Lilactree Farm

“I think we may have a wider approach to garden design if we have been helped to appreciate other forms of art; to be aware of basic principles – balance, repetition, harmony and simplicity – which apply to all forms of creativity. To look for these ideas in painting and architecture, or hear them in [...]

Herbert Butterfield's essay (The Whig Interpretation of History) was an attack on liberal triumphalism [i.e., the 'Whig interpretation']…Whig history purveyed a concept of progress as the central theme of English history…It has become common among historians to speak of 'whig history' for any subjection of history to what is essentially a teleological view of the [...]

As a result of reading my book review, Deborah of Garden Theatre wound up visiting Brian Bixley and touring his garden. Since her visit was in early spring, her photographs clearly illustrate the underlying design of Lilactree Farm. If you have been enjoying Brian's occasional pieces here, you will want to go over to Garden [...]

Surely this starting into growth is the true Spring in plant life, whether it be an awakening due to the melting of a covering of snow as with the true alpines, or the commencement of the rains in the African veldt; and so long as we can see some plant in the garden starting off [...]

Living in Ontario, Brian Bixley has the well-earned ambivalence of the cold climate gardener, calling winter “the icicle in the soul of the gardener” and yet acknowledging its “shivery perfection.” But the range of his thought and the dry subtlety of his wit in Essays on Gardening in a Cold Climate go beyond the confines [...]

........................................The curious stranger roves, With grateful travel, through a wild of groves; And though directed, oft mistakes his way, Unknowing where the winding mazes stray; Yet still his feet the magic paths pursue, Charmed, though bewildered, with the pleasing view. Stephen Duck, 1731 The hedge clipping was finished yesterday (October 5). We have a variety [...]

Maureen and I spent the first weekend of October in Pittsford, a suburb of Rochester, NY. We did the usual things that starry-eyed visitors do, going to a Wegman’s store, where the range and quality of merchandise in a giant super-market made me feel that I was still living in the nineteenth-century, and whose theatrical, [...]

…………When you do dance, I wish you A wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that; move still, still so, And own no other function. W.S., The Winter’s Tale (4.4. 140-43) Neither Maureen nor Roan has found this to be a companionable summer; too hot, too humid. But for the garden [...]

The caramel-fragrant leaves of the Katsura tree have already fallen, as have those of three horse chestnut kin, the two Ohio buckeyes (Aesculus glabra) and the Yellow buckeye (A. flava). Both the Yellow and the Ohio buckeyes have similar foliage and pale yellowy-green flowers, and the only way I can distinguish betweeen them is by [...]