Ginny (Virginia) Burt loved her days at Port Perry High School. “They were magical times,” she says. Today Ginny is in demand all over North America for creating “magical” gardens.
As a student at Port Perry High School, Ginny was considering becoming either a marine biologist or a veterinarian, but that direction changed when her brother, Tye, brought home a friend from university who was studying landscape architecture at Guelph University.
In 1980, her final year at PPHS, Ginny applied to the Landscape Architecture program at Guelph. She was among the 2,000 applicants for the 30 positions in the five year course. Ginny persisted through the rigorous screening process and was finally accepted.
After graduating, she worked for two years at a company designing ski areas in Aspen, Colorado. Next she was hired by JSW Landscapes, a landscape architecture company in Toronto, where she was the project manager during the design of the Toronto Outer Harbour Marina.
In her spare time Ginny developed an interest in healing gardens. “These are gardens created to enable us to find peace and sanctuary on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level,” says Ginny.
Her interest in healing gardens grew into a passion. On June 13, 1996 she decided to venture out on her own by establishing her own company, Visionscapes.
Since then, Ginny and Visionscapes have worked on over 150 healing gardens across North America. Her work at Visionscape has earned national and international press coverage. She has been the subject of major feature articles in such newspapers as the Toronto Star and the National Post and numerous architectural and landscape magazines such as Gardening Life and Grounds.
One of the Visionscapes projects that she is most proud of and enjoys discussing is the John Gordon Home Healing Garden for the AIDS Hospice in London Ontario. The tranquil and meditative garden provides solace for patients, family and friends.
“One interesting aspect of this project is that the garden draws large crowds in the evening and at night. It has become an inspirational gathering place, where patients and their friends and family can find comfort and inspiration. That is the reason for these spaces,” adds Ginny .
She has won numerous awards for her gardens including the prestigious American Society of Landscape Architect’s award for the design of the Common Ground at the Cindy Nord Centre for Renewal at Oberlin, Ohio.
Although most of Visionscapes projects are for not-for-profit organizations, Ginny has ventured into larger landscape projects such as landscaping the 110 gardens at the Royal Military College in Kingston and a master plan for the gardens at Ridley College near St. Catherines, Ontario.
“There is a process as we design these spaces,” says Ginny, “A process of getting to know the individual and the property but more particularly getting to know the owners and those who will use the facility.”
“What I hope for in all my projects is that those who visit the garden will pause to take a breath and take time to reconnect with themselves and others, and with nature,” Ginny asserts.
Ginny has always had a love of the outdoors due to her parents Larry and Dianne Burt. Her father taught science and environmental studies at PPHS and her mother is a ski instructor who has worked at a number of ski resorts across Canada.
This interest in an active lifestyle continued at Port Perry High School where Ginny was on school teams in basketball, volleyball, field hockey, skiing and tennis.
“Port Perry High School was so full of activity,” Ginny reminisces. “The kids were involved, the teachers were involved and the parents were involved. There was such a rich depth of activities in sports and the arts. They were incredibly memorable years,” she notes. “I still keep in touch with many of my classmates from high school,” she adds.
“I am quite sure that being involved with so many kids in so many varied activities at Port Perry High School helped me in my adult years to understand the human nature of my clients today,” she says.
At Visionscapes, Ginny has a staff of three to aid in the design, plan and implementation of the assignments. “However,” she notes, “In many Visionscapes projects I hire contractors to carry out most of the work, so I have to be able to understand people in order to make sure that I can get the best out of them.”
One of the largest projects carried out by Visionscapes was a gathering place in Cleveland for those who had been touched by cancer. Although only one third of an acre, it involved extensive redesigning of the landscape and cost over one million dollars.
“One of the most inwardly rewarding spaces that I have created is my own garden here in Burlington, even though it is just under an acre. This is an ongoing project, an incremental space. Each year I try to add another layer,” Ginny says proudly.
Ginny is profoundly spiritual in her approach to her assignments. “I want to create gardens as spaces where we can find peace and inspiration. These spaces, when they are designed right, enable us to reduce stress and in this atmosphere drugs and other forms of treatment can be far more effective,” she claims. “I feel that this was notably accomplished at one of our recent projects, the healing garden at the Community Health Partners Health Centre at Elyria, Ohio.”
Closer to home, Visionscapes designed the natural play area and children’s maze at Unionville. Ginny and Visionscapes have also designed a number of private residential gardens in locations as far away as Victoria, Cleveland, Toronto, Guelph and Baltimore.
When Ginny was asked to give readers of Focus on Scugog some advice for their gardens and for daily living, without hesitation Ginny responded. “Our daily challenge is to find out how we can reconnect with ourselves, with nature itself and with a greater nature. There is something out there that is greater than ourselves that we all need to tap into. That’s what gives us a sense of humility.”
Ginny then added, “We all have the opportunity to make magic in our lives and we should make an effort to make magic every day.”
By Paul Arculus
Focus on Scugog
Personalities
