the Death Star arrive. Right now though, it’s sweetness and light! Especially in the charming cottage garden of ...
Wildflowers, donkeys, and old-sign magic at Katie Bird Farm
April 22, 2025 Last week I invited myself to Kay Angermann and Julie Nelson’s utterly charming Katie Bird Farm, their home garden on 3 acres in southwest Austin. I love everything about their country garden, starting with this eye-catching vignette along the driveway: an upturned stock tank displaying a succulent ...
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 ...
Purple passion and roses in Lucinda’s garden
April 03, 2025 When April’s roses unfurl their soft petals, Lucinda Hutson whips up a batch of Purple Passion cocktails (dry gin, fresh lemon juice, and crème de violette liqueur), assembles garden-fresh hors d’oeuvres, and invites her friends over to enjoy the spring spectacle. I count myself very fortunate to ...
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 ...
A woodland art collector’s garden on Vashon Island
August 02, 2024 While touring the Carhart Garden at the Puget Sound Fling last month, I met one of the owners, Mary Carhart, who upon learning I was from Texas enthusiastically told me that she is from Texas too. Decades ago, she and husband Whit moved to Washington for work ...
Michael’s Plano Prairie Garden in spring
June 03, 2024 I’ve visited Michael McDowell’s garden — aka the Plano Prairie Garden — several times over the past decade (see here and here; it’ll also be featured in my forthcoming book). My visits have always been in the fall, when purple spires of gayfeather turn Michael’s prairie garden ...
Prairie wildflower oasis at Native Texas Park in Dallas
May 30, 2024 On a mid-May trip up to Dallas, I swung by the Laura W. Bush Native Texas Park just before sunset to see the big wildflower show I’d been hearing about this spring. I was not disappointed. Red-and-yellow firewheel, purple horsemint, rusty Mexican hat, and lilac American basketflower ...
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 ...
Transplanted from PNW, Nancy begins new garden in Austin
March 23, 2024 I was happy to visit the new garden of a new gardening friend a few days ago. Located in Austin’s Windsor Hills neighborhood, the garden represents a new beginning for its creator, Nancy Fortner (@gardeningwhileold). In 2021, to be near their daughter, Nancy and her late husband, ...
Lucinda’s purple-heart home and garden
March 20, 2024 Who can resist Lucinda Hutson‘s purple casita with mango trim and festive garden? Not me! When Lucinda invited me over last week for a spring garden visit, I happily said yes. The color-party starts on the alcove-like porch, where grape walls and a deep-rose screen door are ...
Cutting Garden and Fling Party at Chanticleer
January 24, 2024 Last September, the Philadelphia Area Fling took me to Pennsylvania, where I enjoyed two visits to the incomparable Chanticleer. I spent a full day there before the tour began and returned for the official afternoon visit, which ended with dinner, live music, and dancing in the garden ...
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 ...
Happy, colorful courtyards at The Lincoln Marfa
September 18, 2023 I stayed at The Lincoln, a boutique hotel of 14 “unique homes” at a century-old property, when I visited Marfa a couple weeks ago. A bright yellow door and orange cosmos flowers offered a cheerful welcome as I rolled my bag to Unit 7, passing a gigantic, ...
Michael Eason’s desert garden retreat
August 14, 2023 While in West Texas a couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting designer and author Michael Eason‘s garden in Alpine. Michael had lined up some wonderful gardens for me to visit there, ones that he’d designed, but it was nice to see his own personal ...
