Heritage Houses Featured at Annual General Meeting
The timing of this inaugural post from Chester Garden Club, in Nova Scotia, Canada, serves as the club’s debut on a new platform. It also happens to appear in the same week as the club’s annual general meeting and, therefore, the change from one year’s activities to the next. Reports of the various committees endorsed the view that the club had completed a busy and successful year. The highlight was the annual convention of the Nova Scotia Association of Garden Clubs, co-hosted with our neighbouring garden club. Members are now looking ahead to next year with enthusiasm for new projects.
There will, no doubt, be some learning issues for the club as we become used to this new platform but we hope to post information and photos illustrating the club’s activities and the gardening scene in Nova Scotia in the months ahead. The archives from our former blog will be moved to this blog so that we won’t lose any posts. To learn about the aims and activities of this group of gardeners, click on About our club.
Chester’s Heritage Houses
Members who attended the AGM were entertained by an amusing and informative talk given by Syd Dumaresq, an architect who has a particular fondness for heritage buildings in the area. Some of these houses actually do have gardens but it was their architectural features that interested Syd.
Pointing out that the basic Cape house – a simple wood-framed structure that is compact and ecologically sound – dates back to the founding of the first settlements in Lunenburg county (1752), he stated that they are the oldest houses in English Canada .
Using photos to illustrate the many examples of the original style of a Cape house, he showed how they changed as succeeding generations prospered and began to add gables, turrets and the unique “Lunenburg bump” to the original design. Further embellishments such as transoms and fancier shapes of window were also incorporated. Syd also discussed the “kit houses” that were made up in the New England states and then shipped to Nova Scotia for assembly here.
To close this post, we offer two photos that illustrate the strange swings of weather we have experienced this year. The anemones shown below were picked in a member’s garden on November 20; the shot of a garden under the first snow of the season was taken on November 23.