As I prepare for another season at Glen Villa Art Garden, I’ve been thinking about other gardens I’ve visited. What lessons can I take from them, that I can adapt and apply to my own? Asking those questions has led me to reflect on something different. Why do some gardens stand out as clearly as…
A few weeks ago I visited Innisfree, a wonderful garden in Millbrook, New York which I first visited fifteen years ago. Unless my memory is out of whack, the garden hasn’t changed significantly since then, but I have. In the intervening years, I’ve visited hundreds of gardens around the world, and as I entered Innisfree,…
This special blog post is an excerpt from Autobiography of a Garden, the book about the creation and development of Glen Villa Art Garden, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Questions to Ask Yourself When Visiting a Garden Context How does the garden relate to the world around it? Is the location special in…
What a wonderful thing it is to fulfill a life-time ambition! I’ve wanted to visit Levens Hall since the early 1960s. That summer, a young English girl arrived in Virginia to spend a year living with me and my family and, as a gift, she brought us a book about English gardens. On the cover…
Last week I was in Austin, Texas to give one of my favourite talks, about using art in a garden. I was there as part of a series called Garden Spark, arranged by writer and gardener extraordinaire, Pam Penick. (You can find her regular blogs at www.penick.net/digging) The talk was held outdoors at Barton Springs…
I first visited the Reford Gardens when the government of Quebec was in charge, sometime in the 1980s, I think, when the gardens were not very interesting. I can’t count how many times I have visited since, though, and always with enormous pleasure. Les Jardins de Métis are divided in two parts, a historic garden…
Yesterday I gave an on-line talk about Glen Villa to a group of well-informed, well-educated women, many of whom attended the same single sex college I attended years ago. (What used to be Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia is now the co-ed Randolph College.) In the question period afterwards someone asked if I had a favourite…
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…
Sometimes, pictures of pretty flowers are enough. I took these photos in a garden in Knowlton, Quebec that I visited last week. It was a grey, rainy day but the gardens were glorious! The flowers in one garden were the stars of the day. Bright copper kettles are no competition for the WOW!…
England has many fine gardens. Houghton Hall in Norfolk is one of the finest, offering a stimulating combination of horticulture, contemporary art and history that is far too much to absorb in a single visit. The most popular part of the garden is the five acre Walled Garden. Divided into contrasting areas, the Walled Garden contains a double-sided…