When I look out my bedroom window, this is what I see. Or what I will see before long. Lake Massawippi isn’t frozen yet, but frozen or not, the prospect reminds me that this is the time of year to look ahead. And to look back. What did I accomplish in the garden…
In January last year, I laid out six garden goals for the year ahead, never believing I’d be able to achieve them all. I put them on paper nonetheless to give myself something to aim for and, to my surprise, I find that over the last twelve months I completed five of the six. This may be due…
Over the last few weeks, while the weather was remarkably kind, I’ve continued to work on an extension to Timelines, the trail that explores ideas about memory, history and our relationship to the land. I wrote about the initial work on Continuum in my last blog post, almost a month ago. Since then, lots has happened. We added a…
The China Terrace is my way of representing the past in the present, of giving a new life to memories of the years when Glen Villa Inn welcomed summer guests from near and far. According to a local newspaper of the time, Canadians and American visitors “from every state in the Union” came to spend their holidays here in…
The China Terrace is my interpretation of history … a room in the garden at Glen Villa where I have recreated parts of Glen Villa Inn, the old resort hotel that once stood on our property. Towards the end of summer I wrote about the new ‘walls’ that we installed to mark the division between…
The title of this post might well be The China Terrace gets a Floor Lift… but that would be confusing and not entirely accurate. So what has happened? The China Terrace, a re-imagining of the grand resort hotel that once stood on the property, was one of the first projects I undertook at Glen Villa. …
Making history visible on the land is the concept that guides the projects I undertake at Glen Villa, my landscape and garden in Quebec. Recognizing and honouring what happened on the land before I came onto the scene is my way of hearing the voices of the past. It’s my way of listening to what the land has to…
One of the first projects I undertook at Glen Villa was the China Terrace, a contemporary folly that honours an old resort hotel that once stood on the property. I first wrote about it as a conceptual garden. Following that, I wrote about it sporadically, focusing on the changes I made — the bed that shook off its annuals…
“No matter how panoramic its scope, a view of surrounding countryside becomes a genuine garden picture only when it has been framed.” – Penelope Hobhouse Recently I came across this statement from the English garden writer and designer Penelope Hobhouse. I read it quickly, nodded in agreement, then paused and read it again. Did I agree? Does…
Last December, on a grey and gloomy day much like today, I wrote out my goals for the garden for 2015. Re-reading that blog post a year later, I’m amazed to see how much of what I set out to do I actually accomplished. Discovering this was a big surprise, but after only a few minutes of thought…