Category Archives: garden travel

Shirley Watts in “Curbed”

The Garden Bloggers Fling hostess for the 2013 meetup, garden designer Shirley Watts, got a nice writeup in the Bay Area’s Curbed today. Very gratifying to see a primarily real estate magazine throw some love at landscapes and gardens too. … Continue reading

Posted in artists, design, garden travel, MB Maher | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

back at the ranch

All day long this past work- and appointment-filled Wednesday I clung to the idea of fitting in a short visit to Rancho Los Alamitos. I’d heard there were some changes with the barns, and there was a new foal, all … Continue reading

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, design, garden ornament, garden travel, garden visit, pots and containers, succulents | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Modernism Week in Palm Springs

It’s Modernism Week in Palm Springs, so what architectural gem did I visit? A Wexler steel house? Maybe a Neutra? Nope, but I did visit a cactarium, the world’s first. The cactarium belongs to the Moorten Botanical Garden, a small, … Continue reading

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, design, garden travel, garden visit, succulents | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

lost in Florence

Zadie Smith’s essay “Love in the Gardens,” describing complicated family relations against the backdrop of visits to two gardens, the Boboli in Florence accompanied by her father, and the Borghese garden in Rome after her father had died, gave me … Continue reading

Posted in garden travel, garden visit | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

in the news

Since the government shutdown, I’ve been checking in with The New York Times at an increasingly feverish pace, several times a day, (and doing little else, it seems), so it was in real time that the story on James Golden … Continue reading

Posted in artists, clippings, design, garden travel, garden visit, MB Maher | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

“Gardens: An Essay” by Robert Pogue Harrison (reposted from 10/7/11)

I’m more than a little overexcited at the prospect of hearing Professor Harrison speak at the latest iteration of Natural Discourse entitled “Culture & Cultivation,” to be held October 10, 2013, in Berkeley, California. The previous Natural Discourse programs were … Continue reading

Posted in artists, books, Department of Instruction, design, garden travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Agave ‘Shira ito no Ohi’

Or, more specifically, Agave filifera ssp. schidigera ‘Shira ito no Ohi’ (Queen of White Thread Century Plant). No one seems to know the origin of the variegated form of this wee agave with the big name, whose queenly title was … Continue reading

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, garden travel, plant nurseries | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

this summer’s dahlias

I moved my one dahlia, the deep burgundy ‘Chat Noir,’ to my community garden plot this summer. Performance was…meh. By August the plant was finished. The soil at the CG still needs work if it’s to grow anything but zinnias … Continue reading

Posted in cut flowers, garden travel, plant nurseries | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Yucca ‘Blue Boy’

I’ve brought a couple home under the name Yucca aloifolia ‘Purpurea,’ but I’ve recently been seeing it tagged as Yucca desmetiana ‘Blue Boy,’ as it was here at Cornerstone Sonoma, in the Transcendence garden designed by Delmar McComb and Peter … Continue reading

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, garden travel, garden visit, Plant Portraits, succulents | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

scenes from Long Island

It looks like the heat is fairly evenly distributed across the U.S. this Labor Day weekend. In between dipping into a steaming hot garden to cut back agastache, anthemis and senecio, I’m catching up on work and going through summer … Continue reading

Posted in garden ornament, garden travel, garden visit, pots and containers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments