About
About North Country Reflections
North Country Reflections is a journal of my gardening life in the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont.
My gardening interests embrace what to grow in a cold climate, how to grow it and, in some cases, how to cook it; how to design a garden in harmony with our natural landscape; and ways to make our gardens more sustainable. I love to visit and learn from other gardens, both contemporary and historic.
About Judith Irven
I am a passionate gardener and landscape designer, and I delight in sharing ideas and knowledge with like-minded people.
My love affair with gardens was kindled at an early age, growing up in England. My own ‘first garden’, when I was a frenetic graduate student and new mother, was a simple row of vegetables alongside the wash-line below our London ‘flat’.
For many years after that I juggled the demands of mothering, homemaking and a high-tech job in suburban New Jersey. And at each place I lived I made a small garden!!
In 1994 Dick and I gratefully exchanged the hubbub of suburbia for the peaceful mountains of Vermont. We now live in an old farmhouse on the western slopes of the Green Mountains, where we have gradually created an expansive garden, both for food and for pleasure.
Living in Vermont has also allowed me to change my life’s trajectory. I went ‘back to school’ to study landscape design at Vermont Technical College, and I now offer comprehensive landscape design services, as well as garden design workshops and classes, through Outdoor Spaces Landscape Designs.
Over time my love of sharing ‘all things gardens‘ has also led me to the world of garden writing, both in this blog and in my companion website: North Country Gardener.
About Dick Conrad
And last but by no means least, I want to acknowledge my husband Dick. He is a skilled landscape and garden photographer and the genesis of many photographs you will see in North Country Reflections. Dick’s photographs add immeasurably to any writing I do. Pay a visit to North Country Impressions where you can see many more of his pictures.
I also want to thank him from the bottom of my heart for his support and encouragement as I embarked on my new career. Without Dick at my side I would never have achieved anything like this in the second half of my life. Thank you Dick!!