Posts Tagged ‘old flower gardens’
Garden Paths
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One of the titles in my new Rural Mystery Series, ‘Garden Paths,’ focusses on a mysterious garden. The garden is on land left to a woman by a family she has never known. When she comes to Nova Scotia to claim the property, she finds the garden, and discovers the story of its creation.
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Synopsis:
When Ella Bartholomew’s uncle dies, she is shocked to hear she has not been remembered in his will, although he is the only family she has known. He has, however, provided for her in another way and Ella discovers that she is now the owner of an unfamiliar property in Nova Scotia. When she visits the mysterious property and the nearby community, she discovers a family and a history she never knew existed. On the property, she finds a beautiful garden and a statue of her unknown mother. Now she must discover the secrets of the garden and those of her mother, and win a battle with a vicious claimant to the property and the garden.
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I had fun writing this book because I was able to write about my own garden and the various plants I have grown. I also love making simple maps and I made a map to help describe the garden in the book (Ella’s mother called it her Million Acre Garden). In the garden is a maze, one of my favourite horticultural features. The Noel Shore area of Nova Scotia is also one of my favourite landscapes.
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The book will be available at the end of April, so watch for it at Dog Eared Books in Oromocto, on-line at Page28 (https://page28books.square.site/shop/new-brunswick-authors/IRBL3TCIF655VYUFJCU3F5DC?page=1&limit=30&sort_by=category_order&sort_order=asc ), and at Amazon.
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Enjoy your spring reading!!!!!
All my best,
Alexandra Tims (a.k.a. Jane)
lost communities – an old flower garden
Do you ever see an old flower garden, no house in sight, growing alone, expanding and reseeding where it can?
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On our drives to find old one room school houses in the landscape, we often find bits of domesticated flowers, indicating a home once flourished there. Sometimes these old gardens are all that is left of a rural community.
I have seen first hand, how many small rural communities in New Brunswick are little more than memories.
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A good example of this is Fredericksburg near Stanley in York County. Today it is a pleasant rural landscape with three or four homes. In 1866 Fredericksburg was a farming settlement with approximately 12 families. This information comes from an information-packed website from the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick: ‘Place Names of New Brunswick: Where is Home? New Brunswick Communities Past and Present’. By typing the name of a community, you can discover information about original land grants, the size of a community in the eighteen hundreds, how many families lived there, the population and whether there was a post office, store, or church. http://archives.gnb.ca/exhibits/communities/Home.aspx?culture=en-CA
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I am sorry these are not better photos, but the colour among all the green shows the remnants of a flower garden that someone once loved.
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Musk Mallow (Malva moschata) …
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Common Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) …
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Some more Foxglove and blue Bachelors Button (Centaurea cyanus) …
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Lupin (Lupinus perennis). I don’t know the identity of the white flowers, but they make a lovely overall ‘bouquet’!
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Have you seen any abandoned flower gardens? Do you wonder what stories they would tell?
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Copyright 2016 Jane Tims
nichepoetryandprose 