Welcome to the GVAG Blog

The entry to the China Terrace, with old pillars I found in a local antique store cum junk shop.

The China Terrace Gets a Face Lift

The title of this post might well be The China Terrace gets a Floor Lift… but that would be confusing and not entirely accurate. So what has happened? The China Terrace, a re-imagining of the grand resort hotel that once stood on the property, was one of the first projects I undertook at Glen Villa.  …

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The wrought-iron will rust eventually but we can scrape and oil it when it does.

Try and Try Again

The old saying is a good one: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. There’s a meme in the gardening world started by Bonney Lassie at call Tell the Truth Tuesday. Despite my fair share of failures, I’ve never joined in. But La Seigneurie, one of the newest parts of my Quebec garden, fits…

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A Fence with a Story

After reading my most recent post about fences, a friend sent me a photo of the fence around the Old Courthouse in St. Louis, Missouri.     I wondered if Missouri was the turtle state, and if not, what was the story behind the design? This information from a brochure about the Old Courthouse tells the…

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Fences

Fences come in all shapes and sizes, yet in one way or another they all serve the same purpose: to separate one area from another. At Glen Villa, my garden in Quebec, the oldest fence separates a former farm field from a driveway.     An equally practical but more decorative fence is the one I…

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A curving parth at Througham Court leads across a field to a gate banners flying in the distance.

Paths with Pizazz

Many garden paths are ordinary, designed simply to get you from one place in the garden to another. Grass paths, the simplest and least costly type of path to make, appear in gardens so routinely that they almost disappear. Occasionally, though, you’ll see a path that stands out. The grass path below is an example. It…

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