The Gazebo Garden in the Fall

In 2019, I was selected to attend an international arts research residency in Paris, France. I’d recently read a wonderful book about Monet (“Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies”, by Ross King), and decided to make the short trip from Paris to Giverny, to visit his famous garden and lily pond. It’s an incredibly beautiful spot, full of beautiful views and vignettes. As I walked through it, I kept thinking of how he’d planned and created this garden and lily pond to have these fantastic views, specifically so that he could paint them. He (and his gardeners) planted the compositions he wanted to create on canvas.

When we first moved here 3 years ago (how has it been 3 years already??!), one of my dreams was for us to collaboratively create the garden that I wanted to photograph, and then make artwork from those photographs. I’ve never been super-fast in my artistic process, but this dream requires a tremendous amount of research, waiting, trust, and letting go. And patience.

Hilariously, after years of living in a tiny house in Toronto, the one thing I miss now that we’re in the country is a feeling of intimate space. Coziness. I love having a “vista” out the front windows, but also wanted to feel like there were little pockets within the garden. Places to explore or relax and reflect. And from this yearning grew the idea of the Gazebo Garden. A space that would feel like a room in the middle of the garden. A room made of the garden.

I’ve loved watching the Gazebo Garden grow, blossom, and become itself over the past few months. As with any garden (or work of art), we planned and created it with specific intent, but also had to allow a lot of creative room for it to do whatever it wanted to do. For instance, I’d deliberately picked flowers for every colour of the rainbow, and what we ended up with was various shades of orange and coral for the most part. This was an entirely different beautiful than what I’d imagined. Pests foiled the leeks, and some of the bean plants. Other things grew in to fill the spaces left behind. Nearly everything I’d planted in the hanging planters died (because honestly, I’m not great at things that need to be watered daily). The bean vines reached for and twirled themselves around the planters, somehow making them still feel relevant. The chipmunk - until now a cute but shy resident of the edge of the garden - developed a taste for ground cherries, and has easily eaten a hundred for every one that we manage to get our hands on. Sigh.

But to see the crystal beads sparkle on a sunny afternoon, or the way dew traces a string of droplets along the edge of each dahlia petal, and to witness the way the vines very slowly became the partial walls I’d hoped they’d become.. also: Sigh.

Every time I go out to the vegetable garden to weed something, or pick something, the Gazebo Garden catches my eye and makes my heart flutter. Time disappears. Mosquitoes rejoice, finding me in such a distracted state that I have become easy prey.

And then, just when I thought I’d seen the peak of it’s beauty, and felt the most magic possible from this small garden “room”, the September fog rolled in.

MAJOR SIGH.

Yesterday morning, when I woke up to this beautifully atmospheric fog, it felt like months worth of working and waiting had finally become A Moment. A feeling, and many views, that I wanted to capture. It feels like another step completed on the journey to whatever artwork I’m in the middle of (the very slow process of) creating.

Here’s an enchantingly foggy morning walk-through for you.. enjoy :)