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Changing Colours

This year autumn is slow in coming. Often by the end of September, the hills are as colourful as the big box of Crayola crayons I always begged (unsuccessfully) my mother to buy, with trees standing in ranges of red, orange and pink, gold and chartreuse, and occasional patches of dark wintery green. Not this year.…

Thankfully the hayfield had been cut, allowing us to cross the field without damaging the crop.

The Devil’s Arrows

  For the last ten days I’ve been touring gardens in Scotland and the north of England.  A few days ago the group I’m hosting stopped to investigate two prehistoric standing stones. Their setting could not be more prosaic — a hayfield close to a busy highway, not far from the city of York — but the…

A door in a brick wall at The Grove, the garden of the late David Hicks, frames the view of a stone construction beyond.

Framing the View

“No matter how panoramic its scope, a view of surrounding countryside becomes a genuine garden picture only when it has been framed.” – Penelope Hobhouse Recently I came across this statement from the English garden writer and designer Penelope Hobhouse. I read it quickly, nodded in agreement, then paused and read it again. Did I agree? Does…

We set up the registration desk in the field where people parked. Info about the Foundation was the first thing they saw.

Opening Day

Yesterday’s Open Garden Day was a fabulously exhausting experience. Some 325 people attended, and the feed-back was incredibly positive. Best of all, we raised over $6000  for the Massawippi Foundation — which means we can keep building trails through the land we’ve conserved, opening to the public a beautiful area previously inaccessible and helping more and  more…

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The Lower Garden

It’s garden visit time at Glen Villa. Last week a group from Quebec City visited the garden; this week it’s a group from Ontario and the following week it’s another group from Quebec. Then, on August 4, comes the big Open Garden Day when we could realistically have 500 people or more. I think all…