Our garden is located in the northend section in the city of Halifax in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada and is a work in progress. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, it is a working class neighbourhood of Halifax. Not many professionally landscaped yards in this area of the city and ours is no exception ! Still, there has been a growing trend for people creating their own little city garden-scapes in our area. We now in our garden boast, numerous cottage style perennial beds, a pond, water features, a garden house and lots of interesting miscellaneous areas of the garden and it's architecture. Some of the above was inspired by ideas we got while visiting Ireland and Scotalnd, except our garden is not on an estate or Castle property, and the ideas have been adapted to suit our vinyl clad 1940's style house. Take note of our Celtic symbols on our front pages of this site, again, inspirations of our visits to Ireland and Scotland and Denise's Irish (County Armagh) heritage.

We bought our house in 1989 and have been in a constant state of renovation since we moved in, both inside and out. There had been virtually no landscaping done when we moved in. Existing was a rusty swingset, an overgrown lawn, an overgrown lilac tree, a peony bush and a falling down garage when we purchased the property ( see before and after sketches below ). As both Dave and I would say afterward, "It just had the right feel". We must have been lunatics, but the sun was right, the size was right and more importantly, it had a sense of privacy. Ten years later, all of this combined with trees, and the addition of structures and 6 foot high fences in the right places, we have created our "Secret Garden". It's our selfish little secret that we share with select friends and neighbours and now, our new web-site friends. The only entrance to the garden is through a locked gate at the bottom of the driveway. The gate is locked not only to protect our privacy,but to keep our Labrador Retriever, Bowser in and safe. When we first put up the 6 foot fence a couple of years ago, we found that Bowser was very distraught that he could no longer greet people and dogs going by on the street. Consequently we ended up putting in custom made windows along the two new fences to accommodate the "Bowse"( See our Dog and Garden Page). One was so he could see and greet those who were going by on the main street and the other was so that he could see his buddy, yellow lab " Sandy" (since deceased) on the side-street next to us.

Follow the linked pages to see how our yard developed over the last ten (10) years. We hope that you enjoy the pictures and stories.