Day 1 of GWA Dallas Garden Tours, Wolford Garden and Hegi Garden

The next gardens our tour bus headed for were the Wolford Garden and the Hegi Garden. The Wolford Garden struck me as a touch pretentious at times, but had some really great hardscape details and interesting atypical plantings for the Dallas area. Very reminiscent of a high-end Balinese hotel with tropical plants, an exotic looking pool and plush outdoor living spaces. No doubt about it, I bet this is a great party house!

The Hegi garden was a bit more introspective with woodland walks and a solemn cavernous outdoor room. Possibly a bit more mosquito prone, since the garden was edged with a boggy creek, but with a feeling of just having discovered some long lost remnant of native woodland.

Day 1 of GWA Dallas Garden Tours, Green Garden and Hobbit House

OK, I'll be frank - I take a lot of pictures. Especially of gardens. I develop an understanding of the garden through my lens. It makes me zero in on a detail, focus on a view on simplify the structure into a pattern I can understand and learn from. Anyway, I end up with a lot of photos because I don't want to miss anything from a garden that I'm allowed into. I have this one chance to absorb it all. It was particularly challenging to photograph the gardens on the GWA tours. We only had 30 minutes or so at each garden and there were A LOT of folks trying to see it at the same time. It was actually kind of comical, jostling with everyone for a good shot. Luckily, everyone I was with seemed to be in a good humor about it all. So my photos may have a random foot in the corner of the frame or be a bit blurry as a tried to get that last shot before the bus left without me. But I had a great time and absorbed a lot through my lens.

I'm going to break the gardens up into two per post because as I said, I took a lot of photos. The first two gardens are the Green Garden and the Hobbit House.

I loved the structure of the Green Garden. Of an Italianate style, broken into several rooms, with boxwood hedges and formal hardscape.

And possibly the exact opposite of gardens - The Hobbit House: totally informal, wild and with no straight lines.

Dallas Arboretum Doesn't Disappoint

I've been kicking around Dallas for the last few days at the Garden Writers Association Symposium. Yesterday evening we got to enjoy several sweat-drenched (but alcohol fueled) hours touring the spacious gardens at the Dallas Arboretum. Immaculately maintained, the plantings were gorgeous.

Created in the 1970s by the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society who purchased two adjoining estates to establish the 66 acre garden, which was then opened to the public in 1984. There are some amazing architecture and garden elements in the arboretum, both old and new.

We got to enjoy the beginnings of the seasonal pumpkin houses. Beautiful and simply constructed, one of the best fall displays I've ever seen.

My favorite part of the arboretum would have to be the frog fountains. Their oversize, tactile qualities made me want to sit next to them all evening long. If it weren't for my camera I would have been splashing around and cooling down with all those kids out there. How lucky Dallasites are to have this charming place in their backyard.