Last week I was in Austin, Texas to give one of my favourite talks, about using art in a garden. I was there as part of a series called Garden Spark, arranged by writer and gardener extraordinaire, Pam Penick. (You can find her regular blogs at www.penick.net/digging) The talk was held outdoors at Barton Springs…
An assortment of photos shows the variety of what is happening now at Glen Villa, my garden in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. Flowers are blooming everywhere. One that I am particularly fond of is columbine. The native variety, Aquilegia canadensis, grows freely in many spots in the garden. In the photo below, it complements the colour palette…
This is a strange year. Like most of you, I’ve been spending far more time than usual at home, inside, seeing almost no one apart from my husband. I’ve wasted time and saved my sanity by reading, baking brownies and doing jigsaw puzzles. The weather has been strange too. Spring came about two weeks earlier…
Labour Day has come and gone, which must mean that summer is over. But the wildflowers blooming so exuberantly in the fields around Glen Villa, my garden in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, say that isn’t so. Ok, perhaps that’s wishful thinking. The Joe Pye weed that was so gorgeous a few weeks ago is…
Some wildflowers are called weeds… but often those ‘weeds’ have pretty flowers. Consider crown vetch, for instance. Its purple flowers are lovely from a distance and it is useful as a temporary ground cover to prevent erosion. But it’s also a menace, in some cases covering and shading out native plants. Chickweed, on the other…
In the middle of August the garden at Glen Villa is just beginning to emerge from an unusually long dry spell. A few days ago we had rain — buckets of it that washed out our driveway and threw a section of bank into Lake Massawippi. (We repaired the driveway; the lake itself may take care…
Mid-July is truly the middle of summer in North Hatley, Quebec, when both the flowers in the garden at Glen Villa and the wildflowers in the fields strut their stuff. The Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’ at The Aqueduct is still blooming, a month after it began. The Eremurus ‘Cleopatra’ that provided such a wonderful vertical accent…
I saw this wildflower in the woods last week and was surprised to learn its botanical name, Cardamine diphylla. I was surprised because only a week or so ago, I looked up the name of another plant, now growing in damp areas in the garden and in the fields at Glen Villa. Its botanical name…
In 2016, in order to discourage Canada geese from ‘littering’ the lawn, we began to transform it into a meadow. We didn’t follow the advice given by experts on how to create a meadow — their process involved too much work and too much expense. Instead we simply stopped cutting the grass. We let it grow throughout the season…
Is it accurate to call The Big Lawn at Glen Villa The Big Meadow? If you use an American definition, the answer is yes. If you consult an English dictionary, the answer is less clear. Webster’s Dictionary defines a meadow as a tract of low or level land producing grass which is mown for hay, and that definition…