Toronto’s ‘Through the Garden Gate’ Celebrates 30 Years!

Posted on May 27, 2017 by Janet

There will be some beautiful gardens for Torontonians to visit when the Toronto Botanical Garden rolls out the welcome mat for its 30^th annual Through the Garden Gate garden tour. It’s being held on the weekend of Saturday June 10 and Sunday June 11^th in the neighbourhoods of North Rosedale and Moore Park. In celebration of the 30 years, organizers have selected 30 diverse gardens. Some are lovely formal jewels like this Moore Park garden.

Some back onto wooded ravines.

There’s one of the prettiest green roofs I’ve seen – and on a nice angle to allow visitors a good view.

And beautiful ideas for furnishing a leafy city sanctuary, like this….

…. and this.

And wonderful plant design, of course, like this exquisite pairing of sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) and Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum)….

…and this. Don’t you love Japanese forest grass? This is Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ and ‘All Gold’.

If the weather stays cool, there will still be lush June irises and peonies.

There will be water features, of course, including handsome formal pools….

…tiered fountains…

….and tiny, secret oases under lush textural foliage.

You’ll be able to get some creative ideas for accessories….

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…. and art…

….and arbours and obelisks.

….and gates and path materials.

And there will be loads of pots and planters, including some with herbs….

…. and others with tropical climbing vines like mandevilla.

You’ll see what clever gardeners have done to turn little sheds into outdoor cocktail bars…

…. and see how easy it is to bring home-cooked pizza to your own back garden!

This year, the TBG has arranged for Toronto’s Augie’s Ice Pops to have two stands on the route so you can buy their frosty organic treats, in flavours like strawberry-basil, grapefruit-ginger – or whatever is farm-fresh and seasonal on the second weekend in June!

Through the Garden Gate is your opportunity to support the Toronto Botanical Garden and its work, while enjoying a rare opportunity to explore some of the city’s finest private gardens.

Tickets may be purchased through the TBG’s website here. Prices are as follows, and note that it will be difficult to see all 30 gardens in one day, so a two-day pass is your best bet – and allows flexibility for weather (since single-day wristbands are expressly for Saturday or Sunday and cannot be interchanged).

One-Day Pass: Public $45 / TBG Members $40
Two-Day Pass: Public $65 / TBG Members $60
Students $25 (With ID, One-Day Pass Only)
Tax included. Tickets are limited, advance purchase recommended.

And if you’re not a member of the TBG already, what are you waiting for? Become a member and get that discount on your ticket price, plus all kinds of lovely extras: a magazine, lots of courses, lectures, a wonderful library – and inclusion in a jewel of a garden that’s about to expand and become one of the most exciting greenspaces in Toronto. If you haven’t been, be sure to have a look at my own seasonal photo galleries on the TBG’s website.

Celebrating Canada’s 150th at Ottawa’s Tulip Festival

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Janet

On July 1, 2017, Canada celebrates a big birthday – we turn 150! The Dominion of Canada was signed into being in 1867; we were only four provinces then: Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. A century-and-a-half later, we are 10 provinces and 3 territories. Our nationhood is acknowledged on the Centennial Flame that has burned in front of the parliament buildings in Ottawa since our centennial in 1967.

I was in Ottawa last week to visit friends and catch a little of the Canadian Tulip Festival. Though there weren’t many tulips at the Parliament Buildings, I did the requisite “lie flat on the grass and attempt to get both tulips & Peace Tower in the shot”.

And since a lovely flame-like tulip called ‘Canada 150’ was introduced this year to commemorate our birthday, I decided to put all the flames together and try to ignite a bonfire!

The weather was perfect and cool when we were there, though the normally dry trail below the Parliament Buildings flanking the Ottawa River was still under water from this spring’s historic flooding of the area.

We began our tulip quest at lovely Commissioners Park adjacent to Dow’s Lake, where the tulips were splendidly arrayed between the lake….

…. and a residential neighbourhood.

Everyone was trying their hand at photography…..

….including the serious shutterbugs….

….and those who still seem to have good knees!

Some were mastering the tulip selfie. Smile!

Double-flowered ‘Miranda’ was a big hit (if you like red tulips on steroids….)

‘Pretty Princess’ is a sport of old ‘Princes Irene’.

I liked this citrus-flavoured tulip mix.

‘Ottawa’ is just one of a number of tulips named for Canadian cities.

‘Calgary’ is a pure white Triumph tulip.

And I’m sure there’s a joke somewhere in ‘Double Toronto’, especially if you come from elsewhere in Canada. As in: “Q. Why are Toronto tulips double? A. Because they think they’re twice as good as the other cities.”

Truth be told, I’m not a big fan of massive blocks of tulips in one colour, whether it’s at the Keukenhof in the Netherlands or Ottawa. I do understand they attract crowds to public places, especially in a city that features winter for half the year. And as a stock photographer, I do love finding well-grown, labelled plants to shoot. However, as a tulip-lover, I’m partial to naturalistic designs incorporating them with perennials, as I illustrate in this video of my own front garden yesterday. But if I had to name a favourite planting at Commissioner’s, this would be the one – a big, happy circus of tulips.

There were more than just tulips in the park, like these lovely late daffodils….

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There is also a row of interpretive signs at Commissioners Park describing the origins of the Tulip Festival, the first 100,000 bulbs a gift from Princess Juliana and the Netherlands in dual gratitude to Canada for providing a safe haven for her during the 2^nd World War and also for liberating the country in spring 1945. The Netherlands royal family and Dutch bulb growers continue to send 10,000 bulbs to Canada each year.

On our second full day of three in Ottawa, we visited Major’s Hill Park, across from the beautiful, Moshe Safdie-designed National Gallery.

I loved this view of the Gallery’s atrium through elderberry flowers (Sambucus pubens).

This is the National Gallery entrance, from a previous visit.

And since we’re here, this is ‘Maman’ by the late French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), in tribute to her mother. At the time, in 2005, its $3.2 million price tag made it the most expensive artwork acquired by the gallery.

Behind ‘Maman’ is the Notre Dame Cathedral, with its twin spires that peek out over this cloud of serviceberry flowers (Amelanchier) from the park.

There were lots of tulip-lovers at this centrally-located site, which has a spectacular view of the Parliament Buildings and the Ottawa River….

…. and the Douglas Cardinal-designed Canadian Museum of History across the river in Gatineau, Quebec. Both the National Gallery landscape and the landscape of the Museum were designed by Vancouver’s renowned Cornelia Hahn Oberlander.

Little children ran around the brilliant tulips.

I have a special place in my heart for tulips that perform this brave task on behalf of misfits everywhere.

It was in Major’s Hill Park that I photographed the ‘Canada 150’ tulip…..

….with its white-edged leaves.

At the top of a rise, there’s a pretty tulip bed leading to the monument honouring Lieutenant-Colonel John By.

His statue looks out over the Ottawa River, which leads to the downtown locks and the Rideau Canal, his great engineering achievement on behalf of the British in the 1830s (and a fabulous winter skating rink for the people of Ottawa). His name is also memorialized in the nearby and fashionable Byward Market.

As the engineer in charge of this grand engineering project, By lived in a home on this site with a wonderful view of the river, Chaudières Falls and the Gatineau Hills. “Colonel By lived with his wife and two daughters in an ornate, cottage-style home. Visitors were charmed by the residence with its English gardens and surrounding pastures.” In 1848, long after he’d returned to England and the house was occupied by other officers, it was destroyed by fire, leaving the foundation cornerstones as part of a living museum here.

As my patriotic effort for this, our Sesquicentennial year I made a video of our Tulip Festival sojourn, complete with stirring national anthem soundtrack, followed by a lovely bit of music by an English composer named T.R.G. Banks, who generously makes his music available as public domain. Happy birthday, Canada. And many happy returns!

A Tour of My Spring Garden

Posted on May 18, 2017 by Janet

Come along with me on a little tour of my garden in mid-May! I’ve meant to do this for several years, and this is the perfect week, since the cool weather up til today has kept everything looking good. Not just that, but I splurged last autumn and bought quite a few spring bulbs from my pal Caroline de Vries, who owns FlowerBulbsRUs in Mississauga, Ontario. And my pal Sara Katz planted most of them. But for some reason, loads of my old tulips seem to have multiplied this spring, adding to the party. Let’s start in my front garden. Isn’t this fun? Though I’ve picked a lot of pinks and oranges, that luscious, black ‘Queen of Night’ is absolutely essential to make this garden ‘zing’.

Here’s a closer look, with the creamy fothergilla shrub and dainty ‘Thalia’ daffodils.

Study the first two photos and you’ll see that my spring bulbs emerge in a sea of green foliage. While a front garden full of invasive, agressive lily-of-the-valley might provide a beautiful, fragrant background for all these bright hues, it’s definitely not recommended as a design tool. Nevertheless, if you happened to read last spring’s blog about how to make a fresh-picked lily-of-the-valley hat, you’ll know that I’ve done my best to come to terms with these perfumed thugs.

I love finding pretty groupings to photograph, like the one below. And that dusty-rose tulip is a bit of a mystery. It might have been mislabelled – I didn’t order it – but it looks like ‘Champagne Diamond’.

It’s pretty gorgeous, whatever it is…..

I have nine Fothergilla gardenii plants in amongst the spring bulbs. Their foliage turns spectacular colours in autumn.

Here are some of my favourite tulips. Let’s start with an oldie, ‘Perestroika’. This tall, late-flowered cottage tulip has multiplied over the years.

And ‘Carnaval de Nice’ has stuck around pretty well, too.

This is ‘Crispion Sweet’ – isn’t it lovely?

‘Rococo’ is a luscious parrot tulip – and parrots are usually divas when it comes to longevity. But I planted these several years ago.

Here’s the lovely, late tulip ‘Dordogne’, below right, with ‘Queen of Night’.

There are loads of daffodils in the front garden as well. I decided to stick with white to cool down this hot-coloured scheme, so there’s a combination of ‘Thalia’ with (below) pure white ‘Stainless’ and orange-centred, spicily-perfumed ‘Geranium’.

The Back Yard

I have more spring happening in the back garden, so let’s head there. It might be fun for you to see it from my bedroom window. That big cloud of white in the centre is Malus ‘Red Jade’, my lovely weeping crabapple planted over the little pond.

If we head down to the deck, you get the view below. That’s fragrant snowball viburnum (V. x carlcephalum) right in front of the deck, just about to open its incredibly-perfumed flower clusters. The garden was designed to flow from the deck to the dining patio, which makes summer entertaining fun.

This is a closer view of ‘Red Jade’. It’s an alternate-bearer, meaning every other year it puts on a great show like this, followed by masses of tiny red fruit. It flowers very sparsely in the ‘off’ years.

Here’s a view of the back of the house, from under the crabapple.

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I’ve had the pagoda lantern for a long time. Though this little garden isn’t classically Japanese, it had a bit of that feel, so I though the lantern worked with the pond.

I love this fresh combination in the lily pond garden, underplanted with self-seeded forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica). Later, there is magenta phlox here.

The back garden is on the north side of the house, so it’s shadier. The tulips in my west border here tend to be surrounded by ostrich ferns, which would fill the entire garden if I let them.

This is ‘Mona Lisa’ – isn’t she lovely?

‘Ballade’ is one of my favourite tulips – a very good perennializer.

‘Texas Flame’ is no shrinking violet (!) and though I started with eight or so, I still have one or two that return each spring.

If I ever knew the name of the orange beauty below, I’ve forgotten it.

Same with this lovely, lily-flowered tulip…. maybe ‘Jacqueline’?

Native Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) bloom in the ferns with the late tulips.

Where it’s sunnier, in the front as well as the back, there is elegant camassia (C. leichtlinii).

In my west side garden, Burkwood’s viburnum (V. x burkwoodii) is filled with fragrant blooms this year.

To access my east side garden, there’s a gate from the driveway fitted with a rusty, old heating grate. Have a peek down the path…..

Let’s go in and walk down it If you look back, you can see the gate. See the arched stems of Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum)? They’re one of my favourite natives and so easy to grow. That’s European ginger (Asarum europeaeum) at the base of the black walnut tree.

There are bleeding hearts in this pathway, too.

So that’s my garden in mid-May! I’ll leave you with this little video of my 2-year-old grandson Oliver, who enjoyed “tiptoeing through the tulips” in a thunderstorm a few days ago. Toddlers and tulips….. time is fleeting, and I’ve learned to enjoy them both for the short time they’re around!

May in the David C. Lam Asian Garden at UBC

Posted on May 9, 2017 by Janet

On my frequent visits ‘home’ to Vancouver, I always make a point of visiting the UBC Botanical Garden. I spent time on the campus about a million years ago, but my sensibilities were not garden-related at the time, given I was in my late teens. But 50 years later, it’s become for me a vital part of the leafy paradise that sits at the edge of the Salish Sea, those bay-and-cove inland waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Though I’ve blogged about their beautiful, May-flowering Garry Oak Meadow before, today I want to explore The David C. Lam Asian Garden, below.

The garden was named for British Columbia’s 25^th Lieutenant-Governor, David C. Lam (1923-2010). A successful real estate developer and philanthropist, Mr. Lam also helped to fund Vancouver’s Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden.

As you enter in spring, you’ll be tempted by the lovely little gift shop, but leave that until you depart. But do note the educational displays featuring plants from the garden, like redvein enkianthus (Enkianthus campanulatus), below.

Move into the garden proper, and you’ll soon see a lovely pond surrounded by Persicaria bistorta and various rodgersias.

There are Himalayan blue poppies (Meconopsis baileyi), of course…

…and they love growing near primroses (P. veris).

This is gorgeous ‘Hensol Violet’ blue poppy with its purplish cast.

I adore being under the towering hemlocks and red cedars. It takes me back to my British Columbia childhood.

In this forest, native sword ferns are plentiful, and amidst the fallen logs, you can see the small rhododendron specimens newly planted.

If you’re feeling brave, you can pay extra to walk the educational Greenheart Tree Walk, alone or with a guide for the scheduled, daily tours.

There’s nothing like being up in the canopy with the birds. I heard a great horned owl when I was there last week.

The spectacular forest here is second growth, with considerable cutting done in the 1930s. Nevertheless, there are 500-600 year old Douglas firs, like the famous eagle-perching tree, below, with its bald eagle aboard.

May is when the Asian Garden shines, with its vast collection of camellias……

….and magnolias, including common star magnolia (M. stellata), below, but many rare and endangered species, such as early-blooming and critically-endangered Magnolia zenii, as well.

There are myriad rhododendrons, such as R. rigidum arched over the path, below…..

…and the tiny R. senghkuense, lovingly planted in the bark of a fallen red cedar, which approximates its preferred substrate….

….and numerous other rhodos, including those in my montage, below.

The David C. Lam Asian Garden is renowned internationally for its collection of 130 maples, the second most significant collection in the world. Among them are the rugged, hardy Manchurian maple, Acer mandschuricum…..

….Acer pauciflorum, below….

…Acer japonicum ‘O-isami’, below…..

…the lovely fullmoon maple Acer shirasawanum ‘Palmatifolium’, below….

…Acer elegantulum, below….

…and Siebold’s maple, Acer sieboldianum, below, among many, many others.

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There are hundreds of other flowering shrubs and trees, like Asian spicebush (Lindera erythrocarpa)….

…the enchanting Chinese styrax-parasol tree (Melliodendron xylocarpum)…..

….with its delightful umbella-shaped blooms. It’s one of my favourite small trees.

There are Asian lindens like Tilia intonsa from Taiwan…..

…and rare hornbeams, like the monkey-tail hornbeam Carpinus fangiana, below….

…and mountain ashes such as Sorbus meliosmifolia….

…the Chinese yellowhorn (Xanthoceras sorbifolium)….

…. and the wondrous Rehderodendron macrocarpum, now threatened because of logging in southwest China.

I love the way this Chinese horse chestnut, Aesculus assamica growing beneath a massive native B.C. hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), symobolizes the successful marriage of the second-growth forest here with the Asian flora within it.

Though you’re in a mature forest full of towering British Columbia conifers, you’ll also find some Asian species, like the Chinese plum yew, Cephalotaxus sinensis, below.

There are fairly common viburnums, like Viburnum davidii, V. henryi, and the cinnamon-leaved viburnum, V. cinnamomifolium, below…..

…and rarer ones, like Viburnum chingii.

And this pale-yellow weigela (W. middendorffiana) is a rare beauty from Japan and northern China.

…and I think this pink deutzia (Deutzia calycosa) that grows at elevation in Sichuan – where it’s called 大萼溲疏 or “da e sou shu” – is delightful.

Look at beautiful Ludlow’s peony (Paeonia ludlowii), below. In Tibet, they call it lumaidao meaning “God’s flower”.

I spend my time turning labels around so I can record the names to match my photos later….

….like this evergreen vine from Japan and Korea, Stauntonia hexaphylla.

Here is the pink form of Clematis montana scrambling up an evergreen in the forest.

Paths through the garden commemorate the work of many storied plant explorers who collected throughout Asia.

Here is a collection of some of the historic names – all leading somewhere in the garden and helping to map the species. The signpost “Straley” honours the late Gerald Straley, who was Curator of Collections at UBC until his untimely death in 1998.

The sign below honours the late David C. Lam garden curator and plant explorer Peter Wharton, who sadly passed away in 2008. These days, when he’s not in the garden, curator Andy Hill can be found on the slopes of Chinese or Vietnamese mountains plant-hunting with the likes of Dan Hinkley of Washington, or with Douglas Justice, Associate Director of Horticulture & Collections at UBC Botanical.

If you still have the energy after traversing all the bark mulch paths in the David Lam garden, do take the tunnel under Marine Drive and head over to the sunny side of the street where you’ll find the Garry Oak garden, the alpine garden, and the beautiful British Columbia Native Plant Garden. And if you see my pal, curator Ben Stormes, there – be sure to say hello!

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Monthly Archives: May 2017

Toronto’s ‘Through the Garden Gate’ Celebrates 30 Years!

Celebrating Canada’s 150th at Ottawa’s Tulip Festival

A Tour of My Spring Garden

May in the David C. Lam Asian Garden at UBC

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