![\"Meagher,](\"http:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Meagher-Timelines-009.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA\u00a0few\u00a0weeks ago I was fortunate enough to visit a garden in the small village of North Hatley, Quebec, where I live, to see\u00a0the work of garden makers Jane Meagher and Jean Vanaise. Here, over about ten years, they have transformed a one-acre town lot into a lushly varied garden.<\/p>\n
The transformation began when they decided to renovate and enlarge their house.\u00a0 Before they began, the garden around the building was\u00a0mostly grass plus a few\u00a0bunches of flowers scattered\u00a0more or less randomly.\u00a0Not so today. Now\u00a0their mini-paradise\u00a0is set off from the street and surrounding houses by a fence that Jean built to protect\u00a0the\u00a0expanding garden from voracious deer.<\/p>\n
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The fence protects three sides of\u00a0a formerly grassy square; the house itself protects the fourth. From the balcony above, I looked down on the sunny side of the garden.<\/p>\n
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A ground level view shows how what\u00a0was once featureless\u00a0is now tightly planted with richly coloured plants, many native to the area.<\/p>\n
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![\"Meagher,](\"http:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Meagher-Timelines-013.jpg\")
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Mixed with these hardy plants are vegetables — zucchini, cabbage, tomatoes and corn. (Will raccoons get the corn before Jane and Jean do?)<\/p>\n
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![\"Meagher,](\"http:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Meagher-Timelines-014.jpg\")
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By itself this\u00a0mix of edible and decorative plants\u00a0would be a winner but\u00a0it is only one of three distinct sections of the garden. Each responds to the conditions on site and each, consequently, is quite different in character.<\/p>\n
The second garden is behind the house. Partly shaded, partly in full sun, this area is unfenced so the plants here have to withstand the appetites of freely wandering deer. They also have to complement rocks and water which are the dominant\u00a0features of the area. The enormous\u00a0leaves of butterbur (Petasites japonicus<\/em>) and coarse, tooth-edged leaves of\u00a0The Rocket (Ligularia stenocephala<\/em>) are the perfect choice,\u00a0providing a dramatic contrast to spiky iris and frothy astilbes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jean designed the garden and he and Jane have done\u00a0much\u00a0of the work themselves,\u00a0helped along the way by local gardener Warwick Hache. Cleverly, they used the enormous rocks unearthed when the house was renovated to anchor the pools and small stream that make up the water garden. Today the stream appears completely natural — which isn’t surprising since springs were always there, hiding underground, waiting to be discovered.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Both the front and back gardens have changed and grown over the last half dozen years as Jean in particular has become more and more engaged in the project. His passion now is a Zen garden he is designing in the narrow space alongside the house.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hostas original to the garden are even happier now that they are fenced from the deer, and gradually Jean is increasing their number and variety. He is also adding driftwood and cedar branches with interesting shapes and textures. Rocks with patterns\u00a0worn over centuries by the movement of water sit\u00a0beside\u00a0a small Buddha, providing a\u00a0thoughtful contrast between contemplation and movement, permanence and change.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Neither Jane nor Jean is a trained gardener but both know what they like and what they want to achieve. Jean is gradually trimming up the trees in the back garden to open it to the sky, and in the Zen garden, where he is standing in the photo below, he is training an oak tree (!) to resemble a\u00a0giant bonsai.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is not a big garden — perhaps 1\/4 of an acre at best. What appeals to me most about\u00a0it, though, is the enthusiasm with which it has been designed and is being maintained. It is what a home garden is meant to be:\u00a0not a static, ornamental space but a place to live in, to enjoy, to value.<\/p>\n Bravo, Jane and Jean!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A\u00a0few\u00a0weeks ago I was fortunate enough to visit a garden in the small village of North Hatley, Quebec, where I live, to see\u00a0the work of garden makers Jane Meagher and Jean Vanaise. Here, over about ten years, they have transformed a one-acre town lot into a lushly varied garden. The transformation began when they decided…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,20,21,22],"tags":[506,914,915,916,917,519],"class_list":["post-9065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design","category-people","category-plants","category-reviews","tag-canadian-gardens","tag-jane-meagher","tag-jean-vanaise","tag-north-american-gardens","tag-north-hatley-gardens","tag-quebec-gardens","category-24","category-20","category-21","category-22","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Meagher,](\"http:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Meagher-Timelines-027.jpg\")
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