Category Archives: garden travel

this is my brain on spring

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Denise

Spring is such a massive distraction, and that’s coming from just my own little garden, which apart from work* I rarely want to leave. For the first time in my adult life, I drove by a multiplex theater on Sunday … Continue reading →

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planting notes 2014

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Denise

Every year brings a new crop of preoccupations in the garden, such as: Will the beschorneria choose this spring for their first bloom? How about the puya in the gravel garden? Feel like blooming this year? Some plants really do … Continue reading →

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the desert gardens of Steve Martino

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Denise

I’m checking the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days website daily now, anxiously awaiting full publication of this year’s schedule. I’m expanding my radius to include Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, Palm Springs, California, New Mexico, anyplace I’ll be likely to find some … Continue reading →

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Australian Native Plants Nursery

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Denise

For just a two-hour drive up the coast, we ended up covering a lot of continents on Tuesday, botanically speaking, of course. Australia and especially South Africa were well represented. This was a much-anticipated trip to Jo O’Connell’s Australian Native … Continue reading →

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Shirley Watts in “Curbed”

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Denise

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 →

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back at the ranch

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Denise

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 →

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Modernism Week in Palm Springs

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Denise

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 →

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lost in Florence

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Denise

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 →

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in the news

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Denise

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 →

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

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Denise

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 →

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