When I was a girl, you grew flowers in a flower garden, vegetables in a vegetable garden. Never the twain did meet — at least not if you were in tune with fashions of the day. But there is a long history of growing companion crops, and today flowers and vegetables are often grown together,…
Tonight I’m officially launching my new book, Autobiography of a Garden. Date: Friday, July 29Place: Studio Georgeville20 Carré Copp, Georgeville QCTime: 5-7 Tomorrow night is the second book launch of the weekend. So if you can’t come tonight, do join me tomorrow. Date: Saturday, July 30Place: Gillygooly Gallery96 Hatley Centre RoadCanton-de-Hatley, QCTime: 4-6 Everyone is…
Tree Rings, the sculpture I created to honour a maple tree at my garden Glen Villa, is featured in Garden Design Magazine’s on-line newsletter. I’m really pleased. Why wouldn’t I be? The article is a wow! Tree Rings Stainless Steel Sculpture – Garden Design See how laser-cut stainless steel rings pay tribute to an ancient maple…
Last fall I submitted a proposal to the International Garden Festival at Métis, Quebec as part of a mulit-disciplinary team. The Festival is one of the leading annual garden festivals in the world — a “forum for innovation and experimentation and an exceptional showcase and launching pad for participating designers from a host of disciplines,” to quote…
Two weeks ago I wrote about using water in a garden to reflect the things around it. Water has been used this way for a very long time, and often with a warning attached: think back to the Greek legend of Narcissus, the young boy who fell in love with his reflection in a pool and died. Reflections are…
Edward Lutyens once said that a garden “should have a backbone — a central idea beautifully phrased.” The central and beautifully phrased idea of the International Garden Festival at the Reford Gardens in Métis, Québec is to offer garden installations that challenge conventional ideas of what a garden is — or can be. For the…
This post comes with a link to Rain, a music video filmed at Glen Villa and in and around North Hatley, Quebec where I live. The video features Canadian folk singer-songwriter David Francey. As you will hear from his accent, David was born in Scotland and immigrated to Canada as a boy. For some years he…
Strictly speaking, the answer is — no. Both are living sculptures, but they are made in different ways. Mosaiculture is also a contemporary form of plant display, while topiary has a long and distinguished history, dating back to Roman times. So, what are the differences? The most obvious one is that topiary uses a single plant to create…
Recently I saw a photo of a giant yellow ducky floating in Hong Kong harbour. Called Spreading Joy Around the World, it’s by the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. And it is BIG: 54 ft, or 16.5 metres, tall. The artist said it was intended to make people feel happy. It worked. It made me smile.…
This book arrives at a good moment. In a few months, I’ll be visiting gardens in England along with fifteen other women, and Rory Stuart’s book offers some excellent pointers on what to pay attention to when visiting a garden and how to evaluate the experience. The subtitle, Experiencing, Making and Thinking Abut Gardens, explains…