Today (July 9th) from 10:00am – 2:00pm, Strathcona & Cottonwood Community Gardens will celebrate the granting of respective 20 and 10 year licenses at their Plant Sale and Open House, a popular annual fundraiser for the volunteer-run gardens. Don’t miss this fabulous event! The Open House and Plant Sale provides a wonderful opportunity to tour […]
Planters – Check. Plants – Check.
Before I tell you about these planters, let me apologize for my infrequent posting of late. You probably knew this already, but it’s really not a great idea to work full time, plan a wedding (just 62 days away!) and take an intensive garden design program that takes up every second weekend. It’s pretty crazy. […]
The best pick-me-up ever
Last week kind of sucked, for no particular reason. By Thursday, I was feeling stressed and depressed, and just wanted to crawl into a hole to hibernate for a while. Then on Friday I received a small package. It was an unexpected gift from Terra Nova Nurseries. Wow. What excitement. I opened it as carefully […]
Baby it’s cold outside
Even though the longest day of the year is quickly approaching, once the sun goes down, it gets chilly quickly. That’s when I start to wish for an outdoor fireplace, like this one at Unica Home. I wonder what the strata council would have to say about that! My parents have one like this from […]
Topo Table
I love this Topo Table from NONdesigns. Apparently, the designer “got tired of perfectly flat tables” so made TOPO out of common-countertop material Corian, plus plastic inserts formed over rocks which “drop into the table to form functional little landscapes.” Neato. Via Apartment Therapy.
An Arthur Erickson-designed garden
Last week I had the privilege of touring a private home and garden designed by celebrated architect Arthur Erickson. One of the Vancouver-based architect’s earliest residential works, the minimalist wooden structure seamlessly integrates with the landscape. From outside the property, dense plantings hint at something special beyond the simple fence. Entering from the side lane, […]
Community gardens – good for the economy?
You knew gardens are good for the community, but now you can put numbers to it: From a NYU Law and Economics Research Paper: We find that the opening of a community garden has a statistically significant positive impact on residential properties within 1000 feet of the garden, and that the impact increases over time. […]
Name that plant
I’m in the middle of a weeklong intensive course called “Conceptual Garden Design” as part of my program. Yesterday was spent touring multi-million dollar properties designed by some of Vancouver’s highest-profile landscape architects (yes, I’ll be posting photos. Soon). But there’s something nice about seeing all these acres of live-in gardener-maintained perennial beds and manicured […]