A noun. A verb. A blog.
The Rock Garden at Whistling Gardens What’s going on in your winter garden – anything? With Toronto’s long, dreary winters, you’d expect us to pay more attention to the winter months. Yet, bedazzled by leaves and flowers, winter is often the last thing we think about. In 2012, Whistling Gardens near Brantford opened to give […]
Ingredients: Paper birch poles, staghorn sumach, rosehips, magnolia leaves, silvery eucalyptus (okay, okay, these last two aren’t local), variegated boxwood, noble fir, white pine, and, although you can’t see them here, red-budded pussy willow. Also not visible are the purple chard and Swiss chard from this summer, still producing around the edges. In this one, […]
A combination of luck and planning produced a pleasing fall display in 2012 A dry shade garden can be a happy place in a rainy year, especially when the soil has been fed properly. This spring, it enjoyed a healthy top-up of duck compost, as well as all the shredded leaves it could eat, the […]
Sculpture Installation “Stooks and Punes” by Gary Smith at Toronto Botanical Garden This fantastic piece of sculpture at the Toronto Botanical Garden stopped me in my tracks this fall. It delighted by pressing all of my fave Tim Burton-y, Dr Suess-y buttons: it intrigues, plus makes me laugh, a little bit. It’s just plain fun. […]
Another gem on the 2012 Gardens of the Beach garden tour, this city garden demonstrates a graphic designer’s eye for colour, texture and composition. Beyond the arbor, the back garden is almost completely given up to the gardener’s massive hosta collection. Green lives here in many, many variations, and the effect is (strangely) simultaneously restful […]
Michelle Blais, in her do-it-herself garden, stands in front of her hand-made garden shed. What fun it is to peek into other people’s gardens, and at its best when you see garden solutions that you can actually use. Spying the garage in this garden, I thought “Wow, what a great reno of an old garage!” […]
Yvonne Cunnington’s simplified Four Square Garden It took many years and tons of tender devotion aka slog work for Yvonne Cunnington and her husband John to transform their large country property near Ancaster into a horticultural work of art. Now, to simplify life, they’ve left it all behind for a small, rental property – for […]
The front door to Post Architects on Victoria Park Avenue Behind a street-facing business office, a young family – he’s an architect, she’s an artist, they have tots – have created a garden that grown-ups and kids can enjoy. They welcomed visitors into their space this June on the Gardens of the Beach 2012 garden […]
Between the busy-ness of summer holidays and back to school, September’s garden can be messy. That’s so in my back garden, where morning glories typically take over by September. This year, they are true to type. Because our front yard Grand Simplification project consumed us this summer, the Microgarden in the back is now channelling Aretha Franklin: N.E.G.L.E.C.T., just a […]
A big, blue transferware vase that was a lucky thrift store find (on an old high chair thrown out by a neighbour) You definitely need a big vase. And you don’t need anything expensive to fill it. I gathered long stems of dill, their seeds in tones of brown and chartreuse for this, with a […]
Now that the hardscape portion of our Grand Simplification is complete, let’s step back and evaluate. And, to celebrate the first day of school, I’ve even given grades, using my very arbitrary rubric which is no rubric at all. You judge whether we’re being too easy – or too hard – on ourselves. Circulation: B+ […]
We sympathized with the builders of the pyramids after Beaver Valley Stone delivered our 4,180 lbs (1,896 kg) of weathered limestone. Not only did we ask ourselves how we’d ever move these big hunks of rock into position; we asked how the heck we’d ever get them off the skid – without breaking any backs, […]