Big accolades for Bay of Fundy's Kingsbrae Garden

Big news this week on the garden scene here on the Bay of Fundy! Kingsbrae Garden in St Andrews, New Brunswick, received a “Top Five North American Gardens Worth Travelling For” award at the Garden Tourism Conference (Toronto), in consultation with Canadian and International associations.

Kingsbrae Garden kinda has a lucky number five thing going: it was also recently named in Boston Globe travel editor, Steve Jermanok’s “Top 5 Travels for 2010” worldwide. It’s easy math: 5 + 5 = 10; serendipitously, Reader’s Digest named Kingsbrae Garden one of the 10 reasons to visit St Andrews—“the perfect place for a family summer getaway”—encouraging readers to “While away an afternoon at Kingsbrae Garden”.

And, of course, what makes Kingsbrae Garden especially charming is the location of its 27 acres nestled within the heart of St. Andrews by-the-Sea, Atlantic Canada's premier resort community.

Congrats Kingsbrae!

Thinking spring on Bay of Fundy

One of my winter projects was to finish up the edits on the 10 new Bay of Fundy Travel Show episodes we filmed last summer and fall around the Bay of Fundy. Here, as a little tribute to the arrival of spring, is episode from Campobello Island, New Brunswick. Enjoy!

It's maple season on Bay of Fundy

Well, so much for winter! The last couple weeks of warm winds and melting snow have heralded the arrival of "Sugar Season" on the Bay of Fundy....maple sugar season! Many families like ours have been tapping sugar maples for generations.

Our family has been making maple products here in the upper part of the Bay of Fundy for over 100 years. We only tap about 4000 trees (fairly small amount compared with other farms) but that's enought to keep our family, our town, our visitors and quite a few restaurants elsewhere in the province supplied with real maple syrup.

By the way, we jokingly call imitation table syrup telephone pole syrup since it compares that unfavourably with the real stuff!

Igloo on the Bay of Fundy?

Well, it's a rare winter here when we have either a) enough snow, or b) the right type of snow, to partake in formal snow fort building. When I was a kid growing up here we were more inclined to burrow a tunnel into the mountains of snow left by diligent snow plows.

However, this winter we've had tonnes of snow and local folk have been making the best of it! Here's a family at Fort Anne in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, trying their hands at igloo making. Looks like fun...

Thanks to Trish at the nearby Annapolis Historic Gardens for sharing this image.