Will Conlon sat in full sun beside a koi pond at the Royal Manor Inn on Ricardo Street, racing the clock to capture one view of a private Niagara-on-the-Lake garden onto his canvas before the gates closed.
“No one put me here. Nobody made me do this,” he said. “I just do whatever I have to do to get the shot, like a journalist doing what they have to do to get the story.”
The Shaw Guild opened eight private gardens across Old Town and Queenston on June 13, marking 20 years of its longest-running fundraiser for the Shaw Festival.
The guild is a volunteer group that raises money for the theatre company. Ticket sales from the tour help pay for Shaw productions, including “A Christmas Carol,” and for children’s programs.
Visitors toured the gardens on their own from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. A homeowner and a master gardener were present at each property to walk guests through the plantings and the history of the trees.
The biggest draw this year, and a new feature of the tour, was the McArthur Estate, a 10-acre property on John Street built in 1823. The guild sold separate timed-entry tickets for the estate and treated it as the centrepiece of the anniversary tour.
The McFarland House on the Niagara Parkway, one of the seven main tour homes and a military hospital during the War of 1812, offered guests a pre-ordered lunch or cream tea overlooking the Niagara Parks.
Valerie Hancock, who chaired this year’s tour, said it gives visitors a rare look past the garden gates.
“You get to go to the backside of the homes and to see what’s actually happening in the spaces that we don’t often see from the roadway,” she said.
The band By Design played the patio at the McArthur Estate, one of several gardens with live music performances throughout the day.
The guild also assigned a painter to each garden, giving each one until June 22 to hand back a finished canvas. Conlon drew the Royal Manor Inn, where he built his picture around the koi pond and set an empty bench at the edge of the frame.
“I like having an empty bench in a photo like this because it’s almost like an invitation to come and enjoy this,” he said.
With half an hour left, Conlon stopped painting and shot reference photos to finish the canvas at home.
