46. Pam Penick on Gardens of Texas

PAM PENICK BIO

Pam Penick is a Texas garden writer, speaker, and advocate for climate-resilient design, known for inspiring waterwise, wildlife-friendly landscapes for nearly two decades. She’s the author of Gardens of Texas, Lawn Gone!, and The Water-Saving Garden, and she’s the voice and photographer behind Digging, her influential website about gardening in a hot climate.

Her writing has appeared in Better Homes & Gardens, Fine Gardening, American Gardener, and other publications. For 10 years — including during a historic drought — she ran a landscape design business helping Texas homeowners replace thirsty lawns with waterwise gardens of native and well-adapted plants. She’s also the founder of Garden Spark, an Austin-based speaker series on design and ecology, where she brings fresh ideas and bold voices to the local gardening community.

Pam gardens under live oaks in northwest Austin, where she keeps an eye out for screech owls and foxes but could do with fewer deer.

You can learn more about Pam at her blog Digging, her instagram @pamdigging, and new book Gardens of Texas.

SHOW NOTES

  • Childhood free-range experiences in South Carolina as a foundation for later love of gardening

  • The contrast between her outdoor childhood and the more screen-focused upbringing of kids today

  • Early career in magazine writing, including a rock and roll publication and The Sun in Chapel Hill

  • Returning for a master’s in English at NC State before moving to Austin

  • Discovering gardening while raising children and diving into classes at the Wildflower Center and Dallas Arboretum

  • The inspiration from local Austin blogs that led her to start her own blog Digging in 2006

  • Blogging as both a public conversation and a personal gardening journal

  • How blogging built skills in writing and photography that evolved into books and design work

  • The surprising longevity of blogging and the continued appeal of long-form, authentic garden storytelling

  • Reflections on the shift from blogs to platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, and now Substack

  • Embracing multiple mediums but encouraging writers to find the format that matches their authentic voice

  • First book Lawn Gone! inspired by clients seeking lawn alternatives during Austin’s drought restrictions

  • Guidance on reimagining yards beyond the traditional lawn and hedge format

  • Second book The Water-Saving Garden with practical strategies for capturing and conserving water in any U.S. climate

  • Growing national awareness of water scarcity and the role gardens can play in responsible use

  • New book Gardens of Texas born from a desire to showcase Texas gardens overlooked in books and magazines

  • Extreme Texas climate events as a driving force for documenting how gardeners adapt to change

  • Emphasis on resilience, adaptation, and encouragement for Texas gardeners facing uncertainty

  • Visiting 27 gardens and driving 6,000 miles to capture the diversity of Texas landscapes

  • Lessons from West Texas gardens where small irrigation investments create critical oases for wildlife

  • The role of the monsoon season and challenges when rains arrive late or not at all

  • How design can merge pollinator plants, vegetables, and desert aesthetics in one space

  • Featuring Terra Preta Farm for its story of food justice, organic farming, and testimony before Congress

  • A San Antonio garden evolving with nature’s changes, showing how loss can open opportunities for renewal

  • Plano Prairie Garden as a model for resilience, with late-season Liatris blooms drawing monarch migrations

  • The power of diversity in planting, especially after freezes or extreme weather events

  • East Texas gardens full of pollinator life even after late freezes, with lessons on diversity as resilience

  • Central Texas highlights like a sculptor-designed crevice garden born from constraints and creativity

  • Pocket prairie gardens demonstrating how to blend wildness with modern comforts

  • Pam’s own garden as a testament to persistence after ice storms and extreme summers

  • The takeaway that gardens everywhere can reflect place, resilience, and personal meaning

  • Every chapter in Gardens of Texas offering practical lessons—from rain harvesting to design strategies—applicable beyond the state

  • A call for authenticity in garden writing, focusing on curiosity, personal struggle, and human stories

  • Her practice of obsessive documentation through photography as a system of observation and memory

  • Garden writing as a way to record and share, with blogging serving as a living archive

  • Recent inspiration from books like A Natural History of Vacant Lots and Visionary by Christopher Brown

  • Current joy in birdwatching with goldfinches and cardinals in her Austin garden

  • Busting the myth of green thumbs versus black thumbs and how everyone kills plants, and that’s part of gardening

  • Encouraging children’s exposure to nature as the foundation for future horticulturists

  • You can learn more about Pam at her blog Digging, her instagram @pamdigging, and new book Gardens of Texas.