Welcome to the GVAG Blog

This view shows the driveway and the parking area in front of the house, out of the frame to the right.

Before and After: A New Entry for Glen Villa

A month ago, the area at the top of the front steps at Glen Villa looked like this.   Now it looks like this.     We built the drystone wall that appears in the ‘before’ picture a few years after we moved into Glen Villa. We needed a wall because we had cut into the hillside to…

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Bridge Ascending, 2011, by Doucet-Saito

Evaluating the Skating Pond

The Skating Pond was an accident. I didn’t set out to make a pond, for skating or anything else. But that’s what happened. The genesis for the project was an old covered bridge that played a part in my husband’s boyhood. In 2001 vandals burned it down. Seeing the remains, my husband felt as if he’d…

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The linden tree at the end of the Big Lawn on June 2015.

Following My Tree: July

A fully-grown tree doesn’t change that much in a short time, or so you may think. But compare two photos of the linden, or basswood, tree (Tilia americana) that stands in my Quebec garden, Glen Villa. I took the first photo on June 13.   I took the second one two days ago, on July 8.   Even…

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The drive ran in front of the hotel, barely visible on the far right of this old postcard.

Planting in Circles: The Yin/Yang

One of the first projects I tackled after we moved into Glen Villa in the late 1990s was what has become the Yin/Yang. A low, circular stone wall on the Big Lawn was full of overgrown highbush cranberry bushes. (I wish I had a photo to show you, but I don’t.) I loved the bushes with their…

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The upper field is full of buttercups in late spring.

Shrubs and Deer Fences: What Works and What Doesn’t

It seems I’ve been travelling forever. First almost a month in Italy (yes, it was wonderful), then a week in Toronto for the Garden Bloggers’ Fling (exhausting and wonderful), then a week with my sister for some together time on Long Island and in New York City (hot, humid and wonderful). Bur finally I’m home…

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