Garden Visits

Arches, pergolas and tunnels create exciting transitions in a garden, inviting you to step into an opening that promises to transport you to a new space and new experience. These attractive, structural features also serve other functions. They get you to lift your head and look up, always a good thing to get visitors to do. Lifting the head and...

Today, I am delighted to announced the official launch of my 15-day Ireland Grand Circle Tour.It will start in Dublin on Oct. 1 and circle around the picturesque south coast and along the sensational west coast and up to Northern Ireland, Derry, Belfast and out to the Giant’s Causeway before returning to Dublin. We will be staying in excellent hotels including a...

Every year, Daniel Truong and Nina Nguyen come to my garden to clip hedges. They do a wonderful job, shearing, clipping, trimming and shaping cedar and boxwood hedges, leaving them with super-straight lines,  razor-sharp corners and wonderfully flat and even sides and tops. Daniel and Nina pick up every last shred of clippings, so there is never a mess at...

Green-on-green is a style of planting that aims to create an elegant landscape by putting together a variety of plants with different shades and textures of green leaves. An example would be a low boxwood hedge in front of rhododendrons or a row of blue-green hostas in front of a hedge of Japanese holly, skimmia or sarcococca with a neatly...

Our 12-day tour to Italy was a trip of discovery into new and exciting new destinations as well as a chance to get re-acquainted with some all-time favourite place. The group in Sermione on Lake Garda Twenty-three of us gathered in Milan for the start of the adventure. This was a chance to discover new parts of the city such as...

My first visit to Villa d'Este was a long journey. Loraine and I took the train from Rome and then a bus for the final few miles up to Trivoli, the hill town where the garden is located. It took about two hours to get there, as I remember it, because of waits for the train and buses. The next time,...

What kind of first impression does your garden make? The entrance is an important first feature. Being the first thing visitors see, it sets the tone for what is to come. Like all first impressions, an entrance can say a lot about who you are. In a glance, it give ups clues to the kind of style and detail likely...