Keppel Croft Gardens, A Horticultural Treasure on the Bruce Peninsula

Welcome to Keppel Croft Gardens

Bill, Dawn and Margaret Loney

Bill Loney is the guiding garden spirit at Keppel Croft Gardens. He's a self taught gardener whose interest, he readily confesses, became a hobby, which in turn became a passion and then an obsession! I grew up in New Zealand where my parents kept an extensive garden. Our daughter, Margaret, wisely confines her horticultural practices to a Toronto balcony.

For a number of years we lived in the Eastern Arctic where all our gardening was done in juice cans. The serendipitous purchase of our farm at Big Bay, Ontario, in 1977 allowed us to contemplate gardening on a larger scale. The original garden included a bank of lilacs, several old apple trees, a clump of rhubarb, two blue columbines and a tulip. Little did we know that we would be gardening on a prehistoric beach with a skim of topsoil over three metres of gravel.

The large rock garden is an on-going project.

The four acres of gardens at Keppel Croft include perennial borders as well as rock gardens, xeriscape gardens, a zen garden and a woodland garden. There are several ponds as well as numerous art installations. The newly established iris gardens are proving to be very colourful in early summer. Our collection of lilacs is growing with additions each year. Among plans for this gardening season, Bill hopes to complete the dry stream bed, a project that has taken several years already. We have plants, shrubs and trees for sale.

The Nature Trail offers our visitors an opportunity to stroll through the fields to our hardwood bush. There are numerous benches along the way to entice you to sit and enjoy the serenity of Keppel Croft. This trail also gives you access to our Community Vegetable Garden as well as to picnic sites. In the fields you will also find Keppel Henge and the new analemma project.

Bring your picnic and experience a memorable visit to Keppel Croft and beautiful rural Grey County! We invite you to discover more about Keppel Croft.

Note:

Our website is under reconstruction. There are great plans but not enough time! Keep checking our website for new pages which I will be adding. I'm working on more portions of the garden tour at the moment. And if you can't wait for that, come and visit us and see the gardens for yourself! They are quite beautiful after a really humid and hot summer.