A noun. A verb. A blog.
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 […]
Swordless swordfish takes a dive I’ve been dying to use this picture ever since some enchanted afternoon in 2011, when I saw this bright blue swordfish across a crowded room – garden room, that is, during the Gardens of the Beach garden tour. Now most people browsing a vintage shop would look at a swordfish […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
Sculpture Installation “Stooks and Punes” by Gary Smith at Toronto Botanical Garden This fantastic piece of sculpture at the Toronto Botanical Garden stopped me in my tracks this fall. It delighted by pressing all of my fave Tim Burton-y, Dr Suess-y buttons: it intrigues, plus makes me laugh, a little bit. It’s just plain fun. […]
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 […]
Landscape artist Jean Paul Ganem and creative chef Michael Stadtlander having a laugh on the site of the Singhampton Project, earlier this year. World-renowned local chef, Michael Stadtlander, together with landscape installation artist Jean Paul Ganem spent this summer creating a special event—a gastronomic installation—at his farm north of Toronto this August : The Singhampton […]
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, […]