This year I am following the tree at the end of the big lawn at Glen Villa, my garden in rural Quebec. The botanical name of the tree is Tilia americana. I call it a linden. That’s not wrong — the tree is a member of the linden family. Like many living things, it goes by several names. In England, it…
Today, when nothing for me but snow and ice is underfoot, I am thinking about garden paths and how they affect the way we move through our gardens. The material used for the path, its width, whether it is straight or curved, whether we can see where it is leading or not — these aspects and more…
Last week’s post titled ‘Winter Interest’ sparked a critical comment from Anne Wareham, a reader in Wales who is editor of the on-line site ThinkinGardens. Using the word ‘interest’ to describe anything in a garden, she wrote, “seems so very odd and hardly apposite really.” I agree. Interest is one of those lazy words we use…
When I first began gardening,, I thought that Quebec’s winter landscape could offer nothing of interest. Now I realize that I only needed to train my eye to see things differently. Instead of looking to plants for interest, I needed to look for patterns and details. Details like the sun-sparkled fuzz of snow that coated a clump of…
Are gardens intellectual endeavours or places to soothe the spirits? If a garden is intended to be a conceptual work of art, does it succeed if it has to be explained? And what responsibility rests on the person viewing the garden to understand the ideas that shaped it? Make the questions personal: should I have…