Via Libre, a free-spirited garden along the freeway
July 25, 2019 Moss green doors sparkle with tin milagros — an inviting gateway into a garden courtyard. Many people wouldn’t consider buying a house sandwiched between MoPac expressway, a multi-lane highway with freight trains chugging down the center median, and its neighborhood feeder road. But Cynthia Williams Deegan and ...
An exuberant, upcycled, scrap-art garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 21, 2019 Colorful stucco walls! Upcycled metal garden art! Octopus planters! Agaves (atop caged columns) and alliums and poppies! Amusing vignettes! As soon as we stepped off the bus at Denver Garden Bloggers Fling (June 2019), I knew this garden would be one of my tour favorites. Who could ...
Mermaids welcome in Lucinda Hutson’s garden
April 26, 2019 Austin may be 200 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, but for beachy ambience look no further than Lucinda Hutson‘s mermaid garden. The ¡Viva Tequila! author created an under-the-sea vibe with a shell-encrusted arbor dripping with capiz shells, under which a cast-iron mermaid poses seductively. Potted sansevieria, asparagus ...
Wildflowers for the dead at Sutherland Springs Cemetery
March 24, 2019 How did I forget the name Sutherland Springs? While passing through this town of 600 people on my wildflower drive last Thursday, a riotous carpet of flowers caught my eye. I hit the brakes and pulled into Sutherland Springs Cemetery, then got out of my car to ...
Wildflower superbloom south of San Antonio
March 23, 2019 Is Texas experiencing a superbloom of wildflowers this spring? It’s certainly the best display I’ve seen since the epic flowering of 2010. Following a mild and wetter than normal winter, bluebonnets have burst into bloom several weeks early, turning roadsides and fields azure. Indian paintbrush have joined ...
Read This: Hot Color, Dry Garden can help you design your waterwise garden
August 26, 2018 Homeowners who want a waterwise garden, particularly if they live in the U.S. Southwest, often feel that their options are limited to cactus and gravel — a “zero-scape,” as it’s commonly called. If instead you’d like to have a true xeriscape (pronounced zeer-escape), a garden that doesn’t ...
Waterlilies and roses at Monet’s garden in Giverny
July 01, 2018 Having admired his waterlily series at the Musée de l’Orangerie, we decided to visit French impressionist Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny while vacationing in Paris last month. Braving Paris traffic, we rented a car one Sunday morning and drove 50 miles northwest to Giverny, with plans to ...
Ellsworth Kelly’s “Austin” brightens University of Texas campus
March 07, 2018 Resembling squares of lime, cherry, berry blue, and grape Jell-O, the glass-block windows of artist Ellsworth Kelly’s new artwork, Austin, are colorful, playful, and flat-out fun. You kind of want to slurp them up, or stick your finger in them to see if they jiggle. A new ...
Loropetalum color bomb
March 02, 2018 ‘Sizzling Pink’ loropetalum is still sizzling in the lower garden and knocking my socks off every time I look at it. Yesterday the sun was lighting up those fuchsia blooms like a stained-glass window. The fringey flowers look like the pom-poms of a thousand cheerleaders. So colorful! ...
Festive color and a little Dia de los Muertos in Lucinda Hutson’s garden
October 30, 2017 A visit to Lucinda Hutson‘s home and garden always feels like being at a party. Brightly colored walls and accessories, garden rooms with playful themes (like the mermaid garden pictured here), and Lucinda’s own excitement at showing you what’s flowering or fruiting create a feeling of festivity ...
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 ...
Pink flower ka-power
July 25, 2017 Several rosy-cheeked flowers are standing up to the Death Star during this hot midsummer. The ones I’m enjoying most, because the plant is new in my garden, are these satin-petaled, carnation-pink flowers that appear every couple of weeks on a mammillaria cactus. A spiny stoic cactus, just ...
Color-blended garden retreat of designer Barbara Katz: Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling
July 12, 2017 Opening the summer issue of Country Gardens magazine a few days ago, I felt an immediate jolt of recognition at seeing, on pages 10-13, one of the gardens we toured during last month’s Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling. It’s the garden of Bethesda, Maryland, designer Barbara Katz, ...
Peg Bier’s woodland garden of discovery: Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling
July 05, 2017 Near Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, during the recent D.C.-area Garden Bloggers Fling, we toured the garden of Peg Bier, who’s been designing and experimenting with plants here for 40 years. Peg’s charming yellow house comes into view at the end of a well-screened driveway. Plenty of sun gives ...
Blue fantasy in the garden of Linda Hostetler: Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling
July 02, 2017 I saw some truly wonderful gardens during the Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling last week, and one of my favorites was that of landscape designer Linda Hostetler in The Plains, Virginia. From the street you admire a handsome farmhouse-style home at the end of a wide, curving ...
Modern, easy-care garden of Austin designer B. Jane
May 22, 2017 I’ve long admired designer B. Jane‘s contemporary-style gardens here in Austin, including one I wrote about for Austin Home last year. Last week I visited B.’s personal garden in Central Austin’s Brentwood neighborhood and fell hard for her lawn-free, block-planted front yard. A straight walk of Lueders ...
