Monthly Archives: August 2019

Bella and Bianca – Our Monarch Chrysalis Summer

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It was a bittersweet summer in the milkweed patch in my cottage meadow on Lake Muskoka.   There were monarch butterflies and hungry caterpillars. There were two chrysalis vigils. There was joy and sadness, and I learned a lot about this extraordinary and complex biological process called metamorphosis. This is my summer journal.

July 19 – I notice my first tiny monarch caterpillar on butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) leaves in my dusty rock garden behind the cottage. I recalled a monarch flitting about purposefully about three weeks before, on Canada Day weekend.

Another is munching on the flower buds of a different plant of the same species.

The buds of this type of milkweed do seem to be a popular place for monarchs to “oviposit”, or lay eggs (with their ovipositor).  The photo below is from 2012.  A typical monarch will lay 200- 400 eggs in her laying period, which lasts between three to five weeks. And it’s estimated that 99% of those will not survive to maturity.

The upper leaves are also used, which makes sense since they’re tender and likely not as concentrated in latex, the plant’s defence mechanism, which can be toxic to caterpillars in strong enough concentrations (and also toxic to birds that try to eat the caterpillars or the butterflies).  But just as milkweed plants have evolved to resist predation, monarch caterpillars have evolved to outwit the plants, by chewing carefully on parts of the leaf’s vascular system to keep the latex from flowing.  Some milkweeds, like butterfly milkweed here, are also hairy and young caterpillars often “shave” the leaves for a long time before eating them.  Check out this interesting video by a Cornell ecologist who has specialized in milkweed-monarch co-evolution.

JULY 21 – Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) showed up by itself in my meadows a few years ago. I love the fragrance and it’s a good nectar plant for many bees and butterflies, as well as food for monarchs. But I only have two plants and one is filled with caterpillars, while the other is empty.

JULY 22 – Monarch caterpillars are eating and excreting machines.  After the egg develops into the first tiny larva, i.e. caterpillar – called the first instar – approximately 3-5 days later, there are four subsequent developments that span roughly 9-14 days, depending on climate. Each time, the caterpillar molts or sheds its skin. In the photo below, you can see the top caterpillar in the act of excreting its waste, called frass. Its head faces the stem, and the antennae-like organs are called the front filaments or tentacles. There are 3 pairs of jointed true legs near the front; the knobby things behind are prolegs and there are 5 pairs of them fitted with hooks to hang onto leaves.  Behind its head, the caterpillar has segments divided into thoracic and abdominal segments. The 8 abdominal segments feature tiny breathing holes called spiracles.

A milkweed plant is a messy place with this many caterpillars feeding.

Because my other common milkweed has no larvae, after checking online I decide to very gently relocate some of them from the rapidly diminishing plant nearby. At first they curl up in a defensive position.

But gradually they uncurl….

…. and soon they are climbing up the stem past the perfumed blossoms towards the tender leaves at the top.

JULY 23 – It is astonishing to see the efficiency of this munching army…..

…… as they strip the foliage and flowers from the new plant, too.

I make a little video of the caterpillars eating from the two species of milkweed.

I spot a tiny caterpillar and decide to try it on a plant of butterfly milkweed. It’s only later, after I watch it reject the other species, that I learn that while it’s fine to move caterpillars from one plant to another, they should be the same Asclepias species. It inspires me to create a whimsical little video for my Facebook page about this time in July to illustrate the quandary of “too many caterpillars, not enough milkweed”.

JULY 25 – On the dusty hillside behind my cottage, monarchs are on almost every butterfly milkweed plant.  July has been so dry, I feel compelled to water these forgotten plants so they provide nourishment for the caterpillars. It’s only now as I’m writing this blog that I note the bent stem and realize that this caterpillar may well have chewed it carefully until it almost breaks, thus preventing the toxic latex from reaching the top leaves.

In the monarda meadow near the cottage where the common milkweed grows, the caterpillars are now on the move, looking for a place to make their chrysalis. I spot one climbing along a blade of grass..

JULY 26 – I spy another on a fleabane stem, below. Note the chunky “prolegs” gripping the stem.  Like all insects, monarchs (caterpillars and butterflies) have six legs – but those are the “true legs”, and they’re found just behind the caterpillar’s head on its thorax.  They are used for locomotion. The cylinder-shaped prolegs, on the other hand, are used to grip stems tightly as the caterpillar moves its body around.  They are loosened one at a time as the caterpillar moves forward, beginning with the anal prolegs at the top in this photo . Prolegs also have a pad at the end called a crochet with tiny barbs that allow them to hook onto leaves, stems and other surfaces.

JULY 28 – Today brings a thrilling development: I spot one of the caterpillars on a wild beebalm leaf (Monarda fistulosa) conveniently adjacent to the path and it’s making the distinctive “J-shape”…..

….. that signals a chrysalis is about to emerge from that old skin, soon to be shed.

As happens with life processes (and life), it’s best to stay focused. I go inside for a few hours, thinking this will develop slowly.  Not at all. When I return later, there is a beautiful green chrysalis already formed and suspended by its black “cremaster” from the monarda leaf.

This process is utterfly fascinating and fortunately someone has captured most of it with his camera. If you have a spare 10 minutes, this is a pretty cool realtime video by Jude Adamson.

JULY 29 – So now the waiting game begins. The chrysalis is so well camouflaged I eventually need a stick on the path to mark it in my monarda meadow (so called because that’s the main plant of summer, for my bumble bees.)  Can you see where that yellow arrow is pointing?

AUGUST 2 – My three young grandchildren (6, 4 and 2) arrive for a holiday.  I’m so excited because they’re here for 10 days and that means they should see the butterfly emerge. The 4-year old finds the chrysalis immediately.

Five days old now, it is a beautiful work of nature. Cousins, aunts, uncles and great aunts walk down my path to look at it.

AUGUST 4 – Just by chance, the 6-year old and her daddy have brought up coffee filters and instructions for making beautiful butterflies. They catch the light in the cottage window.

And then, wouldn’t you know it, we climb up the hill and at the very top in the septic bed, we find my original butterfly milkweed (the one where I photographed the monarch egg 7 years ago) with more caterpillars feeding. The leaves are already wilting from drought in our hot July, so I connect two hoses and run them up the hill to its base.

Must revive those wilting leaves for these caterpillars!

AUGUST 6 – Meanwhile, a big male monarch butterfly is seen nectaring on swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) down by the lake shore.

AUGUST 7 – The next day, he’s gracing the flowers of butterfly milkweed too. How do I know it’s a male? Because of the two paired black scent glands near the bottom of his hind wings; these are used to attract females. I’m assuming this is one of my caterpillars, since my meadows and milkweed are fairly isolated on this lake surrounded mostly by white pines, red oaks and hemlocks.  There are perennial borders for nectar at a few of the neighbouring cottages, but most of the milkweed is found on the highway edges (where it hasn’t been mown down) and in old fields.

Here’s a little video I make of him the next day foraging for nectar on this milkweed, which has been growing in this spot for more than 12 years now.


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Will my male still be around when his ‘siblings’ emerge?  Given our latitude 45oN – the same latitude as Minneapolis – he and the pupa still in the chrysalis are part of the long-lived “migration generation” of 2019’s eastern monarch population (the western population is west of the Rockies).  Unlike the other generations they exhibit delayed sexuality, so do not mate now. Provided they survive, they will leave Muskoka and fly south on an arduous, unique migration journey that I wrote about in a blog in 2014 in conjunction with the screening of a 3D film called Flight of the Butterflies. Here’s the trailer for the film, showing the oyamel firs in Mexico where this generation will roost for the winter, until they finally begin their remarkable migration north next spring and breed in Texas or near the Gulf of Mexico, before dying.

AUGUST 8 – It is raining today, but I’m keeping a close watch on “Bella”, as my 6-year old granddaughter has decided to name her. We know it’s a girl because when I lift up the monarda leaf to look at the back of the chrysalis, we see the little vertical seam near the top, as shown by the yellow arrow below.  And look at the embossed butterfly shape within.

AUGUST 9 – It pours again today, making up in August for all the dry, hot days of July and making the meadow flowers very happy. The chrysalis also needs moisture, but the developing butterfly inside – called a “pupa” – is well protected from the weather. I make a video showing my meadow and its special guest in the rain.

I spend a lot of time watching the chrysalis, since the transformation to a butterfly – the “eclosure” – can happen quickly.  I can just see the wings forming on the pupa inside.

AUGUST 10 – It’s my birthday! And I can’t imagine a finer gift than to watch a butterfly emerge while my grandkids watch. The cool overnight rain has caused some of the hundreds of bumble bees in my meadows to sleep in the shelter of the wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa) flowers until temperatures warm up. I’m watching them stir to life…..

…. when suddenly I glimpse something extraordinary. All this time I’ve been watching Bella’s chrysalis, just down the path another monarch pupa has been developing in a clump of aphid-infested false oxeye daisies (Heliopsis helianthoides). It’s only because it is black in colour and transparent, meaning it’s about to eclose, that I notice it now. How exciting is this?!  Can you see it?

Now I have two sites to watch. Fortunately, I have no meals to prepare on my birthday and can spend as much time as I like outdoors!

I think about the ecology of this planted meadow, where the chrysalis of a native butterfly is sharing space on a native plant with that plant’s associated native red aphids (Uroleucon obscuricaudatus). Fortunately neither insect seems bothered by the other.  The photo below is at 10:50 am.

Even though I’m determined to photograph the new chrysalis as the pupa ecloses, I’ve been watching for almost 3 hours now and have a few chores to do indoors.  But not having researched enough, I fail to recognize an important sign that things are starting to happen.  See that little gap in the horizontal pleat, below? It means that the butterfly inside is starting to expand and push out on the chrysalis and eclosure will likely happen within the hour. This is 2:30 pm.

So I’m disappointed, but also happy when I come out at 3:38 pm to see family members on the path admiring our brand new female butterfly…..

……….hanging from her chrysalis, which has now turned white. My granddaughter names her Bianca – which seems like a lovely name for a butterfly that may well be living in Mexico in a few short months.

I settle back into my chair and, as my grandchildren come down the path to point her out to relatives and watch her find her wings, we all rejoice in this timeless last chapter of monarch metamorphosis.  Watch with me for a moment.

Though I conscientiously videotape almost all of her movements as she climbs the heliopsis plant over the next two-and-a-half hours, I gaze away for a moment while deep in conversation and Bianca shivers her beautiful wings…….

….. and takes flight, landing way up in the boughs of a white pine tree as if she’s practising for the oyamel firs of Mexico.

I check quickly on Bella, but her chrysalis is still green. And then it’s time for my birthday dinner.  It’s been a perfect day with the best gift I’ve ever had – witnessing one of nature’s miracles, followed by chocolate cupcakes presented to me by my famlly!

AUGUST 11 – It’s time for the grandchildren to return home and they’ve finished packing all their important possessions.  After lunch, they drive off with mommy and daddy.

Meanwhile, out in the breezy meadow, I sit and watch. A clearwing hummingbird moth (Hemaris thysbe) darts from beebalm to beebalm.

An uncommon bumble bee (Bombus perplexus) nectars in the blossoms.

Bella’s chrysalis is turning darker. That means she should eclose within 48 hours. Will today be the day?  I set up my camera on the tripod and make this video at 6:26 pm.

AUGUST 12 – By the time I go out to the path the next morning at 7:40 am, the distinctive expansion of the horizontal pleat on Bella’s chrysalis has begun. It is her 13th day in the pupal stage. I set my camera to video mode and wait. An hour later, it begins. The video below compresses an 8-minute period into less than a minute. I am fascinated by her strenuous efforts to use her forelegs as anchors to push out of the chrysalis. In a strange way, it reminds me of all the physical effort of the labour that precedes childbirth.  Alas, since I’m new at this eclosure watch, I only realize near the end that my lens is too closely focused on the chrysalis; when Bella emerges, she falls out of my frame. Fortunately, she hangs onto the very tip of the beebalm leaf and I quickly adjust my lens.

Having missed Bianca’s eclosure, I’m thrilled to have witnessed Bella emerging. I keep my camera focused on her and note the drop of meconium suspended through her anal opening. This is the waste product from her weeks in the chrysalis.

She hangs her wings to dry them, with lots of room in the meadow to manoeuvre.  Some newly-eclosed butterflies are said to injure themselves when they cannot fully stretch their wings. The next step is to pump her wings full of liquid to expand them prior to flying.

Then I wait and watch. I sit in the path reading my book, checking my emails from time to time, but mostly staring at this tiny little creature, willing it to fly.

For more than eight hours I wait and watch, keeping her in my viewfinder.  I check the internet to see how long it might be before a young monarch finds her wings. Two hours is the average, maybe a little more. I give her all the benefit of doubt; we have waited so long to see her.  Blue jays and song sparrows call from the pines, cicadas drone noisily and train whistles echo beyond the forest. I watch Bella try repeatedly to pump her little wings open, but she fails. The video below captures almost nine hours in less than 2 minutes.

Bella is shrivelling up now. She’s just a little insect, a tiny speck in the universe, but I am devastated.

Some of my friends have raised monarchs in captivity, carefully monitoring the various stages and releasing them safely after they eclose. My friend Kylee Baumle wrote a popular book called The Monarch: Saving Our Most-Loved Butterfly.

Carol Pasternak, the “Monarch Crusader”, wrote a book called How to Raise Monarchs: A Step by Step Guide for Kids.

Bella was to have been an experience in the wild, in our very own meadow, but unlike Bianca she paid the heavy cost levied by mother nature. It’s estimated that more than 90 percent of monarch butterflies fail to survive in the wild. I search online for the most compassionate way to end her short life. Then I remove her gently from the beebalm leaf and hold her on my hand. I feel her little feet tickling my palm. I thank her for letting us watch. And I cry buckets of tears that I realize are not all for Bella, but for the sad things that happen in everyone’s life at some point, the things we fail to properly mourn.

When I began this blog, it was going to be a celebration of the birth (or eclosure) of the first monarch butterfly I’d ever seen form a chrysalis. It didn’t turn out that way, but it was a fascinating journey nonetheless – and a lesson that nature can be harsh and survival isn’t assured with beautiful, much-loved insects, any more than it is with other animals on this planet.  Thank you Bianca, and thank you most especially little Bella.

 

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If you liked this litle rumination on monarchs, please leave me a comment. I’d love to hear about your own experiences.

A Denver Floral Extravaganza – The Garden of Rob Proctor and David Macke

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What a treat I had back in June, along with more than 70 other garden bloggers during our annual “Garden Bloggers’ Fling”, to visit the beautiful garden of Rob Proctor and David Macke in the Highlands district of northwest Denver – and then to visit it again in softer light, the following morning! So in the midst of a very busy summer up here on Lake Muskoka (during which I’ve scarcely had a moment to revisit my photos) I nevertheless wanted to share images from my visit.  If you arrive in June, this is what greets you even before you open the charming front gate.

In front of the house is a “hellstrip” from heaven, below, filled with a drought-tolerant symphony of plants in purples and soft yellows. It’s your first clue that the plantings here have been designed by a master colourist who is also a painter and botanical illustrator. Rob now appears on Denver’s 9NEWS twice weekly as a garden expert, but at one time he was co-director with Angela Overy of the Denver Botanic Gardens School of Botanical Illustration.  He also served as the DBG’s Director of Horticulture from 1998 to 2003.  As his friend and former colleague, DBG Senior Curator and Director of Outreach Panayoti Kelaidis said in an interview once: “He transformed a sleepy, provincial research garden facility and made us one of the great display gardens in America.”

Bloody cranesbill (Geranium sanguineum) creates soft cushions of magenta blossoms in front of lavender-blue meadow sage (Salvia pratensis), middle left. At middle right is purple woodland sage (Salvia nemorosa).

Bees were everywhere, including this honey bee nectaring on the woodland sage.

Two unusual xeric plants are lilac-purple Kashmir sage (Phlomis cashmeriana) and golden drop (Onosma taurica), below.

At the eastern end of the hellstrip, a brighter colour scheme featured….

….. apricot desert mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) with basket-of-gold (Aurinia saxatilis).

A metallic green sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens) was nectaring on the desert mallow, while….

….. nearby,  showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) was awaiting monarch butterflies.

The word “hellstrip” is usually attributed to Colorado garden designer Lauren Springer Ogden, author of the acclaimed book The Undaunted Garden, among others. She and Rob also co-authored Passionate Gardening: Good Advice for Challenging Climates.  In an article she wrote for Horticulture magazine back in 2007, Ogden wrote of the Water Smart Garden she designed for Denver Botanic Gardens, shown in my photo below:  “The Denver Botanic Gardens’ former director of horticulture, Rob Proctor, played a crucial role in developing the full potential of the garden. The first couple of years it floundered—a good number of the called-for plants were not actually put in, and it fell under poorly trained and often careless maintenance. When Rob took over, he made it his priority to support the richness of the planting and the high level of care the garden deserved. He let me shop personally for many of the missing plants and add the beginnings of a collection of fiber plants that now brings so much to the dynamic year-round textures of the garden: nolinas, yuccas, agaves, and dasylirions—plants that just a few years ago were rarely used in Colorado gardens and often thought not to be hardy.”

Though I could have spent an hour exploring the luscious hellstrip, I was ready to find what waited on the other side of the gate in the ebullient gardens that surround the 1905 “Denver square” brick house that Rob and David moved into in May 1993.

I was invited in to look at some of Rob’s art.  I loved this botanical rendering of a passionflower, one of many of his works hanging in the house.

But I was anxious to see what was out back, so I made my way past Stranger, the stray cat that hung around Rob and David’s garden for such a long time that he first got the nickname, then his new home.

Though Stranger elected to stay behind on the sunroom table, Mouse accompanied me out onto the brick-paved patio.

And what a patio it is, nestled into its own little garden spangled with lilac-purple Allium cristophii. Here we see the first wave of hundreds of containers that Rob and David fill with annuals each season, adding to pots containing tropicals, bulbs, succulents or perennials.  Pots with tender plants are lifted outdoors each spring, nurtured and watered all summer, then transported back to the basement in autumn before Denver’s Zone 5 winter winds blow. Cobalt blue – a favourite colour – is the unifying hue here.

Teak benches and comfy cushions abound here and throughout the garden.

Tropical foliage plants mix with colourful annuals and succulents like Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’ pair with potted lilies. Incidentally, Rob is an expert in bulbs in pots, having written The Oudoor Potted Bulb: New Approaches to Container Gardening with Flowering Bulbs way back in 1993, the year they moved here.  It’s one of sixteen books he has authored or co-authored.

Though their property is more than a half-acre with several discrete garden areas, the patio is a lovely intimate extension of the house.

When I visited the first time, Rob, left, in his trademark vest and David, a retired geologist, right, held court out here.

I was impressed that David was able to reach out and pick a succulent pea….

….. from a pot of dwarf ‘Tom Thumb’ peas on the coffee table.

However on my second visit, it was just Mouse and me.

I enjoyed the sound of water from the raised goldfish pond….

….. and the splash of water from a unique watering can fountain set among pots on the stairs to the house.

But I was anxious to head out to explore the garden. When Rob and David moved in 26 years ago, the first thing they did was cut down eight “half-dead Siberian elms”.  Said Rob in a 1995 article for American Horticulturist, he wanted to build perennial borders. “Because of the relatively formal look of the late Victorian Italianate house, I chose a strong, geometric layout of long borders. Occasional half circles soften the straight lines. Within this framework, I indulge in the controlled chaos that we associate with traditional herbaceous borders.”  He carved out two rectangular beds each measuring 16 x 60 feet (4.9 x 18 metres) with an 8-foot wide strip of lawn in between. He then designed a backdrop of 12 brick columns – six per bed – connected by lattice screening and had a mason erect them on deep concrete footings.  That resulted in four 8 x 60 foot perennial beds, two of which are visible below. At the far end on the property’s south boundary line is the gazebo, built atop an old carriage house and featuring a winding staircase to the flat roof and a shady dining area within.  “Climbing the staircase,” wrote Rob, “it’s possible to view much of the garden from above.”

Mouse followed me dutifully out into the garden.

The colours here in June were exquisite, with purple and blue catmints, campanulas, cranesbills, meadowrues, salvias and veronicas enlivened by brilliant chartreuse. “Borders are like paintings,” said Rob. “Each one starts as a blank canvas. Working with a palette of plants, rather than paints, the possible combinations are limitless. The twin borders that cut through the middle of the garden contain the colors that I naturally gravitate towards – the blues, purples, and pinks.”

Each border held dozens of ideas for combinations. When I visited on June 17th, star-of-Persia onion (Allium cristophii) looked perfect with Kashmir sage (Phlomis cashmeriana)…..

….. and softened the flowers of broad-petaled cranesbill (Geranium platypetalum).

By the way, if you ever want to go down into a taxonomic rabbit hole, take a look at my blog on Allium cristophii.

The bold foliage of American cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum), below, offers a strong contrast to the soft colours and shapes of the central border.  Later in summer, the white flower umbels reach up to 8 feet (2.5 metres).  In one of the 2018 video clips from 9NEWS, Rob gives some pithy advice on how to handle this phototoxic native – just don’t!  Clambering over the lattice in the back of this photo is golden hops (Humulus lupulus ‘Aureus’), one of a number of vines that Rob encourages for its lovely effect. As he wrote:  “The golden hops vine needs little encouragement to thread through five or six feet of pink and blue flowers in this border, providing fresh, almost springlike foliage even in midsummer.”

Rob has used the red-leaved rose Rosa glauca as a background feature in one border, less for its single June flowers than for its strong foliage accent in order to enhance the massive beauty bush flowering in the background.

This was the view north along the twin central borders back to the house.

The third long border to the east featured white roses and the tall spires of Verbascum bombyciferum ‘Arctic Summer’….

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…… nestled in a snowy cloud of sea kale (Crambe cordifolia).

The fourth long border on the west side is a confection of pinks and burgundies – peonies, roses and cranesbills in June. As it turns west near the immense beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis), Rob gave special consideration to the unique colouration. “The beauty bush, its pale pink blossoms tinged with coral, inspired the color scheme of the surrounding plantings as the border turns to the west”. For the garden nearby, he chose sunset colours in lilies, red valerian, red sunroses, salmon pink nicotine and coral bells mixed with chartreuse and bronze foliage, to name a few.

In fact, he captured all three tints of beauty bush flowers in the cushions on the chairs placed strategically under its flowery boughs. This is colour perfectionism!  Because of its size, Rob estimates the shrub was planted fairly soon after it was introduced to the west via Ernest “China” Wilson, who sent seed to Veitch’s Nursery in England in 1901. Flowers did not appear on the first seedlings for nine more years.  It became very popular in gardens in the mid-20th century but deserves to be planted in gardens where its size can be contained.

This view melted my heart.  And there were bees in that pink rose… scroll down to the video at the end of my blog and you’ll see them.

Clematis recta is a superb June-blooming herbaceous clematis.  I’m not sure how Rob manages to keep his upright, but it does benefit from some kind of support, like a peony ring.

Further along, near the nuts-and-bolts of the garden (compost bins, potting shed, etc.) I noted one of Rob’s favourite strategies to introduce a splash of colour into the borders: a well-positioned pot with a bright red annual coleus.  He does the same thing with red orach (Atriplex hotensis ‘Rubra’).  Later there will be larkspur here.

We’ve arrived at the back where the gazebo is sited on the foundation of an old carriage house.  A spiral staircase climbs to the top; it must be a lovely spot to sip a glass of wine and look back on the borders.

Down below, there was a table and chairs under the roof, providing a nice view and much needed shade in Denver’s notoriously hot summers.

Luscious tuberous begonias thrive here.

What a great spot for al fresco dinners – surrounded by tropicals and foliage plants. I loved the louvered panels at the back.  And what do you suppose lies behind that dark picket fence?

Well, it’s an alley. A place where most gardeners would be content to create a couple of parking spots and leave it at that. But not David and Rob…. all that sunshine!  So they not only reserved places to park their cars, but….

… also designed a potager divided into eight Native-American-inspired “waffle” beds, which are dug down below grade to capture precious rainwater, just as waffles collect syrup.

Bordered in thyme, the beds contain different types of seed-grown vegetables.  At the centre of the potager is an artful cluster of pots.

As with every part of Rob and David’s garden, there is a comfy, colour-coordinated place to sit and relax – even in the alley!

Biennial clary sage (Salvia sclarea) is one of many plants allowed to self-seed here.

I loved this succulent-filled strawberry jar in the midst of the vegetables.

I headed back into the garden and made my way down the east side, where an old driveway has been re-imagined as the “gravel allée”.  It’s a series of tableaux: sitting areas with colour-matched accessories and plants.  Periwinkle blue and rusty-orange… sigh. You can imagine how enchanting this is for someone who called her blog “thepaintboxgarden”!

Such an inviting scene……

Double clematis are often less hardy than small-flowered species and varieties, so Rob pots them up and takes them to a less exposed area for winter.

Speaking of CLEM-a-tis, I liked hearing Rob educate his news colleagues on proper pronunciation of the vine.

Mouse was getting a little impatient for me to leave, so led me down the gravel path….

…. to containers nestled around a birdbath. Have you been counting the pots? I understand there are more than 600!

I’m a big fan of red-with-green in planting design  and this section of the path tickled my fancy.

Under the mature trees here was another semi-shaded sitting area set in amongst shrub roses with yet another bench.  I loved the row of potted aloes!

Now I was gazing at the house through a delightful thyme parterre herb garden.

I walked around to the south to see the view….

…. and then from the corner nearest the house. This is such a classic design – also created in the lowered waffle bed manner – and so lovely when the thyme…..

…. and the rose are in flower together.

I had a plane to catch later that afternoon, so gathered up my things and headed around the house to the front. There on the west side under the shade of the trees was one final treasure in Rob and David’s garden. It was a patio filled with shade-loving plants adjoining their sunken garden (down the stairs and just out of the photo below).   As Rob wrote in 1995: “One weekend, while digging up self-sown tree-of-heaven saplings, we kept hitting brick. We determined that it was the foundation to a building, about 15 by 10 feet. Friends joined us for some urban archeology as we excavated it, finding hundreds of patent medicine bottles, broken china, and a waffle iron designed for the top of a wood stove. The foundation may have supported a summer kitchen or an earlier house, perhaps a farmer’s. We stopped digging at about four feet and, exhausted, decided our sunken garden was deep enough. We mixed in extra-rich compost to nurture the shade-lovers we intended to plant there.”

It was so hot that day in June, I would have loved to settle in the shade on those blue and red cushions and contemplate the lovely caladium. But it was time to go.

So, reluctantly, out I went through the gate entwined with Virginia creeper, to meet my ride.

As a bonus, I created a little musical tour through David and Rob’s enchanting garden, co-starring a selection of the bees that find nectar there:

Rob and David have shared their garden annually for many years now. It’s for a cause near and dear to them – and to Stranger and Mouse, too. And I’m so glad I was able to share their garden with you, too.

Visiting Marjorie’s Garden

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I have a free summer afternoon in Toronto and call my dear friend, garden writer and designer Marjorie Harris. Could I come to see her and bring my camera?  Of course, says she gracefully. Thus, on a hot afternoon at the very end of July, I walk up her midtown street. It’s never difficult to find Marjorie’s house. It’s the one with the luscious green floral tapestry in front. And it’s the one with the biggest ‘Sun King’ aralia (A. cordata) I’ve ever seen. It seems to extend its golden foliage over most of the frontage, on a narrow city lot that measures 20 x 137 feet (6 x 42 metres).

It’s also the garden with rare Japanese umbrella pines (Sciadopitys verticillata) hiding in the undergrowth, along with hellebores and golden hakone grass…..

….and a tiny, jewelled ‘Hana Matoi’ Japanese maple keeping company with Japanese painted fern.

But seriously…. that aralia! I can’t think of another perennial that creates such an element of privacy as this one. However, as Marjorie reminds me, her garden soil is really rich in compost (“lashes of compost” is a favourite phrase of hers) and she has an irrigation system that targets water on plants that really need it.

Marjorie and I spend a half-hour chewing the fat on the front porch. She and I have known each other for three decades. She is a straight shooter (calls a smart woman a “dame”), well organized, energetic and very involved in the cultural heartbeat of the city. And she is still head-over-heels about the garden she created behind the Annex home she has shared with her husband, novelist Jack Batten, for over 50 years. In it, they raised their children — two each from previous marriages — and enjoy visits from their three grandchldren.

She’s just as beautiful as she was in the mid-90s, when she was the editor of Toronto Life Gardens. I wrote articles and book reviews for her in those days, like the one below on landscape designer Neal Turnbull.  It’s hard to imagine this was 23 years ago! (Click for larger versions of the photos).

Later, she became editor-in-chief of Gardening Life magazine and we worked together then, too. (Interestingly, in her Summer 2005 editorial, below, she talks about Larry Davidson of Lost Horizons Nursery, from whom she acquired many of the choice trees and shrubs in her garden.)  Sadly, most of our beautiful, glossy gardening magazines have since disappeared from the publishing landscape in Canada, which is a crying shame.  But that’s a story for another day.

She’s been an ardent feminist all her life. Once, when I was looking through old magazines in my office, I found a 1973 Vancouver Sun Weekend magazine I had saved because it contained an article on the company I worked for at the time (a jade mine… long story). But as I flipped through the pages, I also found a piece titled The Invisible Women by Marjorie Harris.  The topic was “women’s liberation”. That was the beginning of her freelance career, after time spent on staff at Maclean’s and Chatelaine,

And, of course, she’s written tons of books, including the masterful Botanica North America, (to which I contributed some images). Published in 2003, this heavy tome was a rich, encyclopedic treatment of selected naive plants of the biomes of North America.

She was the Globe & Mail‘s gardening columnist for years and does features for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), among many other gigs. As well, she has her own landscape design business, and designed four gardens on her own block. And she goes to France every winter with Jack and makes us all jealous as we shovel the snow back home!

Ah bien, let’s stop chatting on the front porch and head out to see the back garden. And “seeing the garden” is a brilliant reality at Marjorie’s house, even before you actually go outside, because of the fabulous folding glass doors that span the lowered dining room. Designed as part of a 2005 renovation by Lisa Rapaport of PLANT Architect Inc., the glass expanse opened up the view to Marjorie’s exquisite woodland — a mélange of carefully chosen shrubs and trees, many evergreen, whose architecture creates four seasons of interest.

Now let’s step outside into the garden and look back at the house through the colourful tapestry of trees and shrubs. Beside the urn is a red-leaved Japanese maple (Acer palmatum ‘Dissectum Atropurpureum’).  “It was my first expensive plant,” says Marjorie. “I paid $20 for it at Ron’s Garden Centre in the 1980s. Couldn’t believe I’d spend that much money on one plant at the time. It led to madness of course“.

At first it’s not easy to discern a path forward through the abundance, with interesting plants drawing my eye from ground-level to the leafy canopy above. That’s part of Marjorie’s design strategy. As she says: “I find that too often designers miss out on the mid layers in a garden design:  I think mainly about foliage and how leaf shapes relate to one another and then I think about the height of each plant’s maximum effect and how that relates to the whole garden.”

Fittingly, I have to reach above my head and point my camera down to capture this delicious duo, a fullmoon Japanese maple (Acer shirasawanum ‘Aureum’) with colourful barberries below.

On the fence is Clematis ‘Betty Corning’, a spectacular, easy vine that Marjorie laments as being essentially unavailable in the trade.

There are few annuals allowed out here and those invited to stay must pay their rent, like purple-leaved Strobilanthes dyerianus with chartreuse ‘Margarita’ sweet potato vine.  Behind is a glaucous evergreen Marjorie bought to decorate her Christmas table at the corner jug milk store one autumn, “then out to the garden to see just how big it might get,” she recalls. “I love it“.

It’s the exquisite little touches that draw the eye, like this ‘Geisha Gone Wild’ Japanese maple and gold hosta.


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A few choice conifers lend structure and interest in Toronto’s interminable winter, like ‘Algonquin Pillar’ Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra). “My garden looks good every day of the year except for about 10 days in early spring,” says Marjorie, “when it’s flooded and looking kind of crappy, with all the stuff I haven’t cut down for the winter being brazen enough to be obvious. That I usually clean up myself just because of the shame of it.”

She spends a lot of time looking up at her trees, a remarkable collection, especially given the size of the garden.

There is a beautiful katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) with its heart-shaped leaves and burnt sugar autumn aroma…..

….. and a gorgeous Kentucky coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus), below, with its intricate compound leaves, the largest of any Canadian native tree.

It’s a favourite among her Carolinian forest natives, including tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera), sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus) and ruby-flowered Calycanthus, below.  “Oxydendron croaked on me,” she admits, “as have several others. I keep trying.”  

A pretty pink astilbe purchased from John’s Garden in Uxbridge grows in dappled shade here, too.

Walking towards the back of the garden, I reach an obelisk adorned with clematis and a nicely pruned blue falsecypress (Chamaecyparis), another one of Marjorie’s Christmas decorations.  Back in the 1980s, Marjorie’s garden featured a unique geometric checkerboard design, with half the spaces in flagstones and the other half choice plants.  In 2002, she hired Earth Inc. to design and install pergolas.  “All seemed fine,” recalls Marjorie, “until the dining room was added in 2005 and then the checkerboard just began to look too fussy.”  So a more streamlined path was substituted leading to this series of pergolas, which allowed space for a more interesting mix of woody plants.

The metal grate under the pergola covers the sump pump.  “The property is build on Seaton Pond flood plain, which rises every spring now that there are not enough trees to drain it properly,” Marjorie explains. “There is an underground stream which is an off-shoot of Taddle Creek, which comes through our garden and under the house. Hoses take the excess ground water out to the street storm sewer; and the stream is dealt with by in-house sump pumps and out through the sewage system.”

Marjorie’s pink floss tree (Albizia julibrissin), below, has now survived three winters. It’s the cultivar ‘Ernest Wilson’, purchased from Jim Lounsbery’s Vineland Nurseries and named for the famous plant explorer who found it in a Korean garden in 1918 and brought seed home to Boston’s Arnold Arboretum. He wrote about it in a 1929 bulletin.  “The origin of the plant in the Arboretum affords a good illustration of the importance of obtaining for northern gardens types which grow in the coolest regions they can withstand. The particular tree was raised from seeds collected in the garden of the Chosen Hotel at Seoul, Korea, by E. H. Wilson in 1918. It grows wild in the southern parts of the Korean peninsula but appears quite at home in the more severe climate of the central region. A few seeds only were collected and seedling plants were set out in the Arboretum when about four years old; several were killed the first winter but one came through with but slight injury and since that time has not suffered in the least. From its behavior during the last seven or eight years there seems reason to believe that this Korean type will prove a useful and valuable addition to gardens. It has a long flowering season, continuing in blossom throughout August.  Albizia is a member of a tropical tribe of the great family Leguminosae and it is astonishing that this tree should be able to withstand New England winters. Apparently it is happy in fully exposed situations, where good drainage and a sandy loam prevail.”

Shredded umbrella plant (Syneilesis aconitifolia) comes from one of Marjorie’s favourite wholesalers, Connon Nurseries, and has the most interesting flowers.

Here is a closeup of those unusual flower panicles.

At the back of her garden is a raised planter filled with an eclectic collection of plants. Says Marjorie: “If a plant looks awful in a client’s garden, I will replace it and I usually bring it home and put it in the Jardin de Refusée. If I don’t want it, one of the crew will and we baby these things along and then they become a respected part of our own gardens. I’ve never sold one of these babies back to clients even though they’ve done well in my garden.  In this garden, you have to drop dead to be removed.”

I try not to take that last sentence as a metaphor as I walk back towards the house, past a young striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum), centre, and a ‘Slender Silhouette’ sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua), right. “Getting the right plant in the right place is a whole lot harder than most people understand,” notes Marjorie. “They want copies of stuff they see in magazines and online and most of the time just won’t work in our climate, our neighbourhoods.  Finding the ideal plant is always my goal, and will it work with the ecosystem I’m trying to build up to satisfy both birds and bugs I want to draw into the garden.  I cannot express how boring those so called minimal “modern” plant designs are.  They don’t work ecologically and they require huge amounts of work to keep on looking neat.  Nature is not neat.”

But gazing back past the Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’, left) and the ‘Herman’s Pillar’ barberry (Berberis thunbergii), right, below…

….. I think that this lovely paradise in the Annex represents a leafy manifestation of Marjorie’s life and career: long, rich, full of interesting things acquired with care and intent, and a joy in every season.

Finally, here’s a little taste of a mid-summer day in the garden. The birds and cicadas are a bonus. Thanks for the visit, Marjorie!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oJtmQaZTmk&feature=youtu.be