Succulents and More™

I imagine the work of a landscape designer is a constant give and take in order to find a balance between their own ideas and their clients' wishes. At best, the two parties strike a happy medium—and at worst, they end up making concessions that leave everybody dissatisfied. That's the reason why I love seeing what garden designers do at home where they're not bound by compromise and can give their creativity free reign. I had such an opportunity right after the 2018 Garden Bloggers Fling in Austin when  Pam Penick , garden writer extraordinaire and one of the Fling organizers, took a handful of us diehards on a tour of even more gardens. The first one we visited belongs to landscape designer Jackson Broussard. Hard to believe but these are Bradford pears It was clear right off the bat that this is no ordinary garden. The walkway to the front door is lined with Bradford pears, shaped perfectly and giving a welcome sense of coolness in the Austin heat. I co...

I like fusion. Fusion cooking, fusion music, and yes, fusion gardening. Why limit yourself when you have the entire world to choose from? Pick what you like, and don't worry about what others call “rules.” We saw a particularly nice example of fusion gardening in Austin, Texas last year. Blending Moroccan and Thai influences with an extensive collection of daylilies, 1.7 acre Tanglewild Gardens proves that you can have your cake and eat it, too. The original house was a split level built in 1971. The current owners Jeff and Skottie tore it down to the studs and foundation in 2011 and created exactly the kind of space they wanted. We didn't get to see the inside of the house last year but here are a few representative photos. Front of the house

More from the  2018 Garden Bloggers Fling , which took place in Austin, Texas from May 4-6, 2018.  Kirk Walden's garden in Austin, Texas is all about the view. The end. Just kidding.  A little at least. Because even if that was the entirety of this post, it would do a pretty decent job of capturing the essence of this garden. The saying that a picture is worth a thousand words definitely applies here. View of Lake Austin from Kirk Walden's garden The view does take center stage, as it should in a setting like this. But there's more to Kirk Walden's garden. There's limestone, a building material as local as it gets in the Texas Hill Country. 

More from the  2018 Garden Bloggers Fling , which took place in Austin, Texas from May 4-6, 2018.  Last week I wrote about the garden of Austin, Texas designer  B. Jane . It combines a low-water and low-maintenance front yard with a contemporary resort-style backyard in a compact package. To quote Loree “ danger garden ” Bohl, it's small but lives large. Ruthie Burrus's garden is in some ways the opposite. As you'll see, it lives large because it is large: The hilltop property is two acres and overlooks downtown Austin. As you can imagine—and will see in a bit—the views are insane. The residence is at the top of the hill, connected to the street by a long and steep driveway. A golf cart comes in handy in a place like this!

More from the  2018 Garden Bloggers Fling , which took place in Austin, Texas from May 4-6, 2018.  Garden bloggers from North America and Europe are gathering in Denver, CO right now for the 2019 Garden Bloggers Fling . Because of my daughter's high school graduation, I'm not able to join them, but I'm there in spirit. To celebrate the 2019 Fling, I'm making a concerted effort to write about the gardens we saw last year in Austin. There are still some incredible places to come! Today: B. Jane Garden, located in the Brentwood neighborhood in Central Austin. This area was a cotton farm until the 1940s when it was annexed by the City of Austin. This area is dominated by two- and three-bedroom bungalows, many of which were originally bought by GIs starting families after WWII. ⸻⸺⸻ What do they say about mullets ? Business in the front, party in the back? That comparison popped into my head as I was going through my photos of this garden. You'll see why in a mom...

More from the  2018 Garden Bloggers Fling , which took place in Austin, Texas from May 4-6, 2018.  Garden bloggers from North America and Europe are getting ready for the 2019 Garden Bloggers Fling in Denver, CO next week. Because of my daughter's high school graduation I won't be able to join them, but I'll be there in spirit. Thinking of the 2019 Fling made me realize that there are still several gardens from the 2018 Garden Bloggers Fling in Austin, TX  that I haven't covered yet. No better time to start catching up than now—and no better garden to showcase than the private sanctuary of Pam Penick , one of the original founders of the Garden Bloggers Fling and co-organizer of the 10th anniversary event in Austin. Pam Penick's award-winning blog is called Digging: cool gardens in a hot climate . She not only chronicles the evolution of her own garden in Austin, TX but also writes about other gardens—public and private— in Austin, Texas, and beyond: The Re...

Love at first sight is real, folks. One look at Lucinda Hutson's little purple house was all it took, and I was a goner.  It happened in early May at the 2018 Garden Bloggers Fling in Austin, Texas. Thanks to Lucinda, the color purple will forever be linked in my mind with her Casita Morada , her jewel box of a house built in the 1930s. Lucinda Hutson is not just a color picker extraordinaire, she's a passionate gardener, cookbook and lifestyle writer, and expert on spirits made from the humble agave: pulque, mescal, and above all tequila. Lucinda was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. She learned Spanish at an early age and, as a teen, frequently hung out in Juárez, El Paso's sibling on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. 

Many of you know Jenny Stocker through her blog Rock Rose  and are familiar with her garden in suburban Austin. But seeing photos of a garden is one thing, even if it's hundreds, if not thousands, of photos over a number of years. Visiting it in person is something else entirely. It's a somewhat surreal experience—like a lucid dream where you find yourself in a place that's both new and familiar at the same time. When I finally had the opportunity to tour Jenny's garden during the 2018 Garden Bloggers Fling , I took hundreds of photos myself. I hope that I managed to capture a few angles you haven't seen before. If you're not familiar with the Stockers, here's a brief intro. Jenny and her husband David are transplants from England who came to the US in 1967. After gardening elsewhere in Austin, they built their dream home in 2000 and started their current garden right after the house was finished. In  this post  you'll see their house and garden from a...

The first garden we visited on the 2018 Garden Bloggers Fling in Austin, TX was the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center . Established in 1982 as the National Wildflower Research Center under the auspices of actress Helen Hayes and Lady Bird Johnson it moved to its current 42-acre site in 1995 and was renamed Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in 1997. The Center acquired an additional 237 acres in 2002, enabling it to pursue "larger scale research on the ecology of the Central Texas region and how best to restore healthy landscapes in the region." In 2006, the non-profit organization became part of the University of Texas at Austin. Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson, was a committed environmentalist, working to preserve public lands for future generation and to "beautify" America. She was the driving force behind 200 environmental protection laws that were passed during her husband's administration. At the entrance to the Lady Bird J...

I usually approach gardens that are completely new to me the same way I do thrillers or suspense movies: I try not to find out too much in advance so I can go into the experience without any preconceived ideas. I find that to be more enjoyable than seeing everything through somebody else's lens. At the recent Garden Bloggers Fling in Austin, Texas we were given brief descriptions of each garden. I skimmed through them the night before to get a general sense but didn't read them carefully until afterwards. I might have missed a few things mentioned in the blurbs but I was able to let each garden "speak" to me on its own terms. However, in my posts about the gardens we visited in Austin, I'll give you as much information beforehand as I can. That should help you better understand what you see in the photos. The Mirador Garden  was designed by Curt Arnette of Sitio Design . We visited Curt's own garden after the Fling; I'll have a separate post in a fe...

In part 1 of this alphabetical round-up of garden highlights from the 2018 Garden Bloggers Fling  I went from  A gaves to L ush . This installment covers the rest: M exico  to Z ilker Botanical Gardens . M exico Texas was part of Mexico until the Texas Revolution of 1836. The relationship between Texas and Mexico has always been turbulent, and in a February 2018 CBS 11/Dixie Strategies poll 57% of Texans supported Trump's border wall. But in spite of the current political animosity towards Mexico, Texas's neighbor to the south continues to be a major cultural influence: 31% of the total population of Texas is of Mexican descent and 30% of households speak Spanish at home ( source ). Mexican food—and Tex-Mex, a fusion between Mexican and American cuisine—are insanely popular, and even hard-core conservatives would change their tune if Trump slapped a tariff on the import of tequila. Food writer Lucinda Hutson 's garden, our first stop on Sunday, distills...

As I mentioned in my previous post , I spent five days in Austin, Texas recently to join 90+ kindred spirits for the 2018 Garden Bloggers Fling . We toured a dozen private gardens and several public gardens and visited a couple of nurseries. And on the day after the Fling, I had the opportunity to see even more gardens. Instead of a traditional chronological overview of what we say, I'm giving you a potpourri of Austin vignettes from A to Z. This installment covers A to L, this one M to Z. A gaves Austin and agaves go together like hands and gloves. With maybe one exception, we saw agaves in all the gardens we visited. The whale's tongue agave, Agave ovatifolia , seems to be particularly popular—no surprise there. Agave ovatifolia at Mirador Garden

Cowboy boot planter at Lucinda Hutson's colorful Mexican-inspired garden From May 3 to 6, I attended the 2018 Garden Bloggers Fling . This annual gathering of garden bloggers from North America and the UK (and occasionally from other countries) celebrated its 10th anniversary this year in the place where it all began: Austin, TX. This index contains all my posts relating to #gbfling2018 . I'll update the list as I add new posts about the gardens we visited. PUBLISHED: Austin, TX gardens from A to L Austin, TX gardens from M to Z My Texas plant haul Mirador Garden: steel and succulents in Austin, TX Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin, TX England meets Texas: Jennie Stocker's fusion garden A love letter to color, life, and tequila: the Austin, TX garden of Lucinda Hutson Visiting the garden of Austin, TX writer and blogger Pam Penick B. Jane Garden: small but sophisticated backyard resort Ruthie Burrus garden: Texas Hill Country hideaway with s...