Meet Our Community: Laurin Lindsey and Shawn Michael, Houston designers and yaupon fans

 

Let's get to know each other!

Since we're not able to meet up in person this year, let's meet online. Every week we're introducing a member of our Fling community* here and on Instagram, in their own words. We're excited to see what everyone's talking about and sharing with their followers!

(*Any garden blogger, vlogger, podcaster, or Instagrammer who follows our Instagram or is a member of our Facebook group. If you'd like to be considered or recommend someone for a Meet Our Community profile, email us.)

Laurin Lindsey & Shawn Michael

Our home garden

We’re a husband-and-wife team who own a small landscape design/installation company in Houston called Ravenscourt, which is named after a London park and Tube station near where Laurin lived during a year abroad.

We met 13 years ago and are going into our 12th spring as business partners. We work on city residential gardens and challenge ourselves with creating gardens that invite you in, offer seasonal interest, and support wildlife. This winter provided a new adventure, as we are learning what can survive a sustained freeze and a low temperature of 11 F – in Houston! Our own garden is a pollinator/collector’s/trial garden - a hot mess that’s actually pretty if you like plants.

Our favorite plant is yaupon holly, in all its forms, because it’s bulletproof and beautiful and wildlife use it for nesting and food. Laurin’s favorite garden is RHS Garden Wisley, in Surrey outside of London, which she visited 3 times a year over a 10-year period, even after she moved back to the U.S. Shawn’s favorite “garden” is Muir Woods National Monument for its trees and feeling of tranquility. It is a place of deep communion for him. 

One of our design installations

We mostly post on Facebook and Instagram because it’s quick. But on our blog, Ravenscourt Gardens, we share personal tours and plants that do well in Houston, including plants you don’t see everywhere and those that support wildlife. On our business website we share our work and gardening info. We also share project photos on Houzz.

We believe gardening has something to offer everyone. And no matter our differences, gardening is a bridge that connects us all.

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Thanks for sharing your work and gardening passions with us, Laurin and Shawn! You can follow them on their blog, Ravenscourt Gardens; their website Ravenscourt Landscaping & Design; Houzz; Laurin's Instagram and Ravenscourt's Instagram; Pinterest; and their Facebook business page and home page. 

Photographs courtesy of Laurin Lindsey and Shawn Michael.

Meet Our Community: Theo Margelony, fuchsia fanatic

 

Let's get to know each other!

Since we're not able to meet up in person this year, let's meet online. Every week we're introducing a member of our Fling community* here and on Instagram, in their own words. We're excited to see what everyone's talking about and sharing with their followers!

(*Any garden blogger, vlogger, podcaster, or Instagrammer who follows our Instagram or is a member of our Facebook group. If you'd like to be considered or recommend someone for a Meet Our Community profile, email us.)

R. Theo Margelony

The Fuchsietum - formerly Fuchsias in the City - is all about fuchsias! The sheer love of plants inspires me to share about them online (with major contributions of photography from Kevin Gepford). People sometimes ask where my obsession with fuchsias comes from and how long I’ve had this affliction…err…passion, and I joke that I was probably born in a bed of fuchsias.

When Kevin and I lived and gardened in Manhattan (on 1/94th of an acre), there was no greenhouse, no shed, no garage, only an apartment window and a shelf by the rear door to shelter a few favorite plants in winter. Each December I would sadly have to toss four-fifths of my fuchsias and begin again with mail-order starts in February. On the bright side, I got to experience different fuchsias every year.

In 2019 we traded the Atlantic coast for the Pacific, moving west to Portland, Oregon. It took a few months, but we finally found just the right place, a garden surrounding a 1905 cottage. That’s old by local standards, so we’re calling the project of making it over “This Old House. This New Garden.” The USDA Zone 8b-9 climate here in the Pacific Northwest is perfect for fuchsias, especially garden hardies, plus a ton of other plants from Chile to New Zealand to South Africa. In Manhattan I was mostly into ornamentals - fuchsias, hostas, ferns, and other shady characters - because of a lack of sunlight and space. But in Portland, in addition to our new garden, I have a veggie plot in a local community garden. I got misty-eyed planting tomatoes for the first time in ages.

I suspect I’m a love-the-one-you're-with kind of garden visitor. Every place I visit has something I love. Longwood Gardens and the Montreal Botanical Garden for their sheer size and diversity. Chelsea Physic Garden for its intimacy and history. Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens for newness and spunk. Kirstenbosch for its unrivaled collection of native plants from one of the richest floristic provinces in the world. Those proteas!

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Thanks for sharing your work and gardening passions with us, Theo! You can follow Theo on his website, The Fuchsietum, and on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. A YouTube channel is coming soon.

Photographs courtesy of Theo Margelony.

Meet Our Community: Claire Jones, garden traveler, designer, and bouquet maker

 

Let's get to know each other!

Since we're not able to meet up in person this year, let's meet online. Every week we're introducing a member* of our Fling community here and on Instagram, in their own words. We're excited to see what everyone's talking about and sharing with their followers!

(*Any garden blogger, vlogger, podcaster, or Instagrammer who follows our Instagram or is a member of our Facebook group. If you'd like to be considered or recommend someone for a Meet Our Community profile, email us.)

Claire Jones

Favorite design for a client: a healing labyrinth

I did not pop out of the womb with trowel in hand, but close to it. My first memories are of planting seeds, and I became a landscape designer after majoring in biology/botany at Towson University. I have done just about everything you can think of in the gardening sphere, and now my passion for nature and plants has transitioned into a passion to see other gardens around the world. While still managing my landscape design business and writing, I organize and lead tours with other curious gardeners to see the world. A full schedule awaits me in the next 18 months, and I will be traveling to France, Ireland, Portugal, and Amsterdam to see Floriade, the highly anticipated garden extravaganza held every 10 years.

#bouquetoftheday: pink pussy willow

My blog, The Garden Diaries, covers a wide range of garden-related topics: beekeeping, cooking, seed starting, native plants, garden travel, floral arranging. I am always outside photographing, weeding, working in my greenhouse, or planning new gardens for clients, and my posts follow my gardening-year activities.

As an avid flower arranger, and with more time at home due to COVID, I started #BouquetOfTheDay, a Facebook group of hundreds of people from around the world. Every day I forage in my garden, greenhouse, or along roadsides to create and photograph a bouquet. This creative exercise has made me look at my garden and environment in a whole new light. It’s also become a possible future book project for me to work on. Join me on Facebook and post your own creations.

Stone sofa at Chanticleer

I live in Baltimore County, Maryland, and within a few hours’ drive I can visit a varied and eclectic palette of gardens, including Longwood. My favorite is Chanticleer, which is a laboratory for cutting-edge gardening. And their sofa and armchair made entirely of stone, with accompanying stone remote control, is so fun! I learned about my favorite plant there: balloon plant, or hairy balls (Gomphocarpus physocarpus), a milkweed that monarch caterpillars adore. I use the puffy round pods for structure in floral arrangements, and the plant gets tons of comments in my garden.

Right now I am working on Zoom presentations, and my newest is called "Earth Stewardship: What You Can Do in Your Own Backyard." As gardeners, we have the responsibility and mission to change the world, one backyard at a time.

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Thanks for sharing your work and your gardening passions with us, Claire! You can follow Claire on her blog, The Garden Diaries, and on Facebook, Instagram, and her website, Claire Jones Landscapes.

Photographs courtesy of Claire Jones.

Meet Our Community: Jason Kay and Judy Hertz, bloggers at Garden in a City

 

Let's get to know each other!

Since we're not able to meet up in person this year, let's meet online. Every week we're introducing a member* of our Fling community here and on Instagram, in their own words. We're excited to see what everyone's talking about and sharing with their followers!

(*Any garden blogger, vlogger, podcaster, or Instagrammer who follows our Instagram or is a member of our Facebook group. If you'd like to be considered or recommend someone for a Meet Our Community profile, email us.)

Jason Kay and Judy Hertz

A garden should be a private island of beauty and benevolence, a retreat from a world containing an excess of ugliness and malice. 

We’re not disciplined enough to be into just one kind of gardening. We like native plants, for sure, but not just natives. Tulips! Clematis! Gardening for bees, butterflies, and birds. Ours is sort of a prairie-style, cottagey garden with lots of colorful blooms, like Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia). It grows 6 feet tall and sports fabulous, intensely orange daisies from midsummer until frost. Plus it’s a butterfly magnet!

Gardening in the Midwest, with its hot summers and freezing winters, keeps us on our toes. We live in suburban Chicago, whose motto is urbs in horto, or "city in a garden." Our blog, Garden in a City, is mostly about our own garden, native plants and wildlife gardening, and visits to other gardens and related travel. 

What drives us to share about gardening online? We crave praise and attention. :) Blogging is a unique space for making friends and exchanging insights -- enhanced beautifully by the Garden Bloggers Fling! Judy is the primary photographer, Jason the primary writer, although lately Judy has been writing more posts.

Our favorite garden is Monet's garden at Giverny. We love its fullness, abundance, and explosions of color.

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Thanks for sharing your work and your gardening passions with us, Jason and Judy! You can follow them on their blog, Garden in a City, and on Instagram.

Photographs courtesy of Judy Hertz.

Meet Our Community: Gail Eichelberger, wildflower party host and wildlife gardener

 

Let's get to know each other!

Since we're not able to meet up in person this year, let's meet online. Every week we're introducing a member* of our Fling community here and on Instagram, in their own words. We're excited to see what everyone's talking about and sharing with their followers!

(*Any garden blogger, vlogger, podcaster, or Instagrammer who follows our Instagram or is a member of our Facebook group. If you'd like to be considered or recommend someone for a Meet Our Community profile, email us.)

Gail Eichelberger

I failed miserably when I started gardening 35 years ago, until I figured out that native plants made sense for the shallow soil over limestone bedrock in my Middle Tennessee garden. Native plants evolved for these conditions, and they’re able to survive in my clay soil that is dry most of the summer and wet all winter.

I decided long ago that a plant had to have more than a pretty face to be invited to my wildflower party. My favorite rough-and-tumble plants, as I call them, must also have excellent wildlife value and need no coddling. They’re simple wildflowers that bloom their hearts out and require little care. Many have never been hybridized, which means they haven't had their best characteristics bred out of them.

I garden for wildlife. Wildflowers like frostweed (Verbesina virginica), goldenrods (Solidago), ex-asters, cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum), and rudbeckias are doing the job nature intended them to do, which is to make a lot of food (nectar and/or pollen) and bloom exactly when the critters need it. Once flowering is over and the seeds ripen, they become feeding stations for over-wintering birds.

There were no local garden bloggers when I started Clay and Limestone in February 2008, and I was sure I could find an audience that wanted to learn about our wonderful native plants. My blog has grown to include a monthly Wildflower Wednesday meme, and many wildflower enthusiasts join from all over the U.S. and Canada, as well as South Africa and the U.K. It would not be hyperbolic to say that garden blogging has enriched my life. I’ve made lifelong friends, seen fabulous gardens, and even attended a blogger event in the U.K.

I love botanical gardens that showcase native plants. Missouri Botanical Garden is one of my favorites. I’m from St. Louis and grew up visiting the garden, and it’s been exciting to see how much their educational outreach about native plants has grown. The gardens are exceptional and showcase the best of Missouri prairies.

Gardening is my passion, and I am grateful for the buzzing bees that led me to the edges of my property and the wildflowers growing there.

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Thanks for sharing your work and your gardening passions with us, Gail! You can follow Gail on her blog, Clay and Limestone, and on Instagram and Facebook.

Photographs courtesy of Gail Eichelberger.