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What an Honour!

Site and Insight: Reflecting on Art and Landscape has been honoured with a prestigious Silver Award for electronic media. The award, for the website overall, was given by The Garden Writers’ Association, a large American-based organization that brings together garden writers from around the world.     Site and Insight was one of 231 entries judged…

Ueda Landform uses the idea of chaotic attractors. Two sections are named after scientists who worked on the theory.

Shaping the Earth

Over the last week, as part of a tour I’ve been leading through gardens in Scotland and the north of England, I’ve been fortunate enough to see four earth works created by Charles Jencks. Jencks is an American architectural theorist, writer and landscape architect who has lived in Scotland for many years and now divides his…

These maple trees have offered shade for over 100 years. They line the bank above the lake. An old asphalt path runs alongside them; it was built for guests at Glen Villa Inn.

Trees at Glen Villa

Trees play a major role at Glen Villa, my garden in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. They provide shade in summer, colourful foliage in autumn and the promise that comes with spring green buds. In winter bare branches of deciduous trees offer a stark colour contrast outlined against the snow, and evergreens provide structure and a touch of colour…

This photo is from 2007, the spring after we planted the muscari bulbs for the second time.

The Dragon’s Tail

One of the first flower beds I added at Glen Villa was The Dragon’s Tail, a line of grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) that sweeps across a flat grassy area like a child’s scribble.     I laid out the shape with a lawn mower, cutting a gentle curve, then altering it slightly to add a bit more…

After a first pruning, the shrub was looking vaguely like a large bonsai.

The Gravel Garden

  Beside our house, next to a wooden deck that is rarely used, is a juniper planted when the house was built in 1969. Or to put it more accurately, beside the house and next to the deck are the remains of one. For the last few years, the juniper has been slowly dying. The photo below shows how…