A noun. A verb. A blog.
I’m really going to let the pictures do most of the talking here. This garden was a revelation from the recent Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling (we hosted this event in Toronto in 2015). “Revelation” in many senses – it was surprising, moving, inspiring, and we all revelled in it! My “If I had a Million […]
I’m truly thankful for the ideas that come home from our visits to artists’ gardens. Simple leaf cut-outs and a can or two of window frosting will get you this one. Much more fitting than curtains for balancing privacy and light in a garden shed! July 2015 was our first visit to the Port Hope […]
White cedars (Thuja occidentalis) and yews (Taxus) get precision haircuts It takes you by surprise. As you walk up the gentle rise through a very pleasant, but somewhat conventional shade garden in front and stand beside the hundred-year-old cedar-shingled home in St-Romuald, Quebec you see this. It’s a wow reveal; so beautiful, and so unexpected. […]
Keeyla Meadows’ garden in Albany, California – would you be this brave with colour? Oh, my! The sensory overload of Summer 2013. We have so many wonderful gardens to share with you, it’s been hard to know where to begin. We should have been blogging all summer but, as you can see, we were barely […]
The home, garden and studio of San Francisco sculptor Matt Gil and his wife Lesa Porche are tucked against a rocky slope beneath a highway overpass Unhappy with your garden? I’ll give you something to gripe about: A tiny footprint, most of it vertical. And rocky. Really rocky. The view? Highway pilons, albeit with a […]
Ricki Pierce, aka The Rock Pirate, a mason and a Mason, grins at the entrance to the home, garden and little Utopia on Wambold Street that he and his wife, artist Damaris Pierce, have created in West Asheville, NC. They call it Wamboldtopia. There are many, many doorways in this garden, and doors are symbols of hope, […]
Can social change grow alongside art in a garden? I’ve been mulling this question over since Sarah and I returned from the annual garden bloggers’ meet-up, known as the Fling. This year, the Fling was flung in the trendy Appalachian town of Asheville, North Carolina. The Battersby Girls (plus Sarah’s son J, a good sport) were the sole […]
Here’s the inspiration I promised when I wrote about concrete garden projects last week: works of imagination – all of them carefully crafted of concrete – by Victoria, B.C., sculptor, Birgit Piskor. And here’s the bonus. Not only is Piskor a gifted sculptor, she is also a gifted gardener. In July, I enjoyed a guided tour […]
Taro plant with rescued and repurposed piece of decorative concrete. Vivian saves architectural pieces from demolition giving new life to old beautiful objects. As you approach Vivian Reiss’s Victorian house in Yorkville you know it’s no ordinary dwelling, but a house and garden space created by a gardener of unusual and vivid passions. There was […]