It occurs to me that I never posted about this workshop, which was held at the end of June during the Garden Bloggers’ Fling. I won’t try to convey what Saxon Holt had to say, but Judy found it very helpful. I will say that Saxon was very gracious and entertaining as he shared his …
We devoted one afternoon in Austin to exploring the Zilker Botanic Garden. There were very few blooms, but even in December it’s worth seeing. I especially like the way it is designed around the topography of a hillside overlooking downtown Austin. We enjoyed the Prehistoric Garden, which showcased ancient plants and a few dinosaurs. There …
Back to our September trip. So Judy and I took a train from the Loire to Paris, and then another from Paris to London, passing under the English Channel. For people in that part of the world this is not a big deal but it made us feel so very sophisticated. One of the first …
The Lurie Garden is dramatically beautiful right now, and an excellent vantage spot from which to view the lakefront skyline. Judy took a walk this afternoon during a break from the work day, and snapped these pictures with her cell phone. Grasses and foliage provide a tapestry of gold, tan, green, brown, red, and yellow. …
First of all, Giverny is really tiny. The population is only about 500. This seems surprising for a place that is so well-known, but there it is. So it is not surprising that you cannot take the train directly from Paris to Giverny. Instead you have to get off at the somewhat bigger town of …
In recent decades many garden designers have sought to de-emphasize flowers and pay more attention to form, foliage, and structure. Giverny’s upper garden, on the other hand, is first and foremost about flowers. There are no hedges, no ornamental grasses that I can remember, and not much in the way of plants used primarily for …
In early September, Giverny has a lot of Dahlias in bloom. I mean a LOT of dahlias. I don’t know any of their names, because I don’t grow any Dahlias, but here are some nice ones we saw. It’s not that I don’t like Dahlias. It’s just that north of zone 7 you have to …
So let’s talk about the structure of the upper garden, the Clos Normande, at Giverny. Giverny has no hedges, clipped or otherwise, but that doesn’t mean it is an amorphous blob. It has paths, arches, trees, walls, and of course Monet’s house. There is structure beneath all that exuberant color and greenery. The structure …
American plants, that is. I’ve already written about Monet’s lower garden. In trying to write a post about the upper garden, I face a serious challenge. Namely, Judy took exactly 357 pictures, and narrowing those down to a number suitable for a single post is an impossible task. So, I have chosen to do at …
After Paris, we took the train to Vernon, then got a ride to the village of Giverny, where we stayed overnight. The next morning, we visited Claude Monet’s garden. Monet really created two gardens. There is the upper garden, which has vibrant masses of color emerging from rectangular beds – sometimes called the paintbox garden. …
gardeninacity 