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Midsummer Medley

Mid-July is truly the middle of summer in North Hatley, Quebec, when both the flowers in the garden at Glen Villa and the wildflowers in the fields strut their stuff. The Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’ at The Aqueduct is still blooming, a month after it began. The Eremurus ‘Cleopatra’ that provided such a wonderful vertical accent…

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If we open the garden next summer in mid-June, we might see this field of buttercups.

Open Garden Day and Garden Talks

Many people have asked when we will be opening the garden to the public this year. The sad news is, we won’t.  This summer we are working on various garden projects that need time to settle in. But I hope that in 2019 we will have one — or maybe two — open garden days.    …

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Seeing the trees from a distance was like seeing a beacon of light, pulling you into a magic place.

Five Good Things and a Bad

As June shines its way towards July, I’m outside soaking it in and enjoying the garden at Glen Villa. There are too many happy-making things to show in a single post, so today I’m focusing on only four. First come the hawthorn trees. We planted them more than 15 years ago and they have proved a…

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The house

A Victorian Garden

Yesterday I spoke at the Colby-Curtis Museum in Stanstead, Quebec, home to the Stanstead Historical Society. The museum is a local treasure, housed in a classical revival-style villa built in 1859 called Carrollcroft.     The current exhibition, Abundant in Bloom, is well worth visiting. It looks at  the gardens created by the women of the Colby family…

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I took this photo on April 24, 2017, when I became serious about planting The Avenue.

Crabapples in Bloom!

In just over a year, the Crabapple Allée, aka the Avenue, has gone from dream to dirt, to bloom and gone. We started with this, a dull bare field.     Four months later, The Avenue was beginning to take shape.     By mid-November, the site was a mess of wet earth and newly planted…

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