A noun. A verb. A blog.
British writers Mark Diacono and Lia Leendertz When you have less, you want more. Especially when you have less time or, in my case, less space and sun in which to grow vegetables at home. So I was excited to receive The Speedy Vegetable Garden, a new Timber Press book about veggies for the impatient […]
Broken rose arbor: Before Our rose arbor suffered a collapse this summer due to old age and some of 2012’s big winds. (It’s one of the memories emerging as I sort through thousands of retrieved images after a major data loss.) What would we do? All our energies and budget were being sucked up by […]
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 […]
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 […]
Helenium autumnale – that’s Helen’s flower, to you. Not sneezeweed. Geez. Enough about me. Let’s talk about Helenium. I don’t know what variety this is (perhaps its short stature points to ‘Ruby Dwarf’ aka ‘Rubinzwerg’), but I wish it were growing in my garden. Despite what they say about the need for full sun and moist soil, […]
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, […]
This is where I talk about concrete. We were utter novices when we launched into building our set of 7-foot-wide concrete steps. And when I say “we” here, know that it was the unstoppable Mr. TG doing all the literal and figurative heavy lifting. One of the reasons we went with concrete is that it’s easier […]
Creating a site plan is one of the first steps in the process The first stage in planning our makeover was knowing what we wanted. Our wish list was small: We wanted to stop water, soil, mulch and, especially, people from sliding down the steep slope along the driveway. We needed to get people or groceries […]
Just the planting yet to come in the finished project, from above. Sorry, I’ve been AWOL. One thing that waylaid me has been a major phase of our front yard transformation I’ve called our Grand Simplification. Rather than building to a climax in the retelling, I prefer to start at the end, showing you the […]
Grand simplification in progress, May 2012 A couple of years ago, I embarked on a garden project I called my Grand Simplification. My goal was to make my gardening life less complicated by rethinking the space. Simple is hard, as any designer will tell you. While the process is nowhere near finished, this is my […]