A noun. A verb. A blog.
A small-scale garden folly can be like this dry stone fountain in Shelagh Tucker’s Seattle garden (see it close up here) If you watched Mr. Darcy propose dripping wet to Lizzie Bennet in the Keira Knightley version of Pride & Prejudice*, you’ve seen a prime example of a garden folly. Not his ill-done proposal, but […]
Trick #1: Break the line. The design above doesn’t follow a long, linear path, not even with the paving. One line of stone runs into the fence, not along it, and the rock around the fountain claims an oblique corner. Few of us city gardeners have room to be expansive. Yet skinny spaces can be […]
A simple stone bench amidst the July profusion at Glendale Gardens, now called the Horticultural Centre of the Pacific Avert your eyes from all the white stuff outside. Let’s you and I have a cozy sit, and think about gardens – and how pleasant to do so on a well-placed garden bench, the subject of […]
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, […]
Our cousins’ clubhouse on their farm in Port Perry, circa 1978 Gardens need storage, let’s face it. You need somewhere to put your garden stuff, so why not make it playful or pretty as well as practical? You’ll be looking at it all year round. Let it be good looking – the subject of today’s […]
A rusty orb on stilts contrasts the spiky mullein; Dragonfly Farms, Bainbridge Island, Washington The colour of rust sits comfortably in the natural environment – like green’s complement red, blended with dabs of earth and bark. As with the orb above, even a smooth surface weathers into delicious textural variations. Rust hints of history and […]
Stained concrete, Lane garden, Seattle When a paving geek like me visits a garden, camera in hand, you can be sure that some shots will be about what’s underfoot. So this Friday’s Idea File focuses on the hardscaping under the snow. As you can see, you don’t have to settle for standard unit paver patterns […]
Have a dead tree? Turn it into a garden feature. Christoper D.Mello‘s garden, Asheville NC You’ll be surprised how just a little paint can spruce things up and make your garden pop. That’s idea one – applied here in a variety of ways. This is the first of what I hope will be a weekly […]