The China Terrace in Autumn

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 different rooms in the hotel: a reception area, bedroom and dining room.  (You can read that post here.)

The ‘walls’ are now covered with autumn leaves, and the grass we seeded over a month ago has grown so well that we may need to mow it before the snow falls.

Colourful leaves almost hide entirely the pattern on these new walls, a combination of slate and  bricks inset with pieces of broken china from the old Glen Villa Inn.

The dining room table and rug are also covered with autumn leaves.

The ‘door’ to the dining room is near the bottom right — that bit of open grass.

The shrubs I planted at the terraced entry to the ‘hotel’ are colouring up for autumn.

I chose the shrubs for their resistance to nibbling deer. So far the long-legged rodents have ignored them, thank goodness.

The approach to the China Terrace shows that autumn colour isn’t yet at its peak. By next week it should be.

I like the way the white posts at the entry mirror the white birch trunks along the path leading to the China Terrace.

We are well into the fall work… mowing grass in the fields, dividing and moving plants from one spot to another. The Miscanthus sinensis we planted on the bank of the lake about ten years ago has grown so much that we’ve dug and divided enough clumps to create a new feature along the path to the China Terrace.

I hope that when I walk through the birch trees, with tall grasses growing on either side, I’ll feel like I’m enclosed by a different sort of wall, a transparent, leafy and lovely one.

Chopped back, the clumps don’t look like much but next year they should grow enough to make this section feel like a tunnel, with the sky overhead.

Meanwhile, in another part of the garden, the colours are vibrant.

The snakeroot, Cimicifuga racemosa, has passed its best but some white spires remain.

And boy, are the bees ever happy!

Dozens of bees were fighting for space on the snakeroot… it was fun to watch them crawl into and over each other to find the sweetest spots.

Soon we’ll be closing up shop for the winter but there is still a lot of work to do. More on that in posts to come…. so stayed tuned!