The way echeverias resemble pine cones inspired my front-door holiday wreath. I used bronzy-gold painted pine cones the size of ping-pong balls and attached them, as well as the succulents, to a flat wreath form using hot glue. Surprisingly, hot glue doesn’t harm the plants. When doing holiday designs using succulents, be careful that the embellishments you choose don’t overwhelm plants with muted[...]
This must be the season for trees here at Gardening Gone Wild. Some of you may still be raking up leaves (and composting on site, right?), like I do with my Tupelo leaves – my most dependable tree for fall colors. Nyssa sylvatica is native to the East Coast but is a great garden tree almost[...]
Garden writer and photographer Bren Haas, when interviewing me about my career and books, asked if I’d had a mentor for my photography or painting. I told her, “Light is a great teacher. I become transfixed when I see sunlight glittering on leaves, shadow patterns, or some lovely translucence. I’m uncomfortable in the presence of ‘wrong’ light—i.e. a windowless[...]
There was so much beauty at Waterwise Botanicals nursery near San Diego during the recent Fall Garden Party, I’m going to let my images speak for themselves. Cue the rhapsodic music! During the event, I did impromptu plant-pot pairings. The nursery gave away hundreds of 1 gal. succulents to guests Waterwise Botanicals nursery is a terrific destination nursery in Southern CA,[...]
A recent visit to the Arnold Arboretum in Boston provided a glorious opportunity to photograph trees. After all, the word “arbor” is Latin for tree and arboreta are collections of trees. What better a place to go to work with my camera. I confess I was once uninterested in traditional arboretums because there tends to be little structure to[...]