Spring rolls and resolutions
I think I’ve just made Spring Resolutions. Imagine that! Spring Resolutions. Unlike the New Year’s Resolutions I never really make out loud or even believe I’d keep if I did make them. Spring Resolutions seem to have more promise. At least to me there’s more promise. I’m more likely to resolve to clean up the […]
In the moonlight garden
With the advent of outdoor lighting, the Moonlight Garden seems to have disappeared from today’s landscape designer’s repertoire. All of the nighttime attention has been placed on using up-lights, down-lights and path-lights to create dramatic impact in our gardens that we know look good at night; trees, rocks and features of the home. Unfortunately, we […]
Chocolate Cotton Tails
Easter is, simply, a long weekend with our family. It’s a good time to get together, enjoy some out-of-doors time, eat a bit too much, laugh a lot and indulge in some sweet treats. We aren’t a religious bunch, although I was raised as part of great big Catholic family. When I was a kid, […]
Cost vs. value
As you know, I am on ‘hiatus’. To most of you, this would mean I’m sipping piña coladas in a beach hut in some place that has a beach and a hut, where I can order a drink with less piña and more colada, or at the Sandbanks—which has a beach and portapotties, and so […]
Plant picks
As a landscape designer, I want to share my must-have plants for any outdoor space. These are the ones that I like to put into all of my designs, but also the ones that I have in my own personal spaces. There are thousands of plants, trees and shrubs that you can have in your […]
The rest of the day to myself
“Top ‘o’ the morning to ya”. It’s March 17th and a it’s big day for all of the Irish and the hyphenated Irish and pretenders to the nationality. St. Patrick’s Day was a big deal when I was a kid. With a surname like “Durning” it was hard to be anything but Irish. When I […]
Preservation, demolition or what?
Sorry, still not writing. Other than impulsively writing columns late at night, I’m very relaxed. I’m the kind of guy who likes to keep old things around. Some of us do. I’ll start with an analogy: I went to my closet, which is jampacked with shirts. I looked, but didn’t understand the me that required […]
The local economy
There are many generalizations I have heard about wine over the years: I hate a specific grape variety (be that chardonnay, merlot or malbec); French wines are terrible; Italian wines are all the same; Australian wines are too jammy. There is no one style of any grape. Each is distinctly different from the others. Mostly […]
Colour can be a good thing
I had a great conversation recently with a distraught homeowner complaining about their neighbour’s yard. They were desperately seeking some advice as to how to handle a next-door neighbour who has painted their home in bright and vibrant colours because they were certain that the home was hurting their property value. This is such a […]
Destination
My apologies. I am still not writing columns, so don’t bug me about that. But sometimes I wake at 2 am, because I am cursed, and things that bother me tend to show up in my dreams, and I am forced to get up and write. Be glad you’re not me. Destination: This word has […]