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 ​
Wednesday through Sunday, and 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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Keppel Croft in June, 2025
Summer Solstice, 2025
This Friday at Keppel Henge
​​Join the Bluewater Astronomical Society to celebrate the Summer Solstice on June 20, 2025, 11 am to 2 pm. ​
​Keppel Croft Gardens, at 504356 Grey Road #1 at Big Bay, Ontario, include Keppel Henge.
Suggested entry donation $5. Keppel Croft opens at 10 a.m and closes at 5pm. Event weather permitting.
Park in the parking lot or on the south side of Grey Road #1. Photos below from previous solstice celebrations.
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You are invited to enjoy exploring the gardens and to walk the Nature Trail at Keppel Croft/. Before the observance of the Summer Solstice in Keppel Henge you are welcome to join the Tai Chi practitioners as they present their sets in the gardens. There may be an opportunity to join them again in the henge.
Remember to pack your picnic. Bring your favourite outdoor chair and find a shady place in the garden to meet with friends and to have your lunch. A limited selection of benches, chairs and tables will be available in the gardens.
Members of the Bluewater Astronomical Society will be bringing their equipment and offering a chance for you to make solar observations The enthusiasm and knowledge of the members of BAS are really impressive.
Before you leave Big Bay make sure to go to the Big Bay General Store for a home made ice cream. Wander down to the Big Bay dock, take a seat on one of the benches and admire the splendid view of the bay. Roll on Summer!
Steve Irvine used his drone to take this photograph of Keppel Henge
at sunrise on the summer solstice, 2024. Steve was a co-creator of Keppel Henge.
Dame's Rocket
An early summer wave of colour by an invasive plant
Dame's Rocket, Hesperis matronalis, was brought from Europe as an ornamental garden plant. It is an agressively invasive plant, displacing native plants. For all its bad reputation we look forward to its annual blowsy display.
In several parts of our gardens Dame's Rocket adds to displays of shades of purple and pink provided by lilacs, pinks, veronicas and alliums. One plant of Dame's Rocket creates up to 20,000 seeds.-beware! We remove the plants before the seeds ripen but obvious don't always get that timing totally correct There will be more unintentional purple and pink swaths next year.
We were alerted to this patch of Dame's Rocket by neighbours who noticed this colourful patch and sent us a photo taken from the road side! These plants are growing in an area where we are establishing hardwood and evergreen trees. We haven't yet decided how we will deal with this surprising patch.
Keppel Croft in May, 2025
Magnolias
We bought our farm in May, 1977. When we paid off our mortgage five years later we planted this saucer magnolia to celebrate the occasion.
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When Bill added an extension to our kitchen area he had to limit the width of the addition so that the mortgage magnolia was not disturbed. Its strange list to starboard is because of the ice and snow sliding off our roof!
May is a great time to see magnolias in bloom in this part of Grey County. Inspired by Owen Sound's numerous lovely magnolias we have planted a number in our gardens. Bill planted the seed of this white magnoilia many years ago. The flowers are quite elegant and are perfumed!
Our abandoned pleached allee...
Early plans for Keppel Croft included the planting of these two rows of ironwood trees. We dug up saplings from our bush and planted the beginnings of what we hoped would become a pleached allee.
Eventually the time came when the trees were ready to have their lower and adjacent limbs overlapped and tied together securely. The long term plan was to also tie the tops of the trees together so they would arch over the pathway.
The trees took exception to our efforts and every limb that was overlapped, intertwined and secured died back! Two of the trees died. Our ironwoods were not having any part of that nonsense so we ended up having to trim off the dead limbs and just let the trees do what they wanted. Plans for the arched top were never even begun. The trees eventually created their own arch.
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We planted lots of different kinds of daffodils along the tree rows and on the outer edges planted autumn crocus. It is a bright display to lead visitors to the Nature Trail in the spring and it's is a cool and shady place to linger on hot summer days. Our great plan didn't eventuate but we really like the effect that the ironwood trees created!
If you are interested there's a collection of spectacular photographs of allees presented by Chris Denten . It is obvious none of those gardeners went to their bush lot to get their saplings!
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No Mow May is here!​
Last year we had a most successful No Mow May season. We were so surprised to discover how the volunteer English daisies, dandelions and forget-me-nots took over our lawns. We did not mow the grass until June! Scroll down to see more of our 2024 experience.
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This winter the voles attacked our lawns under the deep covering of snow. In places the lawn is gone. There's just bare earth. Voles enjoyed chewing up the spring volunteer plants as well as the grass. On Victoria Day weekend this little visitor picked bouquets to her heart's delight.
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It is now mid June. No Mow May is rapidly fading though still looking somewhat colourful.
We are planning to mow the lawns this week.
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!
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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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. Voles are also called meadow mice
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...
Our Winter Garden
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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