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The tour program describes this Williamson Road garden as a “plantswoman’s paradise.” No wonder I loved it. Sunday’s Beach Garden Society garden tour had many highlights – and we’ll write about others, later. But, by accident, Sarah and I saved the best till last, the subject of today’s post. It showed how even a plant […]
This way to the gardens! We know you’ll be inspired. Have you ever wished you could be cloned? I have. Then you and I could be everywhere at once – especially every garden tour at once. This weekend, two local tours at least have the decency to be on different days. Saturday, it’s Leaside. Sunday, […]
The amazing green roof of the Hugh Garner (fingers keep trying to type “Gardener” – whose wouldn’t?) Housing Co-op. You now have official excuse reason to spend the Friday before Father’s Day in the garden. Toronto has proclaimed it Garden Day. Yay! Thank you, Toronto. What’s more, it’ll be part of an annual three-day garden […]
In the midst of another snow storm, here are a few shots from my trip to the Allan Gardens Spring Show last Saturday – shot in the midst of another snow storm. The Spring Show isn’t the cornucopia of bloom that the Easter Show will be. Still. Any port in a storm. While, outside, Allan […]
A modest entry marks one of my favourite garden experiences from 2013’s Through the Garden Gate – because the reveal was such a surprise, combining formal elements with quirky details. If you read our blog, you know: Quirk R Us. P’raps that wasn’t one of those headlines. You know. The crawler-friendly ones that neatly index […]
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. […]
The Wave Garden in Richmond Point, California, overlooking San Francisco Bay. Is it essential for a garden, a serious garden, to always start with a plan? And if we don’t have a plan, should we say, “Oh well, nothing’s written in stone”? In June 2013, I visited a garden that began with no real plan: […]
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 […]
I keep telling my friend D that she can give these to me We’ve had a word or two or even three to say about squirrels on this blog. Yet, for a gardener who wages a constant (non-violent) war on squirrels, I must confess to having a perverse squirrelophilia. For example, I always claim the […]
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 […]