Today, on the last day of the year, I’m looking back at what happened in the garden in 2019. Without question, the single biggest event was the Open Garden Day in July. Over 300 people attended and we raised almost $10,000 for the Massawippi Foundation, helping that organization to continue its support for community activities and…
We are preparing for the holidays at Glen Villa and waiting eagerly for family and friends to arrive. The group below came early. I counted 15 of the prehistoric-looking animals munching their way through the field where the long line of crabapple trees grow. Until last week the field was covered…
The foundation wall of the old Glen Villa Inn is once again standing tall. Rebuilding the wall has been quite a process. In its prime the wall was the base of a grand structure. Unfortunately, like so many summer resort hotels built of wood, it didn’t last. A colour postcard of the hotel sent…
Work continues as we rebuild the foundation wall of the old Glen Villa Inn. I first wrote about this project a few weeks ago in a post titled We are (Re)Building a Wall and in that post I recounted some of the history of the old hotel. Last week I wrote about…
Slowly the wall that used to hold up the old Glen Villa Inn is beginning to look like a wall again. As exciting as the re-building are the treasures we discovered when the wall came down. We found glass bottles of all sorts, clear and coloured, broken and unbroken. Some of the bits of glass…
The job of rebuilding the hotel foundation wall is progressing but more slowly than we hoped. The slow-down was unavoidable, thanks to (really, no thanks to) the snow that fell this week. The snow is attractive, no doubt, but it has come much too early. The early snowfall is one part of…
Don’t worry, it’s not a border wall we are building, only the foundation wall of the old Glen Villa Inn. The grand old resort hotel was built in 1902 and burned down in 1909. In the summer it attracted guests from around North America, particularly southerners who came north to escape the heat and…
I’m not pining away, but the pine tree is. Or was. This week we tackled a big job that I’ve been wanting to do for a few years, which was to remove an enormous old pine tree near the bank of Lake Massawippi. The photo below from 2014 shows the beginning of the end of this…
Kiftsgate Court is one of those English gardens included on many garden tours, in part because it is so conveniently located, just down the road from Hidcote, the iconic garden created by the Anglo-American Lawrence Johnston. The gardens at Kiftsgate were created over the last hundred years by three generations of women — grandmother, mother and daughter —…
This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving, and today I’m giving thanks for the splendours of autumn. All week the colours have been spectacular! This view along the driveway at Glen Villa gives some idea of how brilliant the colour is. On the stone wall of the house, Engelman ivy is a symphony of…