A noun. A verb. A blog.
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. […]
Majorelle blue paint on the bench goes perfectly with the crisp green ferns Three vignettes from 2013’s Toronto Island Garden Tour, all featuring ostrich ferns (Matteuccia struthioperis) and the rich azure known as Majorelle blue. A little bit of Morocco at the edge of Lake Ontario – and somehow it works. I love this colour […]
Hydrangea paniculata ‘Quick Fire’ isn’t famous for fall colour. It probably should be. Even the Proven Winners site doesn’t mention fall foliage in its write-up for Hydrangea ‘Quick Fire.’ Why on earth not? The colour this year in my garden is a show-stopper, giving the dried blooms a flattering new outfit. Just look at the […]
All-green fall planters at Allan Gardens A little almost-wordless wow for another grey Wednesday in November. Don’t you love the textures here? And these babies will take a little nippy weather, especially here where they’re a little sheltered. It was hard to choose between them but this one might be my favourite after all.
Black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) – a North American native shrub – with glossy black pomes and bright fall foliage First, to confess. These fruits are highly decorative in the fall garden, but none of them are berries. As botanically defined, berries are fleshy fruits and seeds produced from a single ovary. Currants, blueberries and gooseberries […]
The Toronto Botanical Garden on a rainy (but clearly not grey) day in November Think November is drab? It doesn’t have to be, if you play your cards right. Look at the lusciousness in the photo above, without the use of a single flower – well, discounting the dried heads of a red-tinged oakleaf hydrangea […]
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 […]
‘Chiare, fresche et dolci acque’ (Clear, fresh, sweet water) – opening line of a poem by Petrarch – surround a fountain. Clear, fresh, sweet cocktails (well, Chardonnay for me, but, hey, poetic license) were sipped in the garden of artist and garden designer Shirley Watts and her husband Emmanuel Coup in Alameda, California. And ’twas […]
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 […]
ERA Architects’ provocative Hoarding Suggestions outside at the Gladstone Friday’s opening night bash at the Gladstone was jam packed. Grow Op, Exploring Landscape and Place, is a different kind of garden show. Small-scale, creative and thought provoking, Grow Op installations range from quirky to quite beautiful, curated by landscape architect, Victoria Taylor. You might recall […]
Hot pink peppermint striped tulips with golden daffodils at the Toronto Botanical Garden, 2010 Let’s shake up this grey city with an blast of clashing colours. I’ll go on record here as saying I believe that nothing in nature clashes. She is always original and unabashed in her colour pairings. Designers, however, use clashing colours […]
Look what’s being served as an appetizer on the glass-top table in this contemporary, east-Toronto garden! Could be the icy weather but, for this Friday’s Idea File, I’m thinking about glass (in French, ice is the sound-alike glace). Mirrors are one of my favourite uses for glass in a garden. They expand a small space, […]