Keppel Croft Gardens
A horticultural treasure on the Bruce Peninsula
Big Bay, Ontario
About Keppel Croft
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Opening again in May 2025.
Come and explore Keppel Croft Gardens at Big Bay on the beautiful Bruce Peninsula.
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We have four acres of gardens, a nature trail, an arboretum, and Keppel Henge.
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Bring a picnic and enjoy our award-winning country gardens.
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Days and Hours
Keppel Croft will be open May 1st, 2025.
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Wednesday through Sunday, Holiday Mondays
10 am - 5 pm
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Contact us for after hours visiting and photograph sessions. The light is so beautiful outside of visiting hours!
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​ Entrance by suggested donation of $5 per person. Children free.
Dogs on a lead are welcome
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Contact
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Bill and Dawn Loney
504156 Grey Road 1
Georgian Bluffs, Ontario
N0H 2T0
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519·534·1090
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Our Website Renovations
have begun for 2025. It's a work
in progress.
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Spring Equinox, 2025
Steve Irvine took these drone photographs of Keppel Henge on the morning of the Vernal Equinox, March 20th, 2025. Discover more about the creation of Keppel Henge here.
Keppel Henge is accessible from paths out of the south end of Keppel Croft gardens. Two other installations are near the henge. To the left of the henge is an installation which traces an analemma pattern on the ground. To the right of the henge on a sunny day you can read the time on an
analemmatic sundial, using your body as the gnomon.
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​​Join us at Keppel Henge to celebrate the Summer Solstice on June 20, 2025.
Details about the event will be posted here in the early summer.
​Spring began on the Vernal Equinox, Wednesday, March 20, 2025.
Summer Solstice, occurs Friday, June 20, 2025,
Fall or Autumnal Equinox begins Monday, September 22, 2025.
Winter Solstice occurs Sunday, December 21, 2025.
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Keppel Croft in April, 2025
Our season of weeping and wailing begins! Voles or field mice, are active throughout the winter but their damage only appears as the snow retreats. They are voracious herbivores, and can eat their weight in a day. Vole populations erupt every 3-5 years. The possibility of 166 voles in an acre defies belief. The weight of the snow pulled branches down low so they were accessible to the voles. Bulbs, seeds, roots, tubers, tender bark and grass are on the their menus. https://www.britannica.com/animal/meadow-vole
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It's discouraging walking around the gardens and discovering the damage. This year the nursery plants in beds and pots by the pit greenhouse have been decimated. Lots of trees and shrubs have been girdled completely. The lilies have all been eaten. Burning bushes are favourite meals.​
To add insult to injury, Bill was bitten by a vole he was evicting from a storage bin. The vole was not intimidated in the least and bit Bill right through the gloves he was wearing - two puncture wounds from those incredibly sharp teeth! Now we know what our cats put up with when they caught voles in the spring and got bitten on the lips! A granddaughter's Baby Shark bandaid saved the day.
Keppel Croft in March, 2025
The winter of 2025 reminded us of old fashioned northern Grey County winters - more than enough snow. With scarcely any ice covering the bay until very late in the season, we had many gray overcast days.
Photo: Ben Caesar
Warming temperatures brought a thaw in the second week of March. Rain added to the volume of water flowing through the gardens. We were marooned overnight when the water in the laneway was deeper than our rubber boots were tall. The dry stream bed was a roaring torrent. All the front lawns formed a lake. The speed with which the water drained away was
quite astonishing. Clean up and repairs could begin within a few days.
Bill had to clear snow to free up the door of the pit greenhouse. The flood water had flowed through but done no damage, draining away through the gravel floor.
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When he built the greenhouse Bill imagined we would need to stoke a fire through the winter to keep the space warm. We have never had to use it The ambient heat from the earth, good insulation and a generous covering of snow keep the greenhouse warm through the winter.
We checked the "high tide" mark on the old Findlay stove to see how deep the water was. The olive trees, fig trees, agapanthus, and New Zealand flaxes came through the winter just fine!
It has been a banner season for field voles or meadow mice. They have lived and travelled under the safety of our heavy snow cover. They cause a great deal of damage to shrubs and trees, lawns and perennials. Any trees ring barked like this sapling will die back above the ring bark line but some plants sprout up again below that line. We hope that a good many of the voles didn't survive the flooding...
No Mow May, again!
In May 2024, we had a difficult time keeping up with everything at Keppel Croft. We had read about No Mow May and decided to abandon lawn mowing to see what would happen and to free up our energy to work on the rest of the gardens. We were astonished with the results!
With no effort on our part, the lawns were overtaken by English daisies and Forget-Me-Nots. Dandelions added a dash of yellow. We found that our visitors had a difficult time deciding where to walk so Bill mowed some trails through the blue and white drifts. That solved that problem.
In some places the drifts of Forget-Me-Nots extended the impressions of the actual garden plantings. We are hoping that this spring we will have even more "freebies" coming up in the lawns. The pollinators will be happy.
We were surprised and delighted with the success of our No Mow May last season but this year we will not repeat the error we made in 2024. We will not let the No Mow May linger on longer than it should. On the strength of that decision we bought a new law mower to make that job easier! Join us this May with a visit to enjoy our exuberant volunteers!
The Green Room
Bill built an addition on to the south side of the living room. We call it the Green Room. In the autumn we fill it with a selection of tender perennials, orchids, clivias, our Wollemi and Norfolk pines, assorted ferns and palms. All summer these plants, in pots, have been outside in the garden. Other tender potted plants spend winter in the pit greenhouse or the greenhouse behind the workshop.
The plants in the indoor garden are trimmed and the space tidied up for the incoming pots.
Gradually we bring in the overwintering plants. In late winter we will begin to enjoy the blooms on the orchids and clivias.
Our cymbidium orchids spend the gardening season in pots in various places in the gardens. They do well in filtered light and require little care except for extra watering in dry periods. Excellent cultivation tips can be found at the American Orchid Society.
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We line the pots up by the back door at the end of the season and bring the pots into the house just before the frosts come.​
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During the winter the the sprays of blossoms last for ages. Once there is no danger of frost we move the plants outdoors again.
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The clivias grow in large plastic pots. They don't mind being pot bound. The pots of clivias are placed around the gardens for the summer. in partial sunlight. They look vigorous and attractive even when they are not flowering.
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In the autumn we clean the plants before bringing them into the house. We found a a little paint brush from the dollar store is the perfect instrument for evicting the collection of fallen leaves and assorted insects from between each of the leaves.
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In early spring the blooms are a long lasting pleasure. If the flower head is not removed then berries slowly form. It takes a year for the seeds to mature. It takes 2-3 years before a plant flowers for the first time.. We have found seedlings growing in neighbouring pots!
Rural Gardens of Grey and Bruce Counties
We are founding members of Rural Gardens of Grey and Bruce Counties. Visit the RGGB website featuring our 15 member gardens for information about each garden, gardening advice from experienced people and for special events offered by our members: www.ruralgardens.ca/​ View garden photographs and posts by members on Facebook and Instagram.
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