Category Archives: Annuals/Tropicals

The Wildflower Moat at the Tower of London

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It was a showery May 26th morning as we crossed the Tower Bridge over the Thames while watching for the first competitors in the LondonRide bicycle race to charge across the finish line just beyond. The bridge opened on June 30, 1910 after sixteen years of construction — 800 years newer than the crenellated White Tower, seen through the bridge’s struts at left, which was built by William the Conqueror in 1078 and finished after his death around 1100. The oldest castle in England, it sits behind battlements at the centre of the Tower of London Fortress, along with the Waterloo Barracks containing the Crown Jewels and the old Mint. But we were crossing the bridge to visit the moat encircling the Tower and its spectacular show of wildflowers.

On the embankment of the Thames in front of the Tower, interpretive signage greets visitors, highlighting moments in English history. This portrait of Elizabeth I (1533-1603) is a reminder that royalty has always been a point of intrigue in Great Britain, though much more dramatic than in modern times. The daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn, she was just 2 years old when her mother was beheaded by the king, the first execution of a queen of England. She would assume the throne after the 1558 death of her half-sister, Mary Queen of Scots, daughter of Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon, and rule England and Ireland for 44 years as “Good Queen Bess”.

The Yeoman Warders – the “Beefeaters” – who guard the Tower and have apartments within the complex are also featured on signage.

The closely-shorn lawn at the Tower’s southwest corner near Byward Tower is part of the original dry moat, but a much tamer version of the wildflower moat beyond. As the sign in the photo above said, it was once used as a bowling green by the Tower’s residents; its sunny aspect mean it was also used for growing vegetables. Note the cross-shaped “arrow slits” in the fortification walls.

The moat wasn’t always dry, of course. It was fed by the River Thames, below, and extended in 1285 by King Edward I to keep potential attackers at a distance. Fifty metres (164 feet) wide in places and very deep at high tide, it was also stocked with pike to be farmed for the fortress residents. In fact, wicker fish traps from the 15th or 16th century were found by archaeologists, complete with fish skeletons. But around 1843, a deadly, water-borne infection struck, believed to be caused by the “putrid animal and excrementitious matter” of the moat at low tide. So the Duke of Wellington ordered the moat drained and turned into a defensive dry ditch or “fosse”. Dry it would remain until January 7, 1928 when heavy rain caused the Thames to overflow its banks and flood the moat, allowing photographers to briefly capture how it looked when filled with water. During the Second World War, it was used as an allotment Victory Garden for the residents. By the way, that pointed skyscraper on the south side of the Thames is The Shard, the tallest building in the UK at 1,016 feet (309 m).

We watched as a Yeoman Guard began his guided tour of the Tower in the wildflowers of the moat. Unlike those tourists who headed inside the walls, I was content to spend my entire visit in the flowers.

The 2024 version of the “Moat in Bloom” I saw was two years after the Superbloom of 2022, part of the 4-month-long Platinum Jubilee celebrating the 70-year reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II, who acceded to the throne on February 6, 1952 upon the death of her father, King George VI. Here we see the artistry of both landscape architect Andrew Grant of Grant Associates and planting designer Nigel Dunnett, Professor of Planting Design and Urban Horticulture at the University of Sheffield and founder of the seed firm Pictorial Meadows in 2003, who collaborated under Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) to transform the moat into what Grant called “a joyous shout out for change; a marker in how we can move forward in the way we think about and manage our heritage for the benefit of future generations“. In the photo below taken from the public area near the ticket entrance above the moat, we see how Grant designed the willow-edged cutouts in the moat to mirror the arched windows in Mount Legge, the northwest tower in the outer fortification wall (all the towers have names and histories). We also see the descendants of the 20-million wildflower seeds of 48 species and 16 seed mixes sown originally for Superbloom.

Long before Superbloom, Nigel Dunnett had established his reputation with the 2012 planting at the London Olympic Park; the Buckingham Palace Diamond Garden for the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne; a 2013 redesign of The Barbican complex in London with drought-tolerant, perennial steppe species; a Gold-Medal-winning rooftop design for the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show; and his stunning ‘Grey to Green’ landscape work with the industrial city of Sheffield beginning in 2014 and continuing today, and many other projects to beautify the public realm. As for the moat, the scene below could be an Impressionist painter’s canvas! In fact, Nigel Dunnett was inspired by pointillism, especially the work of artist Georges Seurat, as he wrote on the original Superbloom design process in his Instagram account. “These brilliant and analytical explorations of colour relationships… were pivotal in the design development of the seed mixes and their spatial arrangement. The precise selection of individual colours, their proportions, densities and distributions give rise to the larger scale impression. It’s just a small leap to make the connection to meadows and naturalistic planting.” To accomplish this with technology, Dunnett used pixel diagrams as abstractions to create the colour balance and mix proportions with flower seeds.

Then it was time to take the curving path through this magical moat meadow, its exuberance held at bay by low willow wattle fencing produced by Wonderwood Willow in Cambridgeshire. Wrote Nigel Dunnett: “The 2022 Superbloom was a catalyst, a tipping point for this permanent transition of the moat, which must be Central London’s largest and most prominent ‘wilding’ project. It was great to see people down in the moat as part of the everyday visitor experience to the Tower – before 2022 these were inaccessible monotonous mown lawns.”

In certain places, perennials such as yellow-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium striatum), lambs’ ears (Stachys byzantina) and magenta Knautia macedonica flower alongside the annuals.

The white form of biennial rose campion (Lychnis coronaria ‘Alba‘) added its silvery foliage while lilac Scabiosa columbaria was attracting loads of bumble bees.

This is Bombus terrestris, the common buff-tailed bumble bee sharing a scabious bloom with a hover fly.

A number of benches are placed at intervals throughout the moat.

My three menfolk, husband Douglas, London-based son Doug and his partner Tommy were blown away by the beauty of the moat in bloom. And of course we needed a selfie!

Readers who know my interest – and the name of this blog – know I love to focus on colour. But meadows are also a great passion with me, tracing back to my childhood on Canada’s mild west coast. I talked about this at the beginning of my 2017 two-part blog on Piet Oudolf’s design for the entry garden at the Toronto Botanical Garden: “Piet Oudolf: Meadow Maker“. More than anything else, this is my favourite style of garden, its wildness as vital as its colour associations. Nigel Dunnett also felt this attraction as a child: “From as long as I can remember, I have been inspired by the wild; by the experience of nature. It’s an emotional response. Some of my earliest memories are of being in beautiful flowering meadows, or woodlands in the spring full of wildflowers, and it’s these more intimate or human-scale associations that perhaps made a stronger impression than big dramatic wide landscapes and scenery. That emotional response was, and is, strongly positive: provoking hugely uplifting and joyful feelings.” Below we see various colours of California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) along with blue cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus).

I was fortunate to be in the moat when the poppies and cornflowers, below, were at their very best.

Here we see annual yellow corn marigolds (Glebionis segetum formerly Chrysanthemum) with the California poppies and cornflowers.

We were all competing to see who could get the best photo of…..

…. bumble bees on pollen-rich corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas).

Mauve and white corncockle (Agrostemma githago) is one of my favourite annuals. In fact, I grew it from seed in a big pot this year, along with corn poppies.

In places, the path was marked by drilled bamboo posts threaded through with rope.

A profusion of scentless Mayweed or chamomile (Matricaria inodora) along with oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) created drifts of starry white throughout the moat. White bishop’s flower (Ammi majus) had not yet started to bloom here, but I saw that beautiful umbel as the star of another Pictorial Meadows seed mix garden at the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh in late August 2022, next photo.

I think this meadow was my favourite part of our visit to RBG Edinburgh. It is the Classic mix in the Pictorial Meadows brochure.

Back to the moat. Circling the northwest Mount Legge fortification tower built in the 13th century, it’s interesting to contrast it with The Shard, built eight centuries later. The blue flowers at right are blue thimble-flower (Gilia capitata). In the original Superbloom seed mix, Nigel Dunnett used washes of blue flowers to recall the water of the original moat fed by the River Thames.

Here is another view of this combination.

Is it possible I love Gilia capitata?

A little further down this path, some grasses have made their presence felt, creating a softening of the wildflower scene. Although most of the original Superbloom annuals have reseeded in the subsequent two years, additional reseeding and top-ups are now managed by the Tower of London garden team.

Gilia capitata from California is very attractive to the European buff-tailed bumble bee, Bombus terrestris. For me, this is yet more evidence of a scenario I’ve found in my photographic journey over the past three decades: bees need protein and carbohydrates, they don’t check the native provenance of plants when they’re foraging for food. Protein is protein; sugar is sugar. Obviously, a large population of native plants will appeal to the pollinators that co-evolved in the ecosystem. But if the ecosystem is degraded, i.e. if urban development has scattered native plant communities, bees will secure food from whatever plants are available.

Historic Royal Palaces is keen on messaging about pollinators in the moat. This year’s flowering is still the “ghost of Superbloom”, but as Nigel Dunnett notes the plan is “for the final transformation into a biodiverse habitat landscape based on native plant communities to happen in 2025.”

Oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) attracts short-tongued pollinators, including various types of hoverflies.

I was delighted to see plantain (Plantago major) in the moat, because even as an invasive weed at the edge of my meadows in Canada, it attracts lots of bees seeking pollen.

Corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) are a mainstay in the moat – as they are in fields of Europe, and as they were in the battlefields in John McCrae’s famous World War One poem. “In Flanders fields, the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row,/That mark our place.“

Though the initial soil for Superbloom was engineered for the site and free of weed seeds, two years on the odd adventitious weed species has found a home here, like the yellow sow-thistle (Sonchus arvensis), which was also attracting its share of pollinators.

Corncockle (Agrostemma githago) and corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) make fine companions.

Biennial blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta ‘My Joy’) was just coming into bloom.

Here and there, violet larkspur (Consolida ajacis) towered over the wildflower tapestry.

Though they have no nectar, poppies offer abundant pollen, like this California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) feeding a marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus).

Shirley poppies are a special seed strain of corn poppy, Papaver rhoeas featuring different colours, like white, pink (below), lilac and bicolour, some with semi-double petals and no black blotch near the stamens. They were selected originally by Reverent William Wilks, vicar of the parish of Shirley, England, who spent several years beginning in 1880 hybridizing the wild poppies in the fields near his garden to obtain the strain of poppies bearing his name.

Interpretative signage keeps visitors informed of Historic Royal Palaces’ plan for the moat.

Small scabious (Scabiosa columbaria) is a big draw for pollinators.

The buff-tailed bumble bee (Bombus terrestris) is Europe’s most common bumble bee.

Meadow sage (Salvia pratensis) is a clump-forming perennial that prefers well-drained soil in full sun.

Nigel Dunnett specified the biennial viper’s bugloss, Echium vulgare – another bee favourite. Here it grows with corncockle (Agrostemma githago).

The Tower of London is famous for its six raven guardians, an institution believed to have started with Charles II who insisted the birds be protected and thought the crown and Tower would fall if they flew away. But this magpie does not have any official duties and has staked out its own priority seating in the north moat.

Look at the lovely flower of corncockle (Agrostemma githago), so pretty despite being very poisonous. In the 19th century it was a common annual weed of roadsides, railway lines and wheat fields and it likely made its way throughout the world as part of exported European wheat.

Although cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) was mostly finished in England when we were there in late May, a few plants popped up in the moat, right.

Annual corn flower (Centaurea cyanus) also comes in mixes that contain blue, white, pink and purple flowers – all are foraged by bees.

When I was at the Chelsea Physic Garden the day before visiting the Tower of London (here’s my blog), they had used annual lacy phacelia or purple tansy (Phacelia tanacetifolia), below, in a mass planting as bee forage for their hives. Despite being a native of California, it is a strong polllinator lure.

Here a buff-tailed bumble-bee enjoys foraging on the unusual caterpillar-like inflorescences of Phacelia tanacetifolia.

Signage helps visitors understand the possibilities of the moat, beyond its origin as fortification.

A lovely combination of pink California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) and meadow sage (Salvia pratensis).

Marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus) on pink California poppy.

The north side of the moat offers a good view of the 20 Fenchurch Building, nicknamed the “Walkie-Talkie” for its shape. This is the building which, as it was under construction in 2013, reflected the sun in such a way as to melt the metal of a Jaguar car parked beneath it, forcing the developers to erect a permanent sunshade of horizontal aluminum fins. The north part of the Tower complex behind the battlements is the site of the Waterloo Block and the Jewel House containing the well-protected Crown Jewels. For Superbloom, the north moat was fitted with speakers to create a sensory experience beyond the floral show. Musician Erland Cooper was commissioned to create a soundtrack, which he called “Music for Growing Flowers”.

Along with the corn poppies and California poppies, the moat seed mix contained seeds of Viscaria oculata, the small, lilac-purple flowers at bottom right.

Some plants I photographed don’t appear on the original seed lists but were happily luring insects, like what I believe is a yellow sow-thistle (Sonchus spp.) below. The purple cranesbill in the background is Geranium pyrenaicus.

Circling around to the eastern moat, at the corner we pass through The Nest, an organic willow sculpture by Spencer Jenkins that frames the view of the Tower Bridge.

Yellow buttercups (Ranunculus acris) and purple knapweed (Centaurea nigra) can be seen in the wildflower mix here.

The hardworking willow wattle fencing – nearly one kilometre in length by Wonderwood Willow – keeps the meadow from subsuming the grit path here. According to Andrew Grant in an article in Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute: “We were after a palette that would complement the stonework: colours, textures and form found around the Tower, yet were low in energy in terms of construction, were low carbon and (where possible) were from a renewable resource. As a principle, the use of concrete was banned across the project.” 

Wrote Nigel Dunnett of the east moat: “Here the Grant Associates masterplan introduced areas that were more intimate and playful, with smaller paths bringing people into more intimate contact with the flowers. The use of natural materials and the rustic forms of the woven willow structures created a wonderful foil for the flowers.”

On the plantings in the east moat, Nigel Dunnett wrote: “The plants here were placed at low density around the path edges, and then the seed mixes were sown around them – it’s a technique I’ve used a lot to give some definite structure of deliberately-placed plants amongst the more spontaneous nature of the seed mixes. I used plants with a sensual character here – plants with tactile textures or aromatic plants. One of the most effective was Purple Fennel – the dark-leaved clumps were really effective early in the summer as the seeded plants grew up around them.” The swirling composite-wood pathway takes visitors towards the dragonfly sculpture by Quist.

Signage in the east moat recalls the allotment gardens of the past.

Even in my own meadows on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto, Canada (see my blog here on “Gardening Wild”), plantain (Plantago major), below, in the east moat, is a superb bumble bee plant in spring.

Brass and copper dragonflies fly over the moat, but the future plan is to bring real dragonflies into the moat with water features, as you see in the next photo.

This sign appears at the exit, presumably to greet visitors who might enter from the castle. But it promises a future for the moat: “We aspire to recycle rainwater to support flowering marshes, ponds, areas of food-related flowers and much more.” Fortunately a London-based son means we can and will revisit the Tower to see the development of this magical place. But I’m so delighted I experienced this late spring wildflower chapter in 2024.

Meet the Poppy Family!

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I’m not sure that all my readers know that my main bit of low-paying work for the past several decades has been ‘stock photography’ of plants, gardens and pollinators. In short, wherever I am – in public or private gardens – I like to photograph plants and label them later with their correct botanical names. Then… maybe… there’s a .00001% chance that some publisher or editor will be looking for JUST what I have and pay me a huge sum to licence it for their book or magazine. (Haha). There aren’t many people in North America doing exactly what I’ve been doing and those who do would tell you that this is not the best way to support yourself in life.

But back to the botanical names. One of my favourite plant families is the Poppy Family, i.e. Papaveraceae. Though most of us know what a “poppy” is with its silky petals, the family is actually very large and diverse with 760 species in 44 genera featuring annuals, perennials, shrubs and small tropical trees. Taxonomists have worked to help us understand how their genealogy fits together, placing the genera into subfamilies, tribes and sub-tribes. DNA sequencing has resulted in many favourites, like bleeding heart, being shuffled from one genus into a new one.

I have been fortunate over the past three decades to photograph many of these plants, including Chinese native noble-flowered birthwort, Corydalis nobilis, below, arching over North American native yellow wood poppy, Stylophorum diphyllum, seen in mid-May in the Shade Garden at Montreal Botanical Garden.  I wrote a blog about this fabulous garden.

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FUMARIOIDIAE

Let’s start with the subfamily Fumarioidiae, tribe Fumariae, subtribe Corydalinae. They used to have their own family, Fumariaceae, but they have now been ‘lumped’ by the APG (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group) into Papaveraceae.  With their bilaterally symmetrical or zygmomorphic flowers, they don’t look much like poppies, do they? But that’s the thing about DNA. You can have cousins that don’t look anything like you; nevertheless if you go back far enough in the family tree, you share great-great-great-grandparents. To set the mood, below is a little scented nosegay of Corydalis solida, a bulb native to moist, shady woodlands in Europe and Asia. It grows like a bandit beside my garden path and also throughout my ‘lawn’, but it dies down quickly like most spring bulbs.

First up is Adlumia fungosa or Allegheny vine. My friend Marnie Wright, whose Bracebridge, Ontario garden I blogged about years ago, grows this one over a rustic arch.

Capnoides sempervirens or pink corydalis, grows seemingly out of the ancient banded gneiss rock at our cottage on Lake Muskoka, north of Toronto, which is how it got its other common name, rock harlequin.

Corydalis species….. where to start?  Let’s go alphabetically with the beautiful Corydalis flexuosa below. I photographed it in the Himalayan garden at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden. In 2020, I wrote a 2-part blog about this fabulous garden in springtime.

Then there is Siberian corydalis or noble-flowered birthwort, Corydalis nobilis.   Like many Papaveraceae, it is a spring ephemeral, enjoying moist rich soil in dappled shade, then retreating after its flowers wither.

Corydalis quantmeyerana hails from Sichuan. This cultivar is called ‘Chocolate Stars’ but I couldn’t see much brown colouring in the foliage of the plant, which I photographed at VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver.

In my Toronto side-yard in early spring, the borders beside the path are filled with the bulb Corydalis solida, both the lilac-purple species itself and the pink-flowered cultivar ‘Beth Evans’. They thrive under my tall black walnut (Juglans nigra) – and have also popped up throughout my lawn. I welcome them all for their short stay, before they die down in late spring.

The Dicentra genus (formerly bleeding heart) is now comprised of only North American species. Dicentra canadensis or squirrel corn likes humus-rich soil in shady rock outcrops in deciduous forests of northeast N. America.  

I found Dutchman’s breeches, Dicentra cucullaria one April in the native plant woodland at Toronto’s Casa Loma. Both Dutchman’s breeches and squirrel corn are spring ephemerals, dying down soon after blooming.

Dicentra eximia or fringed bleeding heart is native to northeastern N. America from the Appalachian mountains northward. This is the cultivar ‘Luxuriant’.

I photographed the western counterpart, Pacific bleeding heart, Dicentra formosa with sword ferns in the native plants garden at Darts Hill Garden Park outside Vancouver.

Many gardeners still mourn the taxonomic journey of  bleeding heart out of the Dicentra genus to the awkwardly-named and monotypic genus Lamprocapnos as L. spectabilis.   

I spent many hours at Toronto’s Spadina House gardens, where white bleeding heart, L. spectabilis ‘Alba’, looks lovely in spring with forget-me-nots. (See more of Spadina House at my blog exploring the colour ‘purple’.)

One of the stars of the renowned black-and-gold border at VanDusen Botanical Garden is the chartreuse bleeding heart L. spectabilis ‘Gold Heart’, seen here with Tulipa ‘Queen of Night’.

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Now let’s look at sub-tribe Fumariinae.

Common fumitory or earth smoke, Fumaria officinalis,is considered a weed in many quarters, but it’s rather sweet, especially mixed in with a chartreuse-leaved cranesbill like ‘Ann Folkard’.

Rock fumewort or yellow corydalis used to be… well… a corydalis, C. lutea, but it’s now Pseudofumaria lutea. Native to the European Alps, it is one of those easy-to-grow, graceful plants that looks lovely in light shade. And its name was changed, of course, because of DNA analysis.  I learned the word “vicariance” in reading the abstract, meaning “fragmentation of the environment (as by splitting of a tectonic plate) in contrast to dispersal as a factor in promoting biological evolution by division of large populations into isolated subpopulations”.

‘Rock fumewort’, of course, describes the alpine setting to which P. lutea is native, a trait beautifully exploited at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, PA outside Philadelphia. In June, the gardener here mixes it with scrambling yellow sedums, mountain bluets, various alpine campanulas and the odd perennial geranium. And yes, I wrote a 2-part blog about Chanticleer.

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PAPAVEROIDIAE

There are three tribes in this sub-family, all with radially symmetrical or actinopmorphic flowers. We begin with the Eschscholzieae, and its 3 genera, all from western N. America.

First comes Dendromecon. When I photographed the Channel Island tree poppy near ceanothus at Seaside Gardens in Carpinteria, California (my blog on that lovely garden is here), it was labelled Dendromecon harfordii, below.   Three days later at the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden, I found a taller plant labelled as D. rigida ssp. harfordii.  Take your pick.

There are 17 species of Eschscholzia, but California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) are the quintessential floral emblem of the Golden State.  One of the great joys of visiting California in spring is seeing them along the road, as in Napa…

…. or with blue ceanothus in an iconic native partnership at the University of California Berkeley Botanic Garden….

…. and with other California natives like western blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium bellum) at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. (By the way, I wrote a blog about the meadow at SBBG.)

The final cousin in the Eschscholzieae tribe is the the monotypic genus Hunnemannia, with its sole species,  Mexican tulip poppy, Hunnemannia fumariifolia. I found it at Seaside Gardens in Carpinteria, a wonderful nursery and display garden which I featured in a 2014 blog.   

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The second tribe in Papaveroidiae is the Chelidoniae.

We begin with that trickster Chelidonium majus, the greater celandine.  Why do I say that? Because in eastern N. America, this Eurasian species is often mistaken for our native yellow wood poppy, next. But when it blooms the difference is apparent for Chelidonium has much smaller flowers, as you see below. This is my garden, where it likes to hide in my ostrich ferns (Matteucia struthiopteris), that fern proof positive that native species can be every bit as aggressive as exotics.

I took yellow wood poppy, Stylophorum diphyllum, out of alphabetical order to compare it with Chelidonium, above. A denizen of shady, rich, deciduous woodland in northeast North America, it doesn’t have the invasive tendencies of its doppelgänger cousin. I love seeing it in May in the woodland planting at Toronto’s Casa Loma, with Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) and ostrich ferns, below.

Horned poppies (Glaucium spp.) are next in this tribe, perennial plants of the rocky steppe regions of the world. In fact I found the biennial or short-lived perennial red horned poppy Glaucium corniculatum in the Central Asian Steppe Garden at Denver Botanic Garden a few years ago.  I wrote a blog about this interesting new garden at DBG.  

And the Alpine Garden at Montreal Botanical Garden is where I found an Eastern bumble bee gathering pollen in yellow horned poppy Glaucium flavum.  It’s a short-lived perennial or biennial from Europe, N. Africa and elsewhere. I also wrote a blog about this garden, in honour of its former curator René Giguère.

Hylomecon japonica, Japanese woodland poppy, is a rarity. I found it in the Shade Garden at the Montreal Botanical Garden on May 21, 2014.

Macleaya cordata or plume poppy (syn. Bocconia) is a bit of an oddball as the Papavaeraceae go.  Native to China, Japan and Taiwan, it is taller at 5-8 ft (1.5-2.4 m) than most of its kin with airy panicles of tiny flowers in mid-late summer. It is recommended for the back of the border but, caveat emptor, it spreads very aggressively via rhizomes.

Our native northeastern bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis, is a favourite early spring wildflower, its shimmering white flower emerging through a protective leaf which unfurls once the flower opens. It is seen below with Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and a skeletonized autumn leaf.

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Skipping over the small Tribe Platystemonae from the Western United States (since I haven’t photographed any), we come to Tribe Papavereae with its more familiar “poppy” flowers with the ring of pollen-rich anthers and prominent ovary. Typical of the reproductive arrangement is Iceland poppy, Papaver nudicaule, below.

Moving alphabetically through Papaverae, we start with Argemone, or prickly poppies. I loved this casual design by Denver Botanic Garden’s plant curator Dan Johnson for his home garden’s ‘hellstrip’ bordering the road in Englewood, Colorado. (I wrote a blog about this colourful plantsman’s garden.) I believe it is native, white-flowered crested prickly poppy, Argemone polyanthemos with California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) for a Papaveraceae double-date.  

Way back in 1998 in my Fujichrome slide days, I photographed purple prickly poppy Argemone sanguinea. Not the best image but you get the picture.

If there is a plant genus that deserves the moniker “Holy Grail”, it is Meconopsis, especially the species called “Himalayan Blue Poppy”, Meconopsis baileyi (syn. M. betonicifolia), below.  Discovered originally in mountainous Yunnan, China in the 1880s by the French missionary Jean Marie Delavay, it was English botanist and plant collector Frank Kingdon-Ward who brought out seeds and contributed to its great popularity with his 1913 book In the Land of Blue Poppies.  Though exceptionally hardy, alas the blue poppy is not for everyone. It has very specific cultivation needs, preferring humus-rich, consistently moist, neutral to slightly acidic soil in a dappled-shade, woodland setting in a region with cool, damp summers. Thus it likes coastal British Columbia, Washington State, Alaska and cooler maritime settings on the East Coast. Plants tend to flower for one or two seasons before dying, but will seed around if conditions are good.

I have photographed blue poppies (usually in the rain) at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden where they grow in the Himalayan Dell beneath towering giant Himalayan lily, Cardiocrinum giganteum.  I made this photo May 27, 2013.

They also greet visitors along the main path in the David Lam Asian Garden at UBC Botanical Garden, where I photographed them on May 29, 2013…..

…. and in the lovely Japanese garden at Victoria’s Butchart Gardens when I was there on May 30, 2011.

VanDusen’s collection of Meconopsis species is particularly good. If you go in late May, you might find the lovely pink form of M. baileyi….

…. and the cultivar M. baileyi ‘Hensol Violet’….

The prickly blue poppy, Meconopsis horridula  grows at VanDusen in the Himalayan Dell, too. Like many Meconopsis species, it is monocarpic, producing flowers just once before dying.

The satin poppy, Meconopsis napaulensis might be flowering in white or pale pink.

The Himalayan woodland poppy formerly included in Meconopsis has now been moved and is called Cathcartia villosa.  I photographed the one below at VanDusen on June 23, 2010 in a particularly cool spring where flowering was late.

Finally, we come to the poppies, the genus Papaver. I’ll begin alphabetically with another species that has been shuffled out of its previous home in Meconopsis, Welsh poppy. Formerly called M. cambrica, it is now Papaver cambricum.  This species grows throughout VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver, both the yellow form, here with bluebells…

….. and the orange form.

Another recent arrival in the genus is annual wind poppy, Papaver heterophyllum,  formerly Stylomecon heterophylla.  Native to the coastal mountains from northern California south to Baja California, Mexico, germination of its seed is triggered by wildfires.

The Caucasian scarlet poppy (Papaver commutatum) is an annual native to Turkey, Iran and the Caucasus. The cultivar ‘Ladybird’, below, has particularly vibrant red flowers with prominent black blotches. 

Iceland poppy or Papaver nudicaule is a short-lived perennial native to a wide range of boreal regions in Europe and North America.  In California, it’s often used for spring bedding; I photographed the plants below at Hearst Castle in San Simeon on March 29, 2014.

For beginning gardeners, Oriental poppy, Papaver orientale, below, is often one of the first perennials to try.  Native to Turkey, Iran and the Caucasus, its silken petals and dark stamens add drama to the late spring-early summer garden.

The flattened stigmas of Oriental poppy extend like tentacles across the top of the carpel. This is the black-blotched, white cultivar ‘Royal Wedding’.   

Oriental poppies are part of the rich roster of late spring-early summer perennials, such as Siberian iris (I. sibirica), below. Also flowering at that time are peonies, foxgloves, Shasta daisies, yarrow, roses and a host of other possible companions.

Hybridizers have created numerous cultivars of Oriental poppy with white, red, salmon and peach flowers. There is even a double variety called P. orientale var. plena ‘Red Shades’, below.

If you followed my Covid-winter #janetsdailypollinator posts on my Social Media accounts (you can see all 144 on Facebook or Instagram by inserting that hashtag), you might recall me including one of a honey bee dusted with the black pollen of Oriental poppy, below.  Though poppies do not produce nectar, many are sources of abundant pollen for bees.

When we participated in an Adventure Canada cruise of the Eastern Arctic, my favourite activity was to scramble around the tundra photographing the plants of Nunavut and Greenland. I found the Arctic poppy, Papaver radicatum, below, at Sylvia Grinnell Park in Iqaluit. I wrote a 10-blog series on that fabulous voyage last year, beginning with Iqaluit.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place.  

Canadian army physician Lt.-Col. John McRae’s famous Second World War poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ brings us to European corn poppies, Papaver rhoeas. It was spring in Belgium in 1915 when McRae watched his best friend die in the muddy fields of Ypres, where red poppies with black centres had begun to flower. As the Canada Veterans page says: “The day before he wrote his famous poem, one of McCrae’s closest friends was killed in the fighting and buried in a makeshift grave with a simple wooden cross. Wild poppies were already beginning to bloom between the crosses marking the many graves. Unable to help his friend or any of the others who had died, John McCrae gave them a voice through his poem.”

Corn poppies are used in the gravel garden at Chanticleer near Philadelphia, along with white lace flower (Orlaya grandiflora).

It was the Rev. William Wilkes (1843-1923) in the hamlet of Shirley, south of London, who noticed the first unusual variant in a field of wild red corn poppies, a flower with a white edge. That was the beginning of 20 years of his hybridization work to get the characteristics he wanted with petals ranging from white through palest pink, lilac, cherry pink, apricot, salmon, scarlet, orange and bicolours as well as semi-doubles. They became known as the “Shirley poppies”. This is a montage I made of various strains and colours of P. rhoeas.  

I love seeing the little Spanish poppy, Papaver rupifragum var. atlanticum ‘Flore Pleno’ in my travels. Also called Moroccan poppy or double Atlas poppy, there is usually a bee rolling around in the pollen-rich stamens. Despite its Mediterranean origins, it’s quite hardy and easily grown from seed.

Finally we come to the ‘type species’ for Papaver, the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum.  That common name, of course, refers to the latex derived from certain botanical varieties of opium poppy being grown – either legally by the pharmaceutical industry, or illegally by the illicit drug trade  – for naturally-occurring alkaloids such as morphine and  codeine, among others. These are the “opiates” whose sedative and painkilling effects can also be highly addictive.  “Somniferum”, the Latin epithet for the species means “sleep-inducing”.  But most of the 52 botanical varieties of P. somniferum do not produce opiates. Czech blue poppy, though the same species name, is farmed for bread-seed, the little black poppy seeds you find on bagels and cakes. And many varieties were simply bred for ornamental purposes, not for medicinal or illicit drug manufacture. But if you want a history of the Opium Wars, etc., check out the Wiki page.

One beautiful cultivar of P. somniferum is ‘Lauren’s Grape’, below, my photo showing the glaucous, lettuce-like foliage of opium poppy. I photographed this lovely specimen in the Niwot, Colorado garden of Mary and Larry Scripter, which was designed by Lauren herself, Lauren Springer.

‘Cherry Glow’ is another beautiful opium poppy cultivar. I found a little Toxomerus geminatus hoverfly foraging on the pollen-rich stamens.

Sometimes you’ll see seeds offered for “peony-flowered” opium poppies, P. somniferum var. paeoniflorum.  The cultivar below is ‘Flemish Antique’ and is quite famous in poppy circles.

And then there is P. somniferum var. laciniatum with its shaggy petals. I photographed the pretty duo below in my son-in-law’s mom’s farm garden in Alberta.

And now, finally, I come to the end of my long, long look at the diverse Poppy Family. With its silky white petals and bright yellow stamens, Romneya coulteri, Coulter’s matilija poppy or California tree poppy, is the tallest poppy family species I’ve photographed, growing up to 8 ft (2.4 m) tall and wide.  Though I have seen this species in California, I photographed this one in the public garden in the Queenstown Gardens Park in New Zealand.   

My Motley Pots

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For someone growing plants in meadows and naturalistic planting beds at ground level at our cottage on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto, I spend an inordinate length of time each summer watching a few mismatched pots on the upper deck right outside my cottage living room window. 

At first it was just a pair of oversized resin pots planted with conventional annuals. In 2007, that meant ‘Profusion Orange’ zinnias, nasturtiums, ivy geraniums and peach and yellow African daisies (Osteospermum ‘Symphony Series’).

In 2011, I planted both pots with an eclectic mix of succulents, agastache and spiny porcupine tomato (Solanum pyracanthos) that I bought at the Toronto Botanical Garden’s spring plant sale. 

That was the first year I noticed that the ruby-thoated hummingbird seemed to be enjoying nectaring in the agastache flowers.

In 2012, my pots featured the few succulents I was able to winter over in a sunny ground floor window as well as a swath of colourful portulaca.

In 2015, with photography on my mind, I paid more attention to hummingbird favourites, shopping at a favourite nursery (Toronto’s Plant World, sadly now closed) to buy a selection of salvias and agastaches (aka hummingbird mints) I called my “hummingbird groceries”.

One pot featured deep-pink calibrachoa, orange portulaca and ‘Zahara Double Orange’ zinnias with Agastache ‘Kudos Series’.

The hummingbirds loved Agastache ‘Kudos Coral’.

I added a third pot that summer, planting it with Bidens ferulifolia ‘Campfire Fireburst’ (an over-rated plant)….

….. and some special salvias or sages, including Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips’.

 The hummingbird supped a little in an ordinary nasturtium too.

In 2016, I couldn’t find all the plants I wanted so I filled in with assorted fancy  petunias. I also found holy basil or tulsi (Ocimum tenuiflorum) which is one of the most amazing bee plants. Since I do a lot of native bee photography, I never had to go far to find a huge assortment of bees to photograph…..

…… including the tiny green sweat bee (Augochlora pura).

But that was the year I discovered that hummingbirds love the Wish series of salvias, including Salvia ‘Ember’s Wish’ below.

The next year, 2017 (notice I added two additional very motley pots from the back of the cottage), I had a pleasant surprise.  The striped and ‘Wave’ series petunias I’d grown the previous year self-seeded in the soil over winter and…

….. produced a beautiful mix of healthy hybrids in all kinds of jewel colours.  I liked them much better than the originals, and some had that old-fashioned fragrance.

I also grew heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens) for its sweet perfume and was pleased to welcome back self-seeded ‘Apricot Sprite’ agastache (A. aurantiacum)……

….. which is always a hummingbird menu choice.

That year I also grew blackeyed susan vine (Thunbergia alata ‘Susie Yellow‘) on a tripod in one of the pots and caught the hummingbird checking it out on occasion.

In 2018, I worked on my close-up photography.  It’s not that easy to get photos of the male ruby-throated (it’s the male that sports the rosy neck feathers or gorget), since males migrate south much earlier than females, usually by the end of July. But here is monsieur on Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blooms’.

It was fun to try Lantana montevidensis that year, and someone approved!

As always, the self-seeded ‘Apricot Sprite’  (Agastache  aurantiacum) was popular not just with hummingbirds, but with the odd bumble bee too.

For 2019, my motley pots featured the usual suspects in the sage department, and I added a little birdbath which was never visited (though pretty)…..

….. and one unusual Betsy Clebsch (California’s sage queen) hybrid called Salvia ‘Big Swing’.  It was visited once in a while, but it wasn’t as popular as….

…..Salvia ‘Amistad’….

….or Salvia ‘Ember’s Wish’.

Which brings me to 2020.  Actually, let’s go back to November 2019. When I knew my Toronto source for plants of Argentine sage (Salvia guaranitica) was going out of business, I decided to dig up my tender ‘Black and Blooms’ plants and bring them down from Lake Muskoka to the city. I left the pots on the deck in early autumn for my husband to keep watered when I travelled to Greece to take a botanical tour with my pal Liberto Dario. Alas, my husband  also travelled to New York on the coldest night of November and my poor sages sat outside in Toronto as the thermometer plunged to -9C. When I came home, they seemed to have died. But I put them in our basement laundry tubs, gave them a watering, and just watched. Sure enough, little leaves emerged eventually and by March they announced themselves ready to greet hummingbirds for another season.

For some reason, perhaps Covid-19!!, I decided that this would be the year I would return to seed-sowing at home. Alas, I had long ago discarded my old basement grow-lights, but I did have a few LED lights for the gooseneck lamps which I sometimes use for small-scale studio photography.  And I also had an empty 3rd floor guest bedroom window-seat. Voilà, I had seedlings in April!

I had long wanted to try sowing Petunia exserta, a rare, threatened endemic from limestone outcrops in the Serras de Sudeste in Brazil. It was first described in 1987; thirty years later, only fourteen plants were found during an expedition. It is reputed to be a good hummingbird plant, so of course I wanted to try it.  A friend in Victoria gifted me seeds and it turned out to be amazingly eager to germinate and grow!

I also thought it would be fun to grow an old French marigold from seed, a tall single form that was supposed to have been grown by Linnaeus himself in his garden in Upssala, Sweden.  So I ordered seed for Tagetes patula ‘Burning Embers’.  You should know that although this species is called “French” marigold, it’s actually native to Mexico and Guatemala. It got its common name because it was brought back to Europe in the 17th century by Portuguese explorers.  The seeds germinated quickly, but they were a little wonky as they twisted vigorously toward the light.

By June, the annuals were planted in Muskoka and the petunias looked stunning. 

I wasn’t sure if any hummingbirds had found them, but I was convinced later when I saw the watercolour that my son’s girlfriend, Italian artist Marta Motti, made for me as a birthday surprise.  That’s the male with his ruby throat, by the way.

Hummingbird on Petunia exserta by Marta Motti

Late June and early July saw an unrelenting heat wave and drought. On July 4th, I put a thermometer on a chair on my sundeck near my pots and it read 104F-40C.  It was a huge challenge to keep the pots watered sufficiently, and I realized these two annuals were meant for rich, moisture-retentive meadows, not crowded pots.  And the petunias grow upwards in the fashion of indeterminate tomatoes, making flowers only on the end of the shoot and dropping the withered flowers by the dozens.  If you want to revive gangly plants, it’s recommended to shear them back in midsummer to the first branching shoots and new growth will form.

Finally, on July 16th the rains came. It poured. My meadows rejoiced and the motley pots were saturated. I did notice that the bright red of the Petunia exserta faded to a pale rose in the heavy rain, but that seemed to be temporary.  Notice that I had added a few rustic willow arbours to host the red morning glory (Ipomoea coccinea) that I seeded in the pots and has yet to flower.

Fast forward a few weeks to mid-August and the pots look wild, overgrown and the most motley they’ve ever been. Fortunately, I’ve never wanted to win a beauty contest with these containers; it’s all about hummingbirds and bees.

This gold-edged red flower is the classic seed catalogue look of Tagetes patula ‘Burning Embers’,but the seeds I sowed produced a sunset mix of colours, some striped or streaked.

Bumble bees arrived in droves to forage for pollen on them.

They look very festive with the ‘Black and Blooms’ sage.

Though they’re usually listed as growing to 18-24 inches (45-60 cm), mine have reached  41 inches  (104 cm) and may well grow taller.  I was curious about the connection to Linnaeus, and asked my Facebook friend, Swedish ecologist Roger Holt, who was at one time a gardener at the Linnaeus garden. He said: “I asked botanist Jesper Kårehed, responsible for the Linnaeus heritage parts and got the answer that both Linnaeus and his precursor, the universal genius Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702) who built the first Swedish Botanical Garden (that later become the Linnaeus garden), had Tagetes patula (and erecta) and from paintings you can see that Rudbeck had the high elongated forms.  In the 1920’s seeds from a form, said to have been picked in the garden of Hammarby, Linnaeus’s private home, started to be around in the trade.  The Linnaeus garden was recreated in the 1930’s, and the tagetes have been there all from the start but probably not the same line of seeds.”

It’s a bit like having Linnaeus’s meadow right outside my window.

The petunias have hosted the odd wasp, and a handsome slaty skimmer dragonfly made it his sunny hunting perch for a few days.

But it has been fun to watch the hummingbird make its way around the flowers, taking a sip out of each.

Here’s a little video I made starring Petunia exserta.

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However, the champion this summer, as every year, is Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blooms’.

Let me leave you with a musical nod to my motley pots and their faithful feathered visitors.

The Joyous Alma VanDusen Garden

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This post has been almost 9 years in the making! It was August 29, 2011 and I was in Vancouver to visit my mother, who was living in a care home in the suburbs.  As I have done every time I travel “home” to Vancouver from Toronto, I set aside several hours to walk through Van Dusen Botanical Garden, a place I know well and one for which my late mom and I shared a deep affection. As you can see from the map below, its 55 acres (22 hectares) make quite the journey.

That late summer day, just months before the formal opening of the new Visitors Centre, colour abounded throughout VanDusen. There was the most amazing planting of colourful annuals out by the entrance, below: a textural mixture of Salvia patens ‘Cambridge Blue’, Zinnia angustifolia ‘Profusion Orange’,yellow coreopsis, purple Verbena rigida and fuzzy bunny tails grass (Lagurus ovatus).

Inside the garden, I was happy to see the carnivorous pitcher plants (Sarracenia flava) thriving in their beautiful urn.

I sauntered slowly through the Fragrance Garden, sniffing the sweet peas, Auratum lilies and chocolate cosmos.

As always, the Black Border with its contrasts of dark and chartreuse foliage was simply sensational.

The Southern Hemisphere garden looked spectacular, with its Fuchsia magellanica, big-leaved Gunnera manicata and Nicotiana sylvestris.

The Perennial Garden featured bands of orange crocosmia, white echinacea and orange helenium.

I explored the big hydrangea collection, so lovely in late summer.  This was Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Europa’, just changing colour sumptuously, as mophead hydrangeas do.

Hours after entering, my feet tired and ready to head to my car, I came to the very back of VanDusen, as far away from the entrance as you can get in this big garden. (See the red arrow in the map above.)  I’m usually a spring visitor, when the rhododendrons, camellias and blue poppies are in flower (you’ll meet those in my next blog), so I was surprised and intrigued to see a mass of colourful flowers, all annuals, in a wildish, meadow-like garden. I waited a few minutes while a bride-to-be finished her wedding photos, then wandered in along the bark chip path. It was like walking into a Willie Wonka flower factory. Past the dark-leaved fountain grass entrance, there were sunflowers towering over my head; pink, white and mauve spider flowers; bronze canna leaves; gloriosa daisies; wine-red, feathery amaranth; and a bright edging of ‘Lemon Gem’ marigolds. All of these flowers are grown from seed!

But unlike many public gardens where they grow in soldierly rows, here they were grown more like a tapestry of perennials.

It wasn’t until I started gathering the images for this blog that I realized that almost all of these annuals are native to the Americas. For example, Amaranthus cruentus, below is a native of Mexico and thought to have been wild harvested before spreading to the southeast U.S.and domesticated for agriculture by Arizona’s indigenous Hopi people around 4000 B.C. They called it komo and used it not just as a grain for flour, but harvested the bracts of the feathery magenta flowers as “Hopi red dye” to colour the dough for their cornbread.  Yellow signet marigold, i.e. Tagetes tenuifolia ‘Lemon Gem’, below, is native to Mexico, Central America and Peru and Argentina. It was used in traditional medicine and its flowers are edible and often used today as a salad garnish. Slender vervain (Verbena rigida), below, originates in Brazil and Argentina.

Spider flower (Cleome hassleriana), below, comes from South America.

I loved the combinations in the garden.

The native American sunflowers (Helianthus annuus), especially, were gorgeous in late August and seemed to have been grown from many seed strains.

Van Dusen Botanical Garden has beehives and the honey bees were all over the sunflowers…

…. enjoying gathering nectar from the tiny disk flowers in the centre. Did you know that there’s a honey in Burgundy, France made from sunflowers? It’s yellow and buttery and is called Miel Tournesol.

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The garden makes extensive use of gloriosa daisies, the tetraploid form of biennial black eyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta), another plant native to a wide swath of the Americas.

This one looked like the cultivar ‘Autumn Colors’.

As I came to the end of the path that day in 2011, I looked back and noticed castor-bean plant (Ricinus communis ‘Carmencita’), native to the Mediterranean basin, and the tall South American vervain (Verbena bonariensis).  Everything here was at its peak, and I could see the foliage of delphiniums in the mix as well.

East of the flowery garden adjacent to the Maze was a border filled with brilliantly coloured perennials and annuals beneath bright-gold ‘Frisia’ black locust trees (Robinia pseudoacacia).

I couldn’t help but think of all the kids who would have been wowed by these giant sunflowers!

This was a fun combination: tall cup plants (Silphium perfoliatum),  yellow Sinacalia tangutica, white Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) and blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’).

As I left VanDusen that August day in 2011, I asked a gardener in the Southern Hemisphere Garden who managed the colourful garden I’d just toured? “Oh, that would be Miguel,” he said. I wrote down the name somewhere and lost it. A few years later, when former VanDusen Garden Director Harry Jongerden became our Director at the Toronto Botanical Garden, I was asked to photograph him, below. When we were finished, I mentioned this amazing flower garden way at the back of VanDusen. “Oh, that would be Miguel Molina’s garden”, he said. This time I wrote his name down.

VanDusen Botanical Garden will be 45 years old this summer. Prior to becoming a garden, it was part of the old Shaughnessy Golf Course, leased in 1911 from Marathon Realty, at the time an arm of the Canadian Pacific Railway.  And yes, that’s actor Clark Gable (‘Gone With the Wind’), below, smoking his pipe while playing in a foursome at the club in 1933.

When Shaughnessy’s lease was up in 1960, Marathon’s plan was to redevelop the entire property as housing, commercial and retail. But in 1966, a group of concerned citizens got together and formed a charitable organization called the Vancouver Botanical Gardens Association (VBGA). They worked with the City of Vancouver, the Province of British Columbia and the Vancouver Foundation to come up with the money to buy part of the old golf course to create a botanical garden. The Vancouver Foundation had been started as a perpetual legacy in 1944 by the lumber magnate and philanthropist Whitford Julian VanDusen (1888-1979) and is now one of the largest in North America, worth $1.2 billion. Within the fund were several VanDusen family funds, including the Alma VanDusen Garden Fund. W.J. VanDusen himself made a $1 million donation to the garden’s development. In thanks, the garden was named for him, one of the few public references to his generosity and he was invited to cut the ribbon at the official opening on August 30, 1975, below, flanked by Premier Dave Barrett, left, Alderman May Brown and Vancouver Mayor Art Phillips.

Late last September, my husband and I made a fast run through VanDusen on an overnight stop in Vancouver before flying in to Cougar Annie’s Garden in the rainforest outside Tofino. I wrote a two-part blog about that fantastic experience.  As is my habit, I visited the flower garden, which I learned was named for W.J. VanDusen’s wife Alma VanDusen (1888-1969). The Alma VanDusen Garden is adjacent to the Alma VanDusen Meadow.  According to a Vancouver Foundation report, “Although she had a spirit of adventure, Alma was outwardly a quiet, private person similar to her husband. She was an artistic soul who enjoyed music and painting. A lover of flowers, Alma grew magnificent orchids in her greenhouse and later tended beautiful gardens at their farm in Langley.”

Given that it was now early autumn, the fountain grass was in flower and those…..

… seedling delphiniums had started to bloom, too. I noticed zinnias were being used to fill in the spaces between the tall flowers.

 

As we walked on towards the parking lot, I spied a gardener digging in the vegetable garden nearby. “Are you Miguel Molina?” I asked.  “Yes,” he answered. I asked if I could photograph him for my blog and he posed for me. Most importantly, at last I was able to thank the gardener who tends such a joyful, colourful garden of memory, dedicated to the generosity of two Vancouverites who helped to make this stellar botanical garden possible.

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I will be writing about VanDusen Garden in May in my next blog. If you want to read about another exceptional Vancouver garden, visit the blog I wrote on UBC’s David Lam Asian Garden.

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Other public gardens I’ve blogged about include Toronto Botanical Garden; Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton ON; Montreal Botanical Garden; New York Botanical Garden; Wave Hill, Bronx NY; New York’s Conservatory Garden in Central Park; New York’s High Line in May and in June; fabulous Chanticleer in Wayne, PA; the Ripley Garden in Washington DC; Chicago Botanic Garden; The Lurie Garden, Chicago; Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin TX; Denver Botanic Gardens; the Japanese Garden in Portland OR; the Bellevue Botanical Garden, Bellevue, WA; the Los Angeles County Arboretum; RBG Kew in London; Kirstenbosch, Cape Town; the Harold Porter National Botanical Gardens, South Africa; Durban Botanic Gardens; Otari-Wilton’s Bush, Wellington NZ; Dunedin Botanic Garden, NZ; Christchurch Botanic Gardens;

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.