One of the front beds in my garden with Gaura, a small weeping Japanese maple and a sand cherry in the background. Shot in October, 2014.

I no longer have a garden. As a firm believer in truthful publishing, I need you to know that I am now a gardening blogger without my own personal garden and I’m not sure how long it’ll be before I have another one. But I promise you this blog will continue to boldly grow where no gardening blog has grown before. Please hear me out.

My guy and I have just changed our lives dramatically and I’m over-the-moon excited. We’ve sold our home in Oakville, Ontario (Canadian gardening zone 6b) and we’re now going to split our time between two places:

• Fernie, a small jewel of a town (zone 4b), nestled in the spectacular Elk Valley at the southern tip of the British Columbian Rockies

The Three Sisters overlooking Fernie. Shot from the centre of town in December, 2014.

• Near Wiarton, Ontario, (zone 5b) on Ontario’s Bruce Peninsula which was designated a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve and is home to one of my favourite bits of semi-wilderness, the Oliphant fen.

We’re doing this to be closer to our kids (my step-kids) who live in Fernie, a fundamental joy we can’t deny ourselves any longer.

Here’s a peek of a container recipe I’ll be sharing in an upcoming post for Spring 2017. Shot in my garden in September, 2016.

Through upheaval, crazy travel schedules and new nest building, I’ll be regularly publishing posts as usual and this blog will continue to be about what Ministry Of The Fence has always been about–looking beyond my own garden fence to discover the wondrous potential of any garden while making connections between our gardens and the post-wild world. Looking at it from a practical point of view, not having my own garden for the time being will give me more free time to explore other gardens and ways of gardening than ever before. Of course, I expect that as soon as spring arrives, I’ll be doing whatever it takes to put spade to ground like any gardening addict. Naturally, the how, where and to what success will be revealed in future posts with all the bare-all enthusiasm of a Kardashian threatened with a series cancellation.

I’ll be covering the tricks used to create the famous White Garden at Sissinghurst in an upcoming post on creating a single-colour garden.

As this posting auto-publishes at 4:30 p.m. EST on January 23rd, 2017, we’ll be somewhere on the snow-blown TransCanada Highway, skirting the north shore of Lake Superior, heading west. A moving van, containing all the stuff we didn’t give away or throw out, will be somewhere ahead or behind us and we’ll be spending the next couple of days doing our best, come blizzard, freezing rain or white-outs, to arrive in British Columbia ahead of it. I’ll be updating my Instagram feed (ministryofthefence) regularly as we plunge into this new life so if you want more details, be sure to check it out. (If you’re not into Instagram, you can still see the photos I post to it in the Instagram window featured on the homepage of this blog.)

Your support and encouragement have meant a lot to me over these years and I thank you. Ministry Of The Fence has been a passion project of mine for a couple of years now and, assuming no substantial loss of sanity, I look forward with your help in continuing to grow this blog boldly for a long time to come.

Here’s a taste of future posts scheduled soon:

• Top gardening predictions for the year ahead. Soundscaping with trees, anyone?
• Container recipes using plants being introduced for Spring 2017 in Canada
• The tricks (and trials) of growing a single-colour garden
• Unravelling the inspirations behind Fusion Gardening
• Do plant brands make a difference?
• How to play plant matchmaker from the ground up

I’m eager to hear what you think of all of this. Please let me know your thoughts and be sure to give me a “like” if you’re OK with it. Every thumbs up means a lot to me.

Here are some pix of posts coming up: