Why is Honest Abe in Our Garden?
Some people keep a Buddha statue in their garden. Others have St. Francis. For us, it’s Abraham Lincoln. Not a Lincoln statue, actually, just half of a bookend set I found online.
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Notes from a wildlife-friendly cottage garden
Wanna See Our New Birdhouses?
About two years ago we visited Tammie of Casa Mariposa and got to see her lovely garden. I was especially impressed by the decorative quality of her several birdhouses. Since then, I have wanted to add more birdhouses to our own garden.
Reford Gardens Part II
Reford Gardens hosts an International Garden Festival, consisting of show gardens put together by artists and design teams from around the world. As the website says, the Festival is a “forum for innovation and experimentation.” The 2015 festival had 28 gardens that were on display from June through September.
A Garden That Tells The Story of a Place and a Family
This is our second post about Glen Villa, which Judy and I visited at the very end of August. Glen Villa is the garden of Pat Webster, located in Quebec about 90 minutes southeast of Montreal. Pat writes the blog Site and Insight, which recently received a Silver Award from the Garden Writers Association. The …
Orange Makes a Lasting Impression
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may know that I like orange flowers. Butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa), Mexican Sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifolia), orange roses (‘Westerland’, for example), orange Zinnias, orange Asiatic Lilies, etc. One of the gardens we visited as part of the Portland Garden Bloggers’ Fling last July was that of JJ …
A Vision Made Real: Watts Towers
We visited the Watts Towers on the Sunday before Christmas. Watts Towers are the remarkable creation of an immigrant tile setter named Simon Rodia, who worked on them from 1921 to about 1954. There are seventeen towers and other structures on the property, the largest being about 90′ tall. The towers were created entirely by …
Quirkiness Supreme at Floramagoria
Floramagoria is a remarkable private garden we got to see during the Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland back in July. The garden was striking for its design and combination of beautifully grown plants. But it also contains a highly concentrated and entertaining dose of whimsy. There is so much in this garden that I’m doing …
A Minimalist Approach to Christmas Decorations
We are minimalists when it comes to Christmas decorations. Not because we don’t like the holiday, far from it. Not because we are of mixed religious backgrounds. (Judy’s dad was a Lutheran minister, while I’m Jewish. Which, in the memorable phrase coined by Walter Matthau in Pete’n’Tillie, would make us Jewtherans.) Actually, neither of us …
Undaunted Color In The Garden of Keeyla Meadows
One of the most exciting gardens we visited during the 2013 Garden Bloggers’ Fling was that of Berkeley artist and garden designer Keeyla Meadows. Keeyla is also the author of the book Fearless Color Gardens, in which she advocates “Jumping off the color wheel.” I’ve just started reading Keeyla’s inspiring book, but having seen her …
And Now For A Bunch Of Things That Are Completely Different
So the Garden Bloggers’ Fling started in earnest on Friday. I’ve gotta say we have been seeing some jaw-dropping gardens. Not just creative and visually stunning, but also very different from what I normally associate with the word “garden”. Mat Gil’s Sculpture Garden is built up against a rock face below a highway overpass in …
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