Verbena explosion
A 6-foot-tall stand of Verbena bonariensis is all you need to dispel traces of coronafunk, and a mass of it in the Circle Garden delights me.… Read More
Penstemon and passionflower
My old stock-tank pond garden is filling in quickly with lavender-flowered Gulf Coast penstemon (Penstemon tenuis) and airy Verbena bonariensis blooming inside a circle of ‘Micron’ yaupon hollies.… Read More
All cleaned up after live oak deluge
The garden reemerged, after copious raking and blowing and bagging, from the annual spring deluge of last season’s live oak leaves and subsequent pollen catkins. I ran around with the camera, capturing the gorgeousness of new flowers and fresh foliage.… Read More
End-of-summer garden
Austin is eager to bid a less-than-fond farewell to summer after a record-breaking hot and dry September. I can already see a change in the light, and my garden got a bit of rain last week. With any luck, by next week temperatures will finally drop.… Read More
Via Libre, a free-spirited garden along the freeway
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 her husband, Bobby, have a talent for transforming an unpromising property into an indoor-outdoor paradise.… Read More
New steel planter and meadowy sedge in my garden
This summer I installed a new custom steel planter in front of the blue stucco wall by the pool. Tina Strarup of Affinity Metalworks created it for me out of 3/16″ gauge mild steel, which will patina to a rusty hue. I planted it up with water-thrifty, heat-loving orange bulbine and a few baby Mexican feathergrasses and mulched it with fines of Texas black gravel (sold by the bag at Whittlesey Landscape Supplies), and I LOVE it.… Read More
My article on urban farm gardeners appears in Country Gardens
January 14, 2019It’s a treat to open the mailbox in the middle of winter and find a spring-y looking magazine inside. The Early Spring 2019 issue of Country Gardens arrived over the weekend, and even more exciting for me, I’m … Read More
Fall flowers before an early freeze
November 20, 2018 Well, fall perennial color was pretty while it lasted. Austin’s first freeze arrived 3 weeks early last week and took out all my plants in full bloom, including forsythia sage (Salvia madrensis) and white mistflower (Ageratina havanensis). … Read More
Read my article about native-plant hellstrips in Wildflower magazine
October 29, 2018 Are you a member of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center? If so, when their member magazine Wildflower arrives in your mailbox, look for my article “Heavenly Hellstrips” and photo illustration. “Heavenly Hellstrips” is about using native … Read More
Plant This: Pride of Barbados, Caesalpinia pulcherrima
October 01, 2018 When summer’s heat sizzles the back of your neck and it hasn’t rained in a month and the rest of your plants want to give up, Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima) sassily unfurls dozens of ruffled, ember-hued … Read More
Oxblood lilies are baaaaack!
September 13, 2018 Five inches of rain soaked the soil last week, and the oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida) have raised their celebratory red flags in response. Popping up from dormancy seemingly overnight, they’ve splashed color along the front of the … Read More
3rd hottest summer in Austin’s history inching to a close
September 03, 2018 Have you heard any whimpering — or hopefully just stoic silence — from your Central Texas gardening friends this summer? Here’s why: we’ve been hammered by the Death Star and no rain for months now. It’s officially … Read More
Early summer color coming on
May 28, 2018 Mexican oregano, vitex, and ‘Vertigo’ pennisetum harmonize in shades of purple. Since the Austin Garden Bloggers Fling tour in early May, when 92 bloggers trooped through my garden, a purple explosion has occurred. So many plants are … Read More
Kirk Walden’s Hill Country garden atop Lake Austin
May 25, 2018 With this killer view of Lake Austin, many homeowners might have sodded a lawn, plunked a few pots of annuals around the pool, and called it done. But Kirk Walden, whose garden was the final stop on … Read More