I love beach towns. Lake or ocean, doesn’t matter. A small town cozying up to a strip of sand or pebbles along big water is my idea of heaven. Last month, we were very lucky to have visited two beach towns – Sunset Beach near St. Petersburg, Florida and Southampton which is situated along the…
If you need to install a staircase in your garden you probably have a really good reason for doing so. People don’t usually throw a staircase into their hardscaping plans just because they love to climb steps. There’s a good reason for them and there’s no getting around the fact that they’ll have to be…
This whole ‘She Sheds’ thing is a bit of a puzzler to me. I get that women can hanker after an equivalent of a man cave and I totally get that a plain old garden shed offers up infinite possibilities beyond storing gardening equipment and a lawn mower. But I didn’t realize how much these…
In what I hope becomes a long-lived annual tradition, I visited friends for a few days this month in Gananoque, a small, utterly gorgeous town on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in Ontario. The timing is not inconsequential. Not only is “the Gan” practically vibrating in July with good times–outdoor concerts, boat…
If you’re craving a little country in your city garden, it might be easier than you think to add some rural charm. And there are inspirations everywhere. But why would you want to? Because farm love is a real thing. Recently, the New York Times ran an article entitled ‘The Modern Farmhouse is Today’s McMansion.…
Last Monday was Victoria Day here in Canada, a national holiday that was once the official day to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday and is now simply our unofficial kick-off to spring. This weekend also semi-reliably marks the moment when danger of overnight frost has passed–at least for most Canadians. Hence, gardening centres finally fling open…
One of my favourite signs that spring is on its way is the sound of bird song. After months of listening to the crunch of ice under tires and the crack of branches breaking under the weight of snow, that exuberant trill from a goldfinch or the unique melody of a sparrow is a genuine…
I couldn’t believe the inventiveness of this fellow in Australia (that’s him in the video below) who, after discovering a frog living in his fence post, proceeds to fine tune a better home for the wee thing (whom he names Frod) after a series of night ops-style observations. With some fancy 3D printing and a…
More And Less lists are replacing New Year’s resolutions and this makes sense to me. Compiling a list of what you’d like to do/see/manifest more of as well as what you’d like less of in your life seems, well, just easier–less intimidating, more approachable and (getting down to brass tacks) more achievable. I’ve never been…
In a post I published eight years ago entitled The Greying Garden And What To Do About It, I explored the viewpoint that gardening was pretty much an older person’s pursuit. I had just attended a gardening seminar where pretty much everyone was rocking grey hair. Now, with a big boost from the pandemic, gardening…
Earlier this month I published a post (highly opinionated, of course) about gardening shortcuts for getting that traditional English country garden style. Since then, I’ve been thinking. The British garden look is popular for good reason, as are other well-known garden looks such as the Japanese-style garden or the American Southwest style (think lots of…
One of the biggest challenges for any gardener is trying to make something of the long, thin and usually dark strip between two houses. This stretch of gardening purgatory is often euphemistically referred to as a side garden. But getting the space to look anything like a garden can be really hard. So how do…
I love the garden design term “desire line“. Used in urban design as well, it refers to a path we take, whether it’s official (as in meant-to-be-part-of-the-overall-design) or renegade (more on that later). It’s usually the quickest route from A to B. You see them a lot in public green spaces–a dirt path carved into…
Bridges are amazing things. They are the very manifestation of a proposition. What’s a bridge if not the offer to be on the other side? But they don’t have to span a physical thing like a river or a highway. According to Cambridge Dictionary, a bridge can be “something that makes it easier to make…
Whenever I’m in a garden having a major Wow! moment it’s usually because I’ve stumbled onto a garden design or decor idea that’s both breathtakingly simple and wildly transformative. Here are five why-didn’t-I-think-of-that DIY garden ideas progressing from the simply elegant to the seriously eccentric (in a good way). Ideas 1 and 2: Maximizing a…
Horticulturist, Arborist and Garden Columnist
Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
Garden of Flowers, Beads, and Yarns
ruminate vb. to chew (the cud)
Reflections On A Life in Exile
Saint Andrews Forest Farm Blog
a chat over the garden fence
There's always room for one more plant.
a little garden near Gawler
.....and nurturing my soul
Ministry of the fence 