A noun. A verb. A blog.
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 […]
Blue Muscari in a cheerful pot on Sarah’s balcony Apparently, it’s Blue Monday, the saddest day of the year. Who knew? I’m not feeling particularly sad myself, but I am always ready to think about the colour blue. Here’s some cheeriness for a blue day. Blue flowers are notoriously hard to photograph, and usually look […]
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!” […]
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 […]
Double Vision exhibits the unique perspectives of twin sisters Debbie Richards (left), a quilter, and artist Diane Stewart Admiring Diane Stewart’s work from afar, you’d never guess her medium: minuscule fabric swatches, applied painstakingly to canvas, sometimes augmented by embroidery stitches. Three years ago, she and her twin Debbie Richards, a talented quilter, had an […]
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 […]
Garden tours are like a box of chocolates. There’s sure to be at least one you love. It’s Toronto garden tour season! Last week, I previewed a few of the gardens you’ll oooh! and aaaah! over in Resplendent Rosedale for the city’s splashiest annual garden tour Through the Garden Gate, held every year in a different location as […]
Getting A Lawn by Lynne McIlvride-Evans My headline is slightly misleading, because what I most want to tell you about it the annual Easter art show in the studio home of artist Lynne McIlvride-Evans. In 2012, it runs April 6 to 9 from 1 to 5 pm. I’ve been collecting her work in a modest […]