Make a beautiful bouquet from anything in your garden in 3 simple steps
3 Simple Steps: Snip, strip and stick!
Tour of Austin Garden Bloggers Fling’s beautiful gardens
I’m not sure I could pick a garden favorite at last May’s Austin Garden Bloggers Fling. The itinerary included a taste of unique ecclectic, xeric, formal, contemporary, and cottage style gardens — a smorgasbord of landscaping styles to delight the senses.
My favorite shot, this picturesque view of the Austin skyline served as the backdrop of a bed running along the back of the Burrus garden.
This rustic stone water trough at the front of the house is surrounded by lush shade plantings.
A quaint cottage-style garden house was built using rock from the property, incorporating vintage windows, and serving as home to beautiful climbing roses.
This sweet dog quietly sat guard throughout our tour.
Flanked by a long driveway peppered with structural agaves and native trees, visitors get a glimpse into the xeric garden that awaits them above.
The Jamison garden, with its cottage ambiance, provided a winding path along the sides and the back of the garden. Filled with ephemera, water features, seating areas, and secret spaces, it’s charm was enchanting.
After running out of room in her own garden, Burrus began beautifying the land that divides her street that runs by an elementary school. With no means of irrigation, she filled it with xeric plants and provided seating areas for neighbors and school children to enjoy.
When we arrived at this garden, the torrential rain that drenched everyone at the Wildflower Center and at my garden had abated and slowed to a light sprinkling. Special thanks to Laura Wills , Austin Fling co-planner, for the insight to order colorful ponchos for this rainy day.
The weather didn’t slow the tour as bloggers walked toward the contemporary xeric garden filled with sculptural yuccas and agaves and Cor-ten steel elements.
Stay tuned for more Austin Garden Bloggers Fling garden tour highlights.
In a Vase on Monday
It was a beautiful weekend celebrating Mother’s Day with my mom and my son. And, it was a sad weekend, thinking of people that weren’t with us, including my husband’s Mom who passed away a little more than 2 years ago.
She was like my second mother and I talk to her picture often and keep a tiny vase in front of her picture on the shelf. Yesterday I put together a bigger vase of blooms from my garden for her.
If you’d like to join in with your vase this Monday, you can link back Rambling in the Garden’s meme at https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/
Can you ID all of these blooms?
#InaVaseonMonday #blooms #flowers #vase #gardening #cuttinggarden #cutflowers #wildflowers
Enchanting Lyndale and Como Park gardens at the 2016 Fling
As is always the case, there is much to see at a Garden Bloggers Fling, and our 2016 adventure kept us going at a fast pace.
I fell in love with the explosion of color where this beautiful beehive beckoned in the Lyndale Park Garden. I waited quite a while to get a solo shot of this amazing sculpture in the garden, as all the other flingers were as enthralled with it as I was. (You can see I didn’t quite let the last person get out of the frame. Tag yourself if that’s your elbow!)
This garden was a creative combination of formal beds with this refreshing fountain, and some unique displays of a wide variety of pollinator plants.
I was smitten by this display of Verbena bonariensis as the focal point in the midst of this checkerboard of annuals. I know this took a great deal of work to achieve, because my Verbena bonariensis is like a naughty child in the garden — it never stays put where I’ve planted it!
It was interesting to see so many plants thriving here that we can grow back in our gardens in Zone 8b in Austin, Texas, like the catmint and lamb’s ears and rudbeckia.
Blue can be elusive in the garden, so I was drawn to this monochromatic display filled with so many of the plants I love, like salvias.
This is the perfect example of how repetition in garden design packs a powerful punch.
And then I found the pink bed! Between the hot sun bearing down on us and the profusion of pink and lime color contrasts in this display, it wasn’t easy to get a great photo. But the Zinnias, Hibiscus, Fountain grass, Cannas and Cleomes were begging to have their photos taken. I had to oblige them!
Oh, and now I see that they were joined by Guara as well.
I grow cleome in my garden as well, although it gets a little weary of the heat about this time of year.
We also visited the Como Park Conservatory and gardens, where I have visited many times, as I lived in the Minneapolis – St. Paul area for four years, from 1988 to 1992. Conservatories always capture my fancy.
I first visited the Conservatory’s Sunken Gardens in the Spring of 1989, when snow still blanketed the grounds outside but bulbs brought spring indoors. This picture of my son was taken when he was 5.
He’s 32 now, and that is still one of my favorite photos of him. Visiting the park brought back many wonderful memories of our time there.
A pond of stunning water lilies greeted us as we approached the entrance.
The Sunken Gardens look so different at this visit. Purples and lavenders and limes seem to dot every surface of the space.
To see other posts of fabulous Fling gardens, check out my overview of Wouterina De Raad’s mosaic sculpture garden and the Eloise Butler Wildlife Garden and Bird Sanctuary.
Gorgeous gardens dominate 2016 Garden Bloggers Fling in Minneapolis
I just returned from a wonderful 5 days at the annual Garden Bloggers Fling, held this year in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was a long weekend filled with good friends, good food and gorgeous gardens. It’s always so fun to spend time with long-time friends, some of whom came to the very first Fling in Austin, and to meet new Flingers and get to know them.
Our first stop was the Eloise Butler Wildlife Garden and Bird Sanctuary
. The garden includes 500 different plant species and more than 130 bird species.
It was a cool morning — which felt like heaven to this Texas girl who left behind temps in the 100s in Austin. We began walking through the most amazing wildflower prairie, walking through narrow paths with beautiful blooms up to my waist and higher. We brushed by many plants I knew, and many that I didn’t. Peaceful, serene and natural, the garden provided the perfect start our day.
I didn’t many photos in this garden, as I focused on being in the moment, truly able to reach out and touch the garden with every step.
These were some of my favorite blooms in the garden.
See how high the wildflowers were?
This is just a short, teaser post. Many more are percolating in my head, so check back soon!
Brilliant bluebonnets brighten the spring countryside in Central Texas…
It’s a banner year for Texas wildflowers. Just the right amount of fall and spring rain has bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, Indian Blanket and a slew of other wildflowers cover Central Texas.
This burst of blooms even made the national news; I was delighted to see it on Monday night’s NBC Nightly News. We’re so proud of our wildflower displays that have their roots in the beautification efforts started by Lady Bird Johnson while her husband was president.
Lady Bird wanted to clean up Washington D.C. and the country’s highways by regulating billboards, junkyards and other unsightly displays that she felt marred the natural beauty of our nation’s countryside.
President Johnson announced the America the Beautiful initiative during his State of the Union speech in January 1965, saying:
“I want to make sure that the America we see from these major highways is a beautiful America.”
Thus followed Highway Beautification act that called for control of outdoor advertising and other items along Interstate or primary highways and encouraged scenic enhancement of our nation’s roadsides.
On her 70th birthday in 1982, Mrs. Johnson founded the National Wildflower Research Center, a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to the preservation and re-establishment of native plants in natural and planned landscapes. She donated 60 acres of land to establish the Center. In December, 1997, the Center was renamed the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in honor of Mrs. Johnson’s 85th birthday. Mrs. Johnson was chairman of the Wildflower Center’s board of directors until her death in 2007.
I remember well her passing, as the people of Texas lined up for miles along her funeral procession route, the hearse coming through Oak Hill on its way to her final resting place beside her husband at the family cemetery at the LBJ ranch.
She accomplished so much in her lifetime, and she left us an amazing legacy by raising awareness of the importance of preserving natural and native beauty in our nation.
Bluebonnets against the backdrop of the Hill Country.
The bluebonnet show is just as dramatic in contrast to Indian Paintbrush.
In my own garden, bluebonnets blanket my stone and granite path and my daughter’s play scape pea gravel, taking their place with another of my spring favorites, winecup.
Up close or as distant blur of constant blue along the hills of Texas, bluebonnets herald the arrival of spring like no other.