Location and Map

In this Section:

• Contact Information
• Business Hours (changes most years!)
• Sketch Map
• Driving Directions
• Wild Woods Wear

Contact Information

About the name of the nursery, for the curious: it's a pun upun my name and the location at the crest or summit of Black Brook Hill. Of course it's also about selling plants at the “peak” of perfection...

e-mail*: Some strange things have been going on in the world of e-mail the past year or so, including servers dumping during overloads, spam filters filtering out non-spam etc; in short, it has become less than 100% reliable. I will always reply to e-mail!, usually the next day and rarely outside of a few days, so if you e-mail to me and don't see a reply within a week you should assume that something has gone wrong in webspace and please phone or write me by letter mail.

Please feel free to contact me by e-mail regarding any comments you may have on website content (eg errors in plant descriptions) or website mechanics (eg links that fail).

Business Hours

Business hours are changing to reflect changing circumstances, personal and business-related, here. I don't mind staying open past 4 p.m. if customers are still in the yard or have made arrangements ahead of time for me to stay open! Please note that sunny Saturdays are now dedicated to bike touring with the Centennial Cycling Club in the Annapolis Valley. In exchange, the plan is to be open on Sundays through the whole of summer except if I take off for a few days bike holiday. The following table is the plan as of the end of January, please check back later in the season in case of a change of plan, or phone for a voice recording of business hours. There is a slight change in hours this year (2008) in that I will not be open on Sundays after Labour Day except by appointment to pick up bare root peonies.

Sketch Map

Driving Directions

First let me explain that house numbering starts over in each county that Highway 1 passes through. So there are potentially 3 number 1051's on Highway 1 between Sackville and Windsor, and this has created more than one lost gardening soul over the years. I'm in the middle section, East Hants. There's a big green sign when you enter East Hants from either end along Highway 1, advertising the World's Highest Tides. (Well of course at this end of the county we're 400 to 700 feet above sea level, so it'd be a high tide indeed that you would see there, not counting winter when the roads are so well-salted as to simulate seawater [except when they need to be]. But the other end of the county sits on the Minas Basin, so the claim has some distant merit.) House numbers are new-ish here so they were logically applied at 10 metres between numbers. So if you're lost in front of 801 Highway 1 and in East Hants, you are 2500 metres (that's 1051 minus 801, multiplied by 10) or 2.5 km from the nursery. Unfortunately this doesn't work in Halifax County (the Sackvilles at least), or of course between two numbers in different counties.

So to driving directions. First you must get yourself onto my sketch map. This involves getting onto Highway 101 by Sackville and heading towards Windsor, or vice versa. If you prefer the scenic route, get on Highway 1 in Sackville or between Windsor and Newport Corner instead. Third option is to get on the Rawdon Road in the Rawdon area. (Beaverbank Road to East Uniacke Road to Highway 1 is an option, but one your car won't thank you for, as 7 of the 14km of East Uniacke Road are a disaster.)

From the 101 take a Mount Uniacke exit — Exit 3 at the Sackville end, Exit 4 at the Windsor end.

• Exit 3 takes you directly onto Highway 1 at an Irving station; turn left at the T junction, following the arrow to Mt Uniacke. I am 10 km from the Irving, and that 10 km is now ALL newly paved as of about 2002 give or take a year (plus now all the way through to Windsor) (but already cracked and breaking in places!!!). The route takes you through Mt Uniacke proper and past Uniacke Estate Museum Park, at which point you have 2.5km to go. This last bit takes you through a few bends of woods and former woods, across Black Brook Creek (not always signed) (now 1 km to go) and up a hill which rises in 2 steps; somewhere on this hill is where the sign for Lakelands is usually planted by the highways people, although it tends to move around. Slow down approaching the rather abrupt crest (Sign: Hidden Driveway) because the nursery is the first driveway on the right as you come over the summit, and the driveway takes you in a fairly tight 180°turn into the gravel & weed parking area. If you missed slowing down enough, there is a nice large parking area suitable for turning around, about 1km away down the hill.
• Exit 4 takes you onto Highway 1 at one of the few exits that doesn't have an Irving station. Turn to the right where you enter the highway and you will have about 15km to go. After a few km you'll pass the Newport Station antenna farm on your left. The nursery is about 11km further along from there. Highway 1 meanders through varrying terrain and is now newly paved all the way from Windsor, eventually entering East Hants county (those tides again) near Lily Lake (on the right)/ the Rawdon Road/ Piggot Lake (on the left). This is Lakelands. At this point you are about 1 km from the nursery, which will be on your left just before you disappear over the gradual (on this side) crest of the slope. (Reading this over, I wonder how many out-of-province tourists stop at one of the lakes expecting a tidal event, since these bodies of water are so close after the tidal signboard. It would be an understandable error...)

From either end there is usually a sign "Perennials 200m" to let you know your destination is near, unless it has been tampered with or I have forgotten to put it up.

Make a Day of it? Coming a distance? Consider visiting the Uniacke Estate Museum Park, just a mile or two down the road from the nursery, for a stroll along the several miles of paths both tame and wild, before or after visiting the nursery. For the past few summers there has also been a Tea Room in operation in the basement of Uniacke House itself, operated by students.

Wild Woods Wear

There is a lot of boggy country nearby, and little in the way of civilization paving over the wilds here. So you might as well expect insects at certain times of the year or day, depending on the weather. Expect them and you won't be disappointed. :-) although the past several years have been relatively bugless due perhaps to drier and shorter springs compressing the period of appropriate hatch temperatures.

All this is not meant to frighten or discourage, but rather to remind you that even when it is high summer at Historic Properties in Halifax it is still a good idea to wear long pants, socks, shoes, long sleeves and hats when you visit the bush; bug jackets are of course ideal. Alternatively, insect repellant. I have a few inexpensive bug hats here to keep the worst of the beasties out of your face, but they do nothing for exposed arms and legs. It is usually late June before shorts become a reasonable option here on sunny days, and they almost never are when it's cool and cloudy.

The first scourge is blackflies; they're out for a few weeks in late May and into June until the weather warms and the ground dries. Thereafter there are ignorable numbers in the shady areas but occasional extra hatches when the weather suits them more than us. Some years are worse than others; since about 2000 this area has had rather short and mild blackfly seasons; they were finished with before they were really noticed.

Mosquitos are around in numbers on cool days and evenings throughout the summer, but in hot weather are mostly in hiding except in shady areas. Keep in mind some of the pot farms with some of the more interesting plants are in shade!

With the hot weather of mid-summer come deer flies, which are mostly a nuisance hanging around the head but occasionally getting in a meal. Deer flies can be dealt with using Deer Fly Strips (available at Lee Valley Tools) on the back of a hat. It's not pretty, but it works.