Mike, Nick, Maddison, Julie, Sasha, Shelly, Emma, and Karen are all first year students at the Willowbank School of Restoration Arts on the Niagara Parkway in Queenston Ontario. They are very keen to learn everything they can about building and repairing dry stone walls, a part of the course that I am asked to come and teach each year. We have been given a small garden wall to rebuild at the Niagara Botanical Gardens today and tomorrow.
Here Sasha begins to lay another stone in the second row of coursing in our new wall. We are reusing the local mostly dish-shaped limestone material which was part of the original wall and was probably sourced from the bedrock when the foundations of the School of Horticultural were excavated.
The wall looked like this before we started.
