Niagara Gardens - Beth Powell in Canfield

Garden art is a wide-open topic.  There are many styles of garden and possibilities for art in the garden.  Bracebridge's Artful Garden is a showcase of what's possible.  They feature more than 40 artists' work at the end of July.  This is where I first saw Floyd Elzinga's Pinecones. These pictures today are of Beth Powell's Canfield, ON garden.  Canfield is south of Grimsby on the escarpment, about 30 minutes away. There is everything from red wagons to dog houses, groupings of doors, a floating canoe garden and a Florida flamingo-inspired gazebo. And of course, there is much more than what you see here, as this is a large rural property and Beth is an ambitious garden artist. Repurposing is popular garden art style in the rural garden with the the open spaces and more relaxed settings. Beth takes familiar objects and gives them new definition through groupings and plantings. They delight and fascinate, inspire and motivate.  These are views of Beth's garden last year during the Hamilton Open Garden Week.  Beth's private garden is open to the public by appointment - one of those great public gardens in your own back yard.

In the Garden of Imagination

The garden of imagination is the perfect phrase to describe this garden captured here.  Located on Heath Street in Toronto, it shows how plants are artistic expressions in the landscape.  I showed this garden's sculpture of the picture frame and glass vase in an earlier post. This is a calm moment given today's headline in the Daily Mail:  "School holidays' August 1 is the day parents reach 'breaking point' with their kids." It is followed with these sub-headlines: - Survey reveals 50 per cent of British parents have had enough by August 1 - On average more than half of the holiday budget will have been spent then - Only one in five parents actually look forward to the summer holidays We in Ontario celebrate this half-way point with a Civic Holiday.  The holiday has many different names at the municipal level, so I guess the half-way point of the summer in Ontario has issues and not everyone gets the day as a holiday.  It seems like Ontario is ambivalent about the mid-way mark of Summer. Who would have guessed all this?

Dark Corners

Isn't this a lovely art piece for the garden? It is the answer to what to do with dark corners in the garden.  When you live on Heath Street, one of Toronto's premier streets in Forest Hill, you add a beautiful sculpture to the garden that emphasizes the darkness and plays with the filtered light.

Painterly Effects in the Garden

I just got the Filter Forge software and have been trying it out.  It creates painterly effects, brush strokes and distortions so that the images have a sense of being digital art rather than photographs.

Garden Gems

Sweet garden moments are wonderful to experience.  Here's one we saw last week in Grimsby.


It has a diverse combination of plants that increase visual interest, along with the lovely heart shape of the planter and the little stones around the edge.  It has the sense of both a fairy garden and a floral design.  A moment of garden artistry!

Squirrel House Gardens - Wall Art

This wall is at Squirrel House Gardens, a private garden open to the public.  It is in St. Catharines, Ontario.  The late afternoon light was perfect, creating a natural sculptural frame for this wall art.