During the 2010 Brampton garden tour, a Japanese visiting student told Karen and Horst that their garden looked just like the suburban gardens in Japan. Karen was thrilled.

I asked Karen if she visited Japan, or researched Japanese gardens. Karen said she hadn’t. The design direction had come entirely from their first purchase: the fountain.

With the fountain as the driving force, the garden evolved from a typical grassed suburban lot to a (mostly) xeriscapic low-maintenance garden paradise.

It’s always amazing to me what inspires a garden. For Karen and Horst, their garden began with a fountain. They both fell in love with it, and from the fountain the rest of their garden grew.