Otherworldly trees and rocks at Joshua Tree National Park
August 03, 2020 Oh hi! Let’s pop back into the national park road trip. From the central coast of California, back in late June, we headed home to Austin via a more southerly route than our outbound one. We zipped through Los Angeles — regretful that the pandemic prevented any ...
Wildflowers and birding at Montaña de Oro State Park
July 24, 2020 We detoured to San Luis Obispo after Yosemite National Park (click here for the how and why of our socially distanced road trip in June) in order to see our niece, who attends college there. To be safe, we met up outdoors at Spooner’s Cove in scenic ...
Wildflowers and wildlife in Yosemite meadow
July 21, 2020 Milkweed and a monarch butterfly in Cook’s Meadow While the sheer cliffs and towering waterfalls of Yosemite National Park tend to get all the attention, Cook’s Meadow in the valley is also beautiful. During our June visit (click here for how we pulled off our socially distanced ...
Earthshaking thrills at Yosemite’s Half Dome
July 17, 2020 Half Dome as seen from Cook’s Meadow On Day 2 of our June Yosemite visit (click here for part 1 and here for how we pulled off the trip), we rose well before dawn, drove the 40 minutes into the park, and dropped David off at the ...
Yosemite National Park, grand temple of nature
July 14, 2020 An epic vista, including El Capitan on the left and Half Dome in the distance, greets you at the Tunnel View pullout. Half Dome. El Capitan. Tuolumne Meadows. Yosemite Falls. The names of Yosemite’s majestic granite walls, grassy leas, and thundering waterfalls are more familiar to many ...
Wildflowers and waterfalls at Kings Canyon National Park
July 12, 2020 Eriodictyon parryi, or poodle dog bush When you visit Sequoia National Park in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, you get two parks for the price of one. Kings Canyon National Park abuts Sequoia’s northern edge, and the parks are managed together; one admission gets you into both. It’s ...
Bears and giant trees at Sequoia National Park
July 08, 2020 After detouring to visit the Grand Canyon in Arizona (see our route in my previous post), we continued westward through California’s sere Mojave Desert. At last the land rose and formed the Golden State’s crinkled, tawny hills, stubbled with spreading, olive-green live oaks. By mid-afternoon we’d reached ...
Waterwise outside, oasis inside a walled Sonoma garden
January 25, 2018 Last August a family road trip took me through Sonoma, California, where I had the pleasure of seeing a garden I was writing about for Garden Design magazine. The owner, Marilyn Coon Stocke, had generously extended an invitation to me and my family, and so we stopped ...
Playing among giants at Redwood National Park and a hike in Fern Canyon
September 03, 2017 Want to feel ant-sized and incredibly young? Any number of national parks will have you marveling over nature’s immensity and your own small place in it. But Redwood National Park, located along the northern coast of California near Oregon, shrinks you right down to bug size as ...
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, part 2: Succulents, Ocean Trail, and Dahlia Garden
August 29, 2017 In my last post I showed you the Perennial Garden and Heath and Heather Collection at Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens in Ft. Bragg, California, which I visited in early August. Today let’s continue the tour, starting with the Succulent and Mediterranean Gardens. My first thought upon seeing ...
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens: Colorful perennial and heather gardens
August 28, 2017 I was not expecting this. None of us were. As we made our way up Highway 1 along the coast of Northern California in early August, naturally I’d planned a few garden stops, including a visit to Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens in Fort Bragg, expecting little more ...
Scenic coastal views along Highway 1 in Northern California
August 25, 2017 A road trip gives you the freedom to explore along the way, to make detours or just stop at an overlook to enjoy a view. In early August we made a family road trip up the coast of Northern California, a region we’d never seen beyond Stinson ...
Garden of Gary Ratway and Deborah Whigham and their Digging Dog Nursery
August 23, 2017 Stepping through a dark-leaved doorway in a beech hedge into the display gardens at Digging Dog Nursery, located in Albion, California, you feel a bit like Alice falling into the rabbit hole. What awaits on the other side? A potted boxwood draws you through the hedge… …and ...
Edibles, outdoor living, and more at Sunset Gardens at Cornerstone Sonoma
August 21, 2017 While touring the Cornerstone Sonoma gardens in Sonoma, California, a couple of weeks ago, I enjoyed a two-fer. Sunset’s Test Gardens relocated to Cornerstone in 2016, and after a year of growth they’re already looking amazing. A glowing vertical garden of sempervivums, planted in the orange Sunset ...
Cornerstone Sonoma showcases conceptual gardens in scenic wine country
August 20, 2017 It wasn’t easy, but I finally visited the gardens at Cornerstone Sonoma in Northern California, which have been on my bucket list for years. Due to my own poor planning, I first missed them after the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling, when I rented a car to ...
Evening photo shoot at The Huntington Gardens: GWA Pasadena
October 29, 2015 The Huntington gardens near Los Angeles have, for years, been on my wish list of botanical gardens to visit. So I was thrilled to see an afternoon visit and after-hours photoshoot offered on the itinerary of the Garden Writers Association symposium on September 20. Unfortunately, it was ...
