A noun. A verb. A blog.
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 […]
The drawbridge entrance to a very special garden in Preston Hollow, Dallas TX Now that The Hobbit movie has arrived in theatres, have a peep at this hobbity garden we visited with the 2010 Garden Writers Symposium. I won’t give you much commentary, other than to say that the garden and buildings were designed from […]
The Rock Garden at Whistling Gardens What’s going on in your winter garden – anything? With Toronto’s long, dreary winters, you’d expect us to pay more attention to the winter months. Yet, bedazzled by leaves and flowers, winter is often the last thing we think about. In 2012, Whistling Gardens near Brantford opened to give […]
This post could have been called, “Andrew Keys broke up my marriage.” It was a long marriage, too; 25 years. Of course, my partner was prickly: a climbing rose (Rosa ‘New Dawn’). And the break-up is only starting, thanks to Keys’ book, Why Grow That When You Can Grow This? 255 Extraordinary Alternatives to Everyday […]
A combination of luck and planning produced a pleasing fall display in 2012 A dry shade garden can be a happy place in a rainy year, especially when the soil has been fed properly. This spring, it enjoyed a healthy top-up of duck compost, as well as all the shredded leaves it could eat, the […]
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. […]
Yvonne Cunnington’s simplified Four Square Garden It took many years and tons of tender devotion aka slog work for Yvonne Cunnington and her husband John to transform their large country property near Ancaster into a horticultural work of art. Now, to simplify life, they’ve left it all behind for a small, rental property – for […]
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 […]
Now that the hardscape portion of our Grand Simplification is complete, let’s step back and evaluate. And, to celebrate the first day of school, I’ve even given grades, using my very arbitrary rubric which is no rubric at all. You judge whether we’re being too easy – or too hard – on ourselves. Circulation: B+ […]
We sympathized with the builders of the pyramids after Beaver Valley Stone delivered our 4,180 lbs (1,896 kg) of weathered limestone. Not only did we ask ourselves how we’d ever move these big hunks of rock into position; we asked how the heck we’d ever get them off the skid – without breaking any backs, […]
This is where I talk about concrete. We were utter novices when we launched into building our set of 7-foot-wide concrete steps. And when I say “we” here, know that it was the unstoppable Mr. TG doing all the literal and figurative heavy lifting. One of the reasons we went with concrete is that it’s easier […]