This tangled garden is the painter's own garden, as it looked in late summer. MacDonald's home was in Thornhill, Ontario, which at the time was a small farming community north of Toronto. Light streams in across the middle ground, illuminating a brilliant clutter of red, mauve and yellow flowers in a sea of green. Rising gracefully out of the shadows in the foreground, the sunflower bows its heavy head, and leads our eyes towards the barn in the background.