Gardeners and their Gardens

A Colorful Garden in Tucson

by Rebecca Sweet
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While visiting Arizona last month I couldn’t wait to tour a few private gardens to see first-hand how these determined and creative gardeners deal with All. That. Heat. Driving through Tucson’s wide suburban streets, where the homes and landscaping tend to blend together, my heart skipped a beat when I noticed this garden’s ‘fence’. Not your [...]

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Garden Designers Roundtable: Focus on the Details

by Rebecca Sweet
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I’ve been wanting to write about this garden for a long time, and have finally found the perfect opportunity with today’s Garden Designers Roundtable topic ‘Focusing on the Details’.  (Warning:  lots of photos for this one!) While touring gardens last year with Debra Lee Baldwin, she insisted I meet her good friend, Jim Bishop.  And, [...]

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A very public front garden

by Rebecca Sweet
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One thing I’ve noticed about many areas of Los Angeles is that if someone is lucky enough to have a garden at all, quite often it’s located in front of the house.  The houses either back up into the surrounding hillsides, or are on super tiny lots with neighboring houses crowding them on all sides. [...]

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My Hollywood Home Away from Home

by Rebecca Sweet
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For the next few weeks I’d like to invite you to join me on my adventure in Los Angeles.  West Hollywood, to be exact.  Why am I here?  My daughter and I are touring colleges and getting to know the town she’ll call home in a year. What’s that have to do with gardening, you [...]

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Garden Designers Roundtable: Our Home Gardens

by Rebecca Sweet
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In this month’s Garden Designers Roundtable, we have the honor of writing about our own personal gardens. While this may seem like an easy post to write, it’s actually been quite difficult for me.   How can I possibly share my garden with you in a way that conveys all that it means to me? While [...]

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My brother’s potting shed

by Rebecca Sweet
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My brother is moving this week, and while it’s always exciting to move on in life, it can also be very bittersweet.  He had a large, beautiful garden but I think my favorite part of it was the potting shed tucked in the far corner. While his family was busy at their new home, unpacking [...]

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Garden Designers Roundtable – Favorite Gardens

by Rebecca Sweet
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The topic for this month’s Garden Designers Roundtable is Garden Travel/Best Gardens.  While I immediately thought of the many beautiful gardens I’ve seen on my travels, there’s one that I’ve recently had the pleasure of visiting, and one that I can’t get out of my mind.  It’s a private garden here in Northern California, created [...]

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New friends, chickens and wine – a perfect afternoon!

by Rebecca Sweet
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One of the benefits of speaking at different garden clubs is the chance to meet their members and visit their beautiful gardens.  One such person is Bonnie Manion, whom I met at the La Jolla Village Garden Club last fall. After a morning of touring gardens, we ended our day at Bonnie’s home where we [...]

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Lani’s Fantastic Fence

by Rebecca Sweet
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Lani Freymiller has created one of the most incredible gardens I’ve ever seen (read more about it here).  Her garden is filled with countless design concepts and creative ideas. So many, in fact, that instead of writing the world’s longest post I’ve decided to write several shorter ones and post them throughout the year. This [...]

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Lecia Davis’s Laguna Beach Garden

by Rebecca Sweet
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Have you ever toured a garden, when the moment you stepped through the front gate you were instantly transported to another time and place?  That was the case with Lecia Davis’s magnificent garden in Laguna Beach, California. I had the opportunity to visit this exquisite garden a few weeks ago and was completely caught off [...]

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Lani Freymiller’s Garden – Green and Serene

by Rebecca Sweet
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As part of my ongoing series, Gardeners and their Gardens, I’d like to introduce you to a garden I visited a few months ago in southern California. I believe each garden is an expression of its creator’s soul, and that if you pay attention, you can literally feel the blood, sweat and tears that went into [...]

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Debra Lee Baldwin’s Succulent Garden

by Rebecca Sweet
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A few weeks ago I was a lucky, lucky girl and had the distinct honor of touring Debra Lee Baldwin’s own garden – and what a garden it was! Debra is known by many as the ‘Queen of Succulents’, thanks to her amazing books, Succulent Container Gardens and Designing with Succulents and the many talks and [...]

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A low-water, high-style garden in San Diego

by Rebecca Sweet
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I don’t think I’ve ever been as rude to another designer as I was when I saw this garden. A few weeks ago I visited my good friend Debra Lee Baldwin who graciously introduced me to a wonderful landscape designer, Frank Mitzel of Aesthetic Design.   Frank kindly took us to see a garden that [...]

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Wordless Wednesday – Succulent People

by Rebecca Sweet
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Having spent a delightful morning touring the San Diego Botanical Garden last week, I must admit I was most smitten by these life-size topiaries.  Pat Hammer, Director of Operations of the Botanical Garden, created these incredible works of art, going so far as making clay masks of some of the members of the garden and [...]

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The Allied Box Factory in San Francisco

by Rebecca Sweet
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A few weeks ago I paid a visit to Baylor Chapman, at her gorgeous floral studio Lila B. Design.  While I’ve written about her shop before (you can read it here), this time I’m writing about the building across the street.  Yep, it’s the giant green one which you can see out of her storefront [...]

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Cutest tool shed ever!

by Rebecca Sweet
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My friends, Michelle and Rob, have the cutest tool shed ever! Just this year, Rob built this for Michelle out of materials he salvaged either on their property or elsewhere around town – truly a labor of love. I  love how it tucks in so nicely within the beautiful perennial bed instead of relegated to [...]

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Opposites Attract in the garden

by Rebecca Sweet
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I love all gardens. I don’t think there’s a single style that I don’t appreciate.   And that’s part of the charm of gardeners – we’re all so different yet we all appreciate one another’s passion.  Sometimes the differences are subtle, sometimes they’re as opposite as night and day. But either way, part of the [...]

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Gardeners and their Gardens: Robert Bellamy

by Rebecca Sweet
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While visiting Dallas last week for the Garden Writers Association’s annual symposium, one of the highlights of the week was touring many different gardens.  One of my very favorite gardens of all was created by garden designer Robert Bellamy.  Over the past 25 years, Robert has slowly acquired neighboring properties in Old East Dallas, ultimately [...]

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Sprinkler Garden Art

by Rebecca Sweet
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  Okay, okay – by now most of you who have been reading my blog for any time now probably feel like they’ve personally strolled through Freeland and Sabrina Tanner’s garden and have seen everything I could possibly show them, right? WRONG! Freeland is an amazing powerhouse of creativity and has just finished building two [...]

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