What Inspires - part 8

Well the first day of winter is finally upon us and we are starting to feel it in the North East. December 21st is the Winter Solstice which signifies the official start of winter.

I was just talking with my Uncle in Florida last night and he told me it is cold there! In fact, he has stockpiled firewood in preparation for cold weather this winter. One tends to wonder about the effects of Global Warming when you need a wood burning stove in Florida to keep you warm!

Anyway, as we head into the Holiday season, I am wrapping up some old projects and starting on some new ones...I can't help but think about the Summer Solstice! It is six months away from now and it was six months ago!!! My one consolation that comes with the marking of this date is that the days will start getting longer by 2 minutes each day until June 21st...

The above photo was taken back in the summer of 2009 around the time of the Summer Solstice... this is the same place I wrote about in a previous article from 2 years ago. It will always continue to amaze me at how Nature can recover a landscape after it has been disturbed by man. It amazes me even more that it can do it in such a beautiful and graceful manner...

A monumental task....

Back in the summer of 2008 I was asked to assist the Curve Lake First Nations People in a community park project. In the center of their community sits a cenotaph stone dedicated to the people of their community who lost their lives in WW1, WW2 and Korea....

I was asked to design and organize the surrounding park area into a properly functioning space for annual community events. The place to start was with the monument itself!

After speaking with the committee, I got the sense of what they were looking for in terms of the monument. I decided to give it a better height and reposition it so that the face of the stone pointed in the right direction (facing the main entrance). The committee then told me that the monument was to sit in a medicine wheel with the red, white, yellow and black colours displayed in a proper order.

The Chief of Curve Lake requested to me that the base of this monument be made to last a couple hundred years or so... I designed it to be at least 6 inches thick with re-bar set in and also to have some foundation piers that go below frost.

The end result looks much like the concept drawing I did. The project is still in progress so the finished park will have to be photographed in the coming year...

I look forward to continue working with the people of Curve Lake on this project!

What inspires...part 7

One the most exciting things to see in a landscape is a combination of plantings staged within a setting of rockery that looks both pleasing and harmonious to the eye.





What inspires me when I create and arrange planting beds with rockery is to observe how Nature does it first! The tower of rockery on the right and the picture above is from a limestone outcropping found in The Beaver River Valley near Georgian Bay, Ontario. You can find this lookout along a hiking trail in the Old Baldy Conservation Area.


There are so many places that Ontario has to offer for the casual observer to feel truly inspired about Nature.

What inspires?... part 6

Nature's little gifts...


I live my life with a simple ethic...when you give to nature, it gives back to you 10-fold. It is a simple rule or law of Nature and one that I hold very close to my everyday practice.

(Photo: Honey Bee hard at work inside a Butternut Squash bloom)

I consider my design work and interaction with my clients as a way to teach people about Nature and when my drawing plans are followed, trees and shrubs get planted. In a way, I do a small part (one urban yard at a time) to help restore beauty to the land and help bring Nature back in balance through the trees I plant.

Anyway, it has been a busy Spring and early summer season for me, not much time to update my blog posts lately or do much gardening. But I thought I would share this one with you....

I was really hoping to get a chance to buy some Butternut Squash plants to place in the garden for this year... a favourite for making pies, breads, soups and just baking slices in olive oil with salt & pepper. But having been so busy, I did not have the time to follow through... I had Butternut Squash growing last year and one of them had rotted while resting on the soil. So, I left it in the garden for compost...

Somehow, someway, the seeds from that squash had matured and in this Spring season they sprouted in an almost perfect line to form 4 or 5 vines. It was almost like the garden heard my thoughts and followed through for me even though I could not get to it on my own. That is what I consider one of Nature's little gifts back to me.

(Photo on Left: The Butternut Squash Vines that seeded themselves.)

What inspires...part 5

Inspirational words....

"The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew the lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to a lack of respect for humans too. So he kept his youth close to its softening influence."

Luther Standing Bear, OGLALA SIOUX

(Picture: taken during one of my many walks in the woods in Northern Ontario)

" When we live in nature it's like constantly being in school. We are in an environment that is always teaching. We are constantly being reminded that there are laws, Natural Laws, which are running the universe. Once we know these laws and we drift from them, we start to live our lives in a different way. Soon we become discontent, selfish and disrespectful. Then, we get in trouble. If our lives have become this way, it can be reversed by going back to nature to be among our teachers."

The above quoted paragraphs are inspirational words taken from the website: www.whitebison.org

Nature will always be my greatest teacher... as I walked through the forest the day that I snapped the above photo, the words came to me in my mind, that I was to walk tall, but with respect in the forests of the Elders ...

What inspires?... part 4

Upon reflecting back to my years in school studying Architecture... I think back to a design class in which a professor once said to us.... "When you guys get out of school...and can afford it... Travel! Go see Europe! Otherwise your designs will end up looking like Markham shopping malls..."


We all laughed... but later on in life, I did get that chance to travel to Europe... I did get to see what some of the true Masters of design were about. In every historic corner of Europe, you find hidden gems of architecture...

This picture was taking in Tallinn, Estonia, I once spent 3 months there during another chapter in my life...

The Great Coastal Gate!

Imagine if you will a medieval town founded in the year 1154. Sailing ships travelling from various Scandinavian and Germanic communities in the Baltic Sea area... coming to the main gate (built in the early 14th century) of an important hub for trade in those days...

The archway crowned with the town's emblem flanked by fortified walls protecting the market and citizens of the area. The stone walls served a purpose for defense, but included design detail that people could marvel at for centuries!

The defense wall blocks your view of what lays beyond it and the winding cobblestone pathway leads your eye in as it prompts you to explore this 850 year old city...(Tallinn)

Still in Estonia, just to the left and down the road a bit from the gate is the Rottermann's Salt Storage, which was renovated recently and is now fittingly converted into The Museum of Estonian Architecture.

Originally designed by a Baltic/German Engineer named Ernst Boustedt and completed in 1908.

When I first saw this building, I could not take my eyes off it. It's shape is so pleasing to the eye as there are hidden geometric ratios in it's form and layout of the facade. The extreme craftsmanship of the Masonry work that went into this structure is a work of art.

What Inspires... part 3

In nature, there is a system of checks and balances, which keeps things in proportion. Each plant and each animal have a natural predator or control measure to keep it from over burdening it's area of existence.


It is when we humans step in and start to change the functions of Nature that the balance in place goes out of sink. If a continuous disruption of the natural process to a natural landscape persists, the land can become so damaged that all traces of the wild disappear.

In the above photo, we see a field of lupines growing in Northern Ontario. This area was once part of a 400 acre farm bordered by 2 other farms. Today the land has been divided up and sold off to various cottagers who now enjoy a forested landscape and this lupine meadow.

A few years back, the municipality stepped up some services for fire route access and widened the roadway. The meadow was somewhat disturbed but has since recovered gracefully. Looking at these photos, a trained eye can see young tree growth... indicating a revitalization occurring in the once open fields of farming activity from over a century ago.

Nature has stepped back in to a land once cleared. The trees have slowly crept back in where they rightfully belong and Nature has begun to heal itself. Wildlife now has great cover and space to forage. The seed bank of grasses and flowers feed the local bird populations and the ground is cooler, holding in more moisture along the forest floor.

The lupines create an acidic soil balance that helps other plant species move into the sandy soils where nutrients may be hard to obtain. The flowers are paving the way for another 20 years of land recovery. Eventually this field of beautiful flowers will be a maturing forest again and Nature will once again be in Balance thanks to little guys like these working away at the job Nature gave them....


The way that Nature works is a lifetime of learning for us to study. It is what will always inspire me in my work to push further and learn what I can from my greatest teacher.

What inspires?... part 2

As I sit here looking out my window at a snowy city, listening to a truck plowing the parking lot near by, I look at this photo and think back to that beautiful spring day when I stumbled upon these red trilliums and snapped a shot of them.

In Nature, everything is simple yet so complex! Looking at these red trilliums you may think they are a nice little bunch of flowers growing in the wild....would look nice in my backyard garden! The underlying fact is that in order for those flowers to grow in that spot, a big tree first had to grow in the space and probably lived for about 70 years...

After many years of enjoying its life in the forest, the tree died and eventually a few years later, it toppled over. The stump that was left behind began to do what is natural, break down into basic nutrients and return to the soil.

The end result... moss now covers the rotted wood, the surrounding soil is in an acidic state due to the wood's decomposition in the wet humus of the forest. With the conditions of the soil being just right, the Red trilliums decided to grow... aiding further in the decomposition of the stump.

Understanding the delicate construction and composition of soil will help anyone to become an excellent gardener. Knowing how Nature does it is part of what inspires me to design....

What inspires?... part 1

(A seat by the falls)











Part of what inspires me most to create landscapes is my constant interaction with Nature. I would say that is what drove me into such a career as a Landscape Designer. Inspirational beauty is all around us in Nature and bringing it alive in my landscapes is what I love most.

(bottom view of the falls, I had to stand in the middle of the Oxtongue River to get this shot)

(Below: View across the lower falls, taken under a red maple)
These are photos taken at various points along Ragged Falls, Ontario. A place where the water rushes down with such force that vibrations literally resonate within your body.
(Above: The very start of Ragged Falls, one of a series of drops along the Oxtongue River)


(Top of Falls view looking down)