The organizers of our Puget Sound Garden Fling this July chose the perfect garden in which to let us gather as a group, feet tired from a day of touring, glasses of wine in hand, to marvel at a textural, art-filled garden sculpted from a steep hillside and appointed with sleek, beautiful outdoor furnishings. As a lover of colour, I was wowed by the garden of Mac Gray and Meagan Foley overlooking Tacoma’s Commencement Bay — and I loved everything about this dramatic, chartreuse-black combination on the terrace.
It made for a very convivial setting!
Though black as an attractive finish for fences and decorative features is now being seen more often, this garden used it in diverse ways, like this sleek wall fountain adding its own splashing soundtrack to our party.
Black continues to be a unifying theme in the pool at the base of the hillside garden where a herd of hippos meander along the shore and a sculptural black fountain creates its own music beneath a massive gunnera, its strong stems echoed in orange spikes.
The plant colour palette is mostly restricted to greens with chartreuse Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘All Gold’) creating luminous leafy fountains here and there. Pieces of art are nestled into the rocks that form the hillside landscape while also retaining the steep slope. At the top of the hill near a copse of white-trunked birches is a massive Stonehenge-like sculpture.
Black planters add to the garden’s dark touches.
‘All Gold’ Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra) is one of the best grasses for all-season chartreuse colour. It prefers damp soil and is perfect for a pondside planting.
Flowers come and go, say seasoned garden designers, but foliage is king. Here we see a compact Japanese maple adding a note of wine to the many greens.
Hostas and sedges (Carex spp.) enjoy the moist conditions in the lower slope.
Higher up, a chartreuse pot lifts colourful shade-lovers above the green foliage plants.
Everywhere are touches of chartreuse and black, like these glazed garden balls tucked below ferns.
The motif seems to be plants + art, including these interesting scrolls in the tile below the shield ferns (Polystichum spp.).
Standing on the terrace sipping my wine, I was transfixed by a semi-circular black sculpture glimpsed through the pendulous boughs of a weeping willow. When I asked Meagan Foley about it, she said she had looked at that part of the hillside and felt it needed a strong piece of art – and this was the beautiful result.
Focusing in on the sculpture, I saw that it was cut out to perfectly frame the yellow spikes of ligularia up the slope.
Not all the artistic touches are one-of-a-kind sculpture, however. There is space in the garden for pure fun, too.
Heading to the front of the house and a balcony overlooking the front garden and Puget Sound, I found more nods to black and chartreuse in the ceramic bamboo culms and furnishings. I imagine this is a wonderful spot for a morning coffee, gazing at the hummingbirds under the Japanese maple and watching the trains pass by on the shore of Commencement Bay. Thank you Meagan and Mac, for sharing it with us.
**********
Do you love charteuse plants too? Here’s a blog I did with lots of ideas for splashing a little of that sunshine-green hue in your garden: Cordial Charteuse on the Garden Menu
And here are my previous blogs on Puget Sound Gardens:
The Wonders of Windcliff – the Indianola garden of famed plant explorer Dan Hinkley and architect Robert Jones
A Return to Heronswood – nineteen years later, I returned to this resurrected oasis on Kitsap
There’s no question that the most unusual garden I’ve ever visited – and not just on my Austin tour this May– is the one belonging to the inimitable Lucinda Hutson.
Yes, that Lucinda Hutson. The Austinite who might be the world’s leading authority on tequila, pulque, mescal, margaritas – and of course VIVA! Because Lucinda is certainly an expert on what Mexicans would call alegría de vivir or what the French could call joie de vivre. Meaning, of course, that life is a party and it’s meant to be lived joyously and in full colour. Preferably with tequila, the subject of her latest book, Viva Tequila, a truly fabulous read on one of the world’s favourite licores.
The video below in Lucinda’s own voice gives an idea of the breadth of the book.
So let’s take our own tour of Lucinda’s wonderful garden and casita moradita (“little purple house”), where she has lived and gardened for 41 years. Imagine a passionate-purple house from the 1940s with a funky cottage garden out front and a Mexican cantina out back. Well, actually, you don’t have to imagine: here it is. Taken together, her ‘Texicana’ house and garden pay homage not just to the colour purple, but to sandia (watermelon), papaya, mango and the brilliant colours of the Mexican barrio, yellow and turquoise. And notice the hues that Lucinda is wearing match that arch perfectly! That’s colores style.
Her front garden palette, unsurprisingly, features lots of purples (Salvia guaranitica ‘Amistad’), as well as blues and pinks.
And the ‘Amistad’ sage, unsurprisingly, always features bees (and hummingbirds).
There are lots more heat-loving sages in the front garden. Here one is paired with the unusual blooms of bat-face cuphea (Cuphea llavea).
There are all kinds of chairs and benches in Lucinda’s gardens where you can sit and enjoy the view — and in this case, the delicious perfume of Confederate jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminioides). Love this colour combination.
And this on the shawl below.
Every detail is thought out, including the broken Mexican crockery beneath the pelargonium.
The fish tile leads us down the side of the house into Lucinda’s Mermaid Grotto.
What a lovely spot for sitting and listening to the trickle of water in the pond.
There are lots of sirenas here, amidst seashells and mother-of-pearl! The succulents are arranged to look like plants at the bottom of the sea.
And, of course, fishy chairs in turquoise-and-orange……
…and seashore-themed coffee tables.
Just another mermaid, but this one fashioned from Haitian oil drums.
As we toured, Lucinda’s cat Sancho did his morning grooming under bougainvillea.
What lovely colour sense she has, created sometimes with small gestures that catch the eye.
“Our Lady of La Tina” (the bathtub goddess) has the job of protecting the garden.
Near the back of the house is the raised vegetable-herb garden. Lucinda grew up in El Paso, Texas in the desert, surrounded by cacti and gravel. She developed her love of herbs and old-fashioned, bright flowers during her travels in Mexico. Look at how simple…..
…..flowers like zinnias and marigolds — both Mexican natives — create a fiesta-like atmosphere. Lucinda freely admits that her gardens are anything but low-maintenance. “This is a water-intensive garden that requires hours with the hoses in the summer, despite my drip system — so many pots and nooks and crannies.” She credits the help of her “wonderful, like-minded gardener from Mexico who shares his culture and ideas with me, and we have so much fun!”
She learned how to cook with Mexican flair, using herbs fresh from her garden. Those culinary delights were featured in her Herb Garden Cookbook, which was published in 1992. Her articles have also appeared in Food and Wine, Food Arts, Fine Gardening, Horticulture, The Herb Companion, Kitchen Garden, Organic Gardening and Southern Living. Isn’t that rustic bench lovely…..
….with its cushions of hermosas flores!
Mexican pottery is also displayed throughout the garden.
Why men need to take cheap cialis mastercard ? Men above the age of 40 generally require some stimulation to achieve full erection in their penis during lovemaking. Although not everyone is seen talking about it, numerous men sildenafil viagra devensec.com are seen affected by impotence condition. These herbal pills are available in the market, when it comes to the effectiveness, this drug surpasses all its contenders. order generic cialis devensec.com buy cialis online http://www.devensec.com/development/FREQUENTLY_ASKED_QUESTIONS_2016.pdf Broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are some among the best food for a healthy and balanced diet. Swiss chard and baby sun rose (Aptenia cordifolia) in a cobalt-blue pot. What a nice combo!
Lucinda invited us to crush the allspice leaves, one of many tender plants she grows for her cookery. She moves this one into the greenhouse for winter.
Even the trash corner looks festive in her garden, with that purple clapboard and blown glass behind it.
Children’s folk-art chairs are arrayed on the wall, as is the custom in parts of Mexico.
Now we’ve come to fiesta central, the deck that hosts Lucinda’s famous parties and salsa dancing. Behind is her writing studio.
This is the buffet/bar. Wouldn’t you love to be invited to a party here?
Now we’re in Lucinda’s Tequila Cantina, her homage to all things tequila. The vignette below would be perfect for the annual Dio de los Muertos celebrated by Mexicans (and Austinites) on November 1st.
Her collection of tequila bottles, glasses and accessories is epic.
More turquesa!
I’ve seen a lot of bottle trees in southern and southwest gardens, but none as evocative of lime and salt as this tree, appropriately mulched with corks!
Leading from the garden into the kitchen is the Stairway of Dreams. Come on in! (Lucinda said it’s okay….)
There are sleek, granite-countered kitchens, then there’s Lucinda’s wonderful, funky kitchen. I cannot imagine how many comidas deliciosas began in this colourful place!
Nor how many of her special Mexican martinis were mixed at this cabinet.
What a wonderful dining room for entertaining friends in Austin winters.
And, of course, there’s an agave chandelier overhead.
The Mexican punched-tin lamp sports its own adornments.
And there is folk art galore all around, from a lifetime of collecting in Mexico.
Her living room is cozy (and rosy).
Even the bathroom window is a seaside fantasy.
My last stop on the house tour was the bedroom, where purple walls and gorgeous bed linens create a kind of sueño mexicano.
Then it was time to say adios to our lovely hostess.
But that wasn’t the last time we’d see Lucinda during our fling. She was signing books the next night at our farewell party at the fabulous shop and venue, Articulture. Viva Tequila! is such a good read, part history, part botany, part cookbook, part cocktail primer and all fun — highly recommended. (When I photographed her below, she had discovered I was Canadian and was regaling me with her love of the singer Ian Tyson. I think she even sang a few bars of one of his songs!)
I adore Mexico and have visited many regions over the past four decades. So here’s a margarita toast (straight from the beach in Manzanillo) to Lucinda Hutson and her exuberant spirit. Salud!
And since we can’t hear the mariachi bands that have surely graced Lucinda’s parties in her El Jardín Encantador, here’s a trio from a favourite restaurant in Cozumel, Casa Mission, singing my very favourite Spanish song. I dedicate it to her.
I know, I know. That was a very bad pun. However, I was deliriously happy to be at Dumbarton Oaks, the former home of Georgetown DC doyenne Mildred Bliss, and especially to be in the spectacular gardens designed by Beatrix Farrand (1872-1959). But I was also almost delirious with the intense heat and humidity on a Saturday afternoon in mid-June so, having arrived a few minutes before the official garden opening time at 2 pm, I was delighted to sit for a moment on the cool stone steps leading into the house’s museum, and contemplate this delicious southern magnolia (M. grandiflora) blossom. Bliss, yes, bliss.
Finally, it was time to head into the R Street entrance to the grounds. In 1702, the land here was granted by Britain’s Queen Anne to a Scottish colonist named Colonel Ninian Beall, part of a 789-acre concession which he called the Rock of Dumbarton after a beloved place in Scotland. In 1801, an early version of the house was built by William Hammond Dorsey. In 1810, the Orangery was built by another resident in the Palladian style; in the 1860s, another resident attached it to the house. Six decades later, when diplomat Robert Woods Bliss and his wife (and step-sister), heiress Mildred Barnes Bliss purchased the property, this part of Georgetown was mostly farmland, but the house itself was there, albeit smaller. They renovated the Orangery, added to the house and began working with Beatrix Farrand on the gardens. In 1940, Mildred Bliss donated the house and estate to Harvard University, while continuing to live there. In time it became a research centre. And yes, though they do not form an oak woodland as they did when the property was named, there is still a beautiful oak on Dumbarton Oaks’s southern lawn.
When Beatrix Farrand wrote about the south facade in her plant book for Dumbarton Oaks, she was authoritative in assessing the relationship of the house and its foundation plantings: “The planting on the south side of the house has been chosen from material with foliage of small scale in order to give apparent size and importance to the building. Large as the building is, a study of its scale will show the detail itself is small. As a general principle, approximately one-third of the spring line of the building should be unplanted, as the effect is unfortunate where a building seems to be totally submerged beneath line of plants that muffle the architectural lines and make the building appear to rise from a mass of shrubs rather than from the ground.”
You can explore Dumbarton Oaks’ gardens online, based on the garden plan below, or you can just take a fast, chatty stroll through its 16 acres in my little blog here.
Let’s start adjacent to the house in the 1810 Orangery, which is lovely and cool……
….. with mossy walls striated with shadows from the supports of the glass roof. That creeping fig vine (Ficus pumila) festooned over the walls and arched windows is more than 150 years old, its exuberance reined in by Beatrix Farrand. In winter, the Orangery is used to store tender plants such as oleander, gardenia and citrus.
By the way, I’ve visited Dumbarton Oaks twice in early April, several years ago, and this is the large magnolia that blooms outside the Orangery. I included this photo (a scanned slide from 2003) because of Beatrix Farrand’s reference to it in her plant book for the gardens. “Immediately south of the orangery, a magnificent old tree of Magnolia conspicua denudata has been christened “The Bride” as when it is in full bloom in early April its loveliness is an enchantment. The tree should be preserved as long as it can be made to thrive and bloom well, and when its days are over it should be replaced by another as nearly like it as possible, as the sight of the white tree from the R Street gateway and looked down upon from the orangery is one of the real horticultural events of the Dumbarton season.”
Now it’s time to head out into the early summer heat and begin our own tour in the Green Garden, the highest point on the site (and once the site of the barn, which the Blisses removed). I stop in front of a stone plaque to Beatrix Farrand’s memory.
Its inscription….May they see their dreams springing to life under the spreading boughs/May lucky stars bring them every continuous good
The plaque celebrates the friendship between Mildred Bliss, below left, and her ‘landscape gardener’, Beatrix Jones Farrand, right, whom she hired to design the gardens in 1920 and who stayed involved with the estate until retiring in 1940.
Born in 1872 to wealthy New Yorkers who summered at their estate, Reef Point at Bar Harbor in Mount Desert, Maine, Beatrix Jones began her training in landscape gardening at the age of 20 under Charles Sprague Sargent at Boston’s Arnold Arboretum. At 23, she launched her design practice in her mother’s New York brownstone; at 26, she was the only woman among the 11 founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). While working on Yale University’s landscape, she met historian Max Farrand, who was chair of the university’s history department; they married in 1913 and she became Beatrix Jones Farrand. (In my last blog on the trees and gardens of Princeton University, I wrote about her beautiful landscape (1914-15) for the Princeton University Graduate College.) She was also a friend of novelist Henry James, whose pet name for her was “Trix”. As for the Blisses, there was also a family connection: while serving as secretary of the United States Embassy in Paris during the beginning of WWI, Robert Bliss and his wife Mildred socialized with Beatrix’s aunt, the novelist Edith Jones Wharton.
Looking over the stone wall beside the plaque, we can see the lovely Swimming Pool and Loggia below. This area was a horse stable yard and manure pit when the Blisses bought Dumbarton Oaks. Architect Frederick Brooke, who had done renovations on the house, transformed them into a swimming pool and bath house,. But in 1923 Mildred Bliss fired Brooke and hired the New York firm McKim Mead & White to rework his interiors and redesign the bathhouse, loggia and arcade.
Here’s the pool in April, with weeping Japanese cherries. Isn’t it gorgeous?
Let’s head down to the Beech Terrace, which features an American beech (Fagus grandifolia) that was the 1948 replacement for the mature European beech (F. sylvatica) that formed the centrepiece in Beatrix Farrand’s design.
We can look out on the Pebble Garden, originally constructed as a high-walled tennis court, but was modified by Beatrix Farrand, who lowered the walls and draped them with wisteria. Not much tennis was played over the decades, so it was redesigned as an Italianate Pebble Garden in 1959-61 by landscape architect Ruth Havey, who had begun her career in Farrand’s practice in 1928 and had assisted her boss on early designs for the gardens.
Here is the Pebble Garden at cherry blossom time in early April. That’s a big magnolia, and the beginning of Cherry Hill outside its walls.
There is a deep pool with three fountain statues at the far end of the Pebble Garden, gifts to Mildred Bliss in 1959 from Gertrude Chanler of Meridian House.
This is what they sound like on a June afternoon.
When you move about on the great Georgetown hillside where Beatrix Farrand worked her magic, you’re treading on the patterned brick paths and stairs she designed, often flanked by boxwood hedges that, in the heat of an early summer day, have a fragrance best known to those who’ve owned cats….
Let’s move on to the Urn Terrace, where the mood is serene and green.
Not far away is a lovely little piece of landscape art by Hugh Livingston: the Garden Quartet.
The interpretive sign in the Garden Quartet reads: “Garden designer Beatrix Farrand wrote that with the sound of falling water and the wood thrush, peace comes ‘dropping slow’ at Dumbarton Oaks. She was referencing the Lake Isle of Innisfree, in which William Butler Yates writes, ‘And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow.’ …. While the energy of the composition changes from moment to moment, much of the composition references the sound of the wood thrush, the feeling of peace descending on the garden…..” Here’s my video illustrating a little of that energy (and, yes, my walking shoes and khaki pants).
Moving on, the Rose Garden is formal and filled with bloom in June (though I always think it would be more effective to have an underplanting of perennial geraniums or dianthus or lavender for those gawky canes.)
I did find one of the pruning staff hard at work here. (Soundtrack by Lynn Anderson)
There is a beautiful stone bench in the Rose Garden with the engraved inscription Quod Severis Metes – “as you sow so shall you reap”.
I find that if I stand on its seat and look over the amazing stone finial, I can peek down into the Fountain Terrace with its twin limestone pools and tropical plant borders – but there’s no time to visit that garden today.
Onward we go, heading east parallel to the R Street wall in the direction of the Lover’s Lane Pool – a route that drops 55 feet in elevation from the Orangery to the pool. On the way, we approach a stone column under an ivied arch, all in the embrace of a weeping willow. This is the Terrior Column.
The common tawny daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva) look as elegant as I’ve ever seen them. Here’s a closer look at the Terrior Column.
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Nearby, in a bamboo-framed clearing, this little Asian-inspired seat with the leaf roof was designed in 1935 by Beatrix Farrand, who wrote: “This is intended to be a shady place in which garden visitors may rest or read, separated from the flowers but yet near them.” The side panels, not clearly visible, represent the Aesop’s fable “The Fox, the Crow and the Cheese”.
Now we come to the southeast corner of the garden leading in to the pool Here we find a grotto with a pipe-playing Pan….
…..his musical instrument and hooves as shiny as when Beatrix Farrand installed him there around 1930.
Turn the corner and you’re gazing down at the Lover’s Lane Pool. According to the website, Farrand designed the pool and its 50-seat amphitheatre to resemble the theater at the Accademia degli Arcadi Bosco Parrasio in Rome, the literary society of the Arcadians.
She designed the baroque cast stone columns that flank the pool.
We head down the slope and arrive at the hidden entrance to the Herbaceous Border. Beyond the orange daylilies is one of the famous Farrand-designed garden benches.
And then we behold this long, lovely double border, our gaze directed to the simple bench at the far end, as she intended.
There are both perennials such as astilbe and annuals like larkspur in the border. In spring, it is full of flowering bulbs.
Included are plants grown for their architectural form, like cardoon (Cynara cardunculus).
And it is abuzz with bees, like this bumble bee foraging on a pink dahlia.
Next we walk under the Grape Arbor at the edge of the Kitchen Gardens.
When Beatrix Farrand and Mildred Bliss planned the kitchen garden in 1922, Farrand located it on the flattest piece of land she could find, an existing hen house and chickenyard at the northeast corner of the estate. She designed it as three separate working areas: vegetables, herbs and an arboretum, which is now the cutting garden. Looking down on the vegetable garden from the herb beds above, you can see the layout relative to the long grape arbor.
In June, there are leeks and lettuce…
…. and kale and edible flowers too. During the Second World War, after the property was transferred to Harvard University, the vegetable garden was turned into a Victory Garden. Later, it was abandoned and lay fallow, but in 2009 it was restored and now supplies the staff and research fellows with fresh herbs and vegetables for their meals.
We climb up to the Herb Garden which has fetching displays of fennel and lavender with a boxwood-edged stone path.
Bumble bees and honey bees are all over the lavender.
Leaving the herb garden, I stop to admire a dish of succulents on a stone wall. (Not all is vintage Farrand here.)
The Cutting Garden is really lovely, full of bright flowers and bees and butterflies.
The little building is a former tool shed.
I loved this old water trough, and the Clematis heracleifolia in front of it.
The Prunus Walk lies on the path between the kitchen gardens but of course its double row of Prunus x blireana is only prominent in early spring. Fortunately, I saw it 13 years ago in full bloom.
Finally, we reach the Ellipse, This was Mildred Bliss’s vision, a childhood imagining – and in Farrand’s words, “one of the quietest, most peaceful parts of the garden”. In 1958, her boxwood trees were replaced by a double row of 76 American hornbeams (Carpinus caroliniana) which are also aging and will be replaced soon, along with the installation of a new irrigation system.
The fountain is Ruth Havey’s triumph, moved from elsewhere on the property. I made a little video of the delightful water music here, with birdsong in the background.
It’s soon time to go, but we haven’t seen all the gardens. I missed seeing the Arbor Terrace on the way up from the Ellipse this time, but I’ve visited that garden in April, when the aerial hedge of Kieffer pear trees is in bloom outside the iron railing adjacent to the facing teak benches all designed by Beatrix Farrand c.1938.
And of course I didn’t bother with the Forsythia Dell, because Farrand designed that lovely path for its brief burst of spring glory – which I was fortunate to see long ago.
We climb the stairs of the Boxwood Walk, which is on axis with the Ellipse fountain and forms the gently ascending path up the 40-foot rise back to the Urn Terrace. It is time to say farewell to the enduring triumph of Mildred Barnes Bliss and her dear friend Beatrix Farrand.
There will be some beautiful gardens for Torontonians to visit when the Toronto Botanical Garden rolls out the welcome mat for its 30th annual Through the Garden Gate garden tour. It’s being held on the weekend of Saturday June 10 and Sunday June 11th in the neighbourhoods of North Rosedale and Moore Park. In celebration of the 30 years, organizers have selected 30 diverse gardens. Some are lovely formal jewels like this Moore Park garden.
Some back onto wooded ravines.
There’s one of the prettiest green roofs I’ve seen – and on a nice angle to allow visitors a good view.
And beautiful ideas for furnishing a leafy city sanctuary, like this….
…. and this.
And wonderful plant design, of course, like this exquisite pairing of sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) and Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum)….
…and this. Don’t you love Japanese forest grass? This is Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ and ‘All Gold’.
If the weather stays cool, there will still be lush June irises and peonies.
There will be water features, of course, including handsome formal pools….
…tiered fountains…
….and tiny, secret oases under lush textural foliage.
You’ll be able to get some creative ideas for accessories….
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…. and art…
….and arbours and obelisks.
….and gates and path materials.
And there will be loads of pots and planters, including some with herbs….
…. and others with tropical climbing vines like mandevilla.
You’ll see what clever gardeners have done to turn little sheds into outdoor cocktail bars…
…. and see how easy it is to bring home-cooked pizza to your own back garden!
This year, the TBG has arranged for Toronto’s Augie’s Ice Pops to have two stands on the route so you can buy their frosty organic treats, in flavours like strawberry-basil, grapefruit-ginger – or whatever is farm-fresh and seasonal on the second weekend in June!
Through the Garden Gate is your opportunity to support the Toronto Botanical Garden and its work, while enjoying a rare opportunity to explore some of the city’s finest private gardens.
Tickets may be purchased through the TBG’s website here. Prices are as follows, and note that it will be difficult to see all 30 gardens in one day, so a two-day pass is your best bet – and allows flexibility for weather (since single-day wristbands are expressly for Saturday or Sunday and cannot be interchanged).
One-Day Pass: Public $45 / TBG Members $40
Two-Day Pass: Public $65 / TBG Members $60
Students $25 (With ID, One-Day Pass Only)
Tax included. Tickets are limited, advance purchase recommended.
And if you’re not a member of the TBG already, what are you waiting for? Become a member and get that discount on your ticket price, plus all kinds of lovely extras: a magazine, lots of courses, lectures, a wonderful library – and inclusion in a jewel of a garden that’s about to expand and become one of the most exciting greenspaces in Toronto. If you haven’t been, be sure to have a look at my own seasonal photo galleries on the TBG’s website.
No, “brown in the garden” is not a phrase you often hear, unless it’s wondering what to do with those Japanese maple leaves that are curling up and turning brown in summer (uh-oh). Or the white pine needles that are turning brown in October (they’re getting ready to fall silly… no evergreen is truly ever-green.)
In the winter, you might notice bronze oak leaves remaining on trees, even through the snowiest and coldest weather. That is a function of tannins that remain in the leaves once chlorophyll breaks down, protecting and preserving them in the same way an old-fashioned ‘tanner’ would use these substances to turn animal hides into leather. This tendency to hang onto the twig as a brown leaf after most deciduous trees have lost their leaves is called marcescence. Beeches, below, also exhibit marcescence, and their winter leaves can be quite fetching in the garden..
I love this winter combination of columnar beeches (Fagus sylvatica ‘Atropurpurea’) and switch grass (Panicum virgatum) at the Toronto Botanical Garden.
Many warm-season grasses also retain tannins in the leaf and enough structural integrity to stand upright through winter weather. Shown below in snow is switch grass (Panicum virgatum), but you may note this strong winter presence in maiden grass (Miscanthus), feather reed grass (Calamagrostis), fountain grass (Pennisetum) and northern sea oats (Chasmanthium) as well.
Toronto’s Music Garden relies on ornamental grasses to provide much of its interest for the long winter months.
Brown seedheads also have their own charm, and many look beautiful against snow. This is anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum ‘Blue Fortune’) consorting with a grass in winter.
Purple coneflower seedheads (Echinacea purpurea) persist very well through winter, and feed hungry birds as well.
Even in the gardening season, flowers that turn brown add a textural note to plantings. In my own cottage meadows, I love the September shaving-brush seedheads of New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis).
These are the seedheads of Phlomis tuberosa ‘Amazone’, with the fading flowers of echinacea. Not surprisingly, this duo is in the Entry Border of the Toronto Botanical Garden – a border designed by Piet Oudolf, whose philosophy is to create a meadow-like tapestry of plants that lend beauty even when out of bloom.
And look at these giant alliums, also in the entry border at the TBG. Of course they were beautiful when they were rich violet-purple, but I do love them as brown seedheads consorting with the rest of the plants a few weeks later.
Speaking of the Toronto Botanical Garden, I spend so much time there, chronicling the changes in the various gardens, but especially in Piet Oudolf’s Entry Border, that I’ve come to appreciate the plants that persist beyond their starring roles. So I’ve made a video to show the function that “brown” fulfills as a substantive colour in autumn and winter, after the colourful flowers have faded. There are many plants shown in these images, but especially good for persistence of seedheads are Liatris, Echinacea, Achillea, Stachys, Astilbe and, of course, all the ornamental grasses. Have a look……
Piet Oudolf also designed the plantings at the High Line, where brown is a colour, too. Below is a pink astilbe in the process of turning bronze, then buff, making it the perfect colour companion for the blackeyed susans.
Lovely as they are in the winter garden, many grasses also have spectacular brown flowers that create lovely colour combinations in the summer garden, too, like this fluffy brown cloud of (Deschampsia caespitosa) with airy sea lavender (Limonium latifolium), also in the border designed by Piet Oudolf.
And here it is softening purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) at the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington, Ontario. Doesn’t that little cloud of brown add a grace note to that scene?
This is feather reed grass (Calamagrostis acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) with blue Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) – demonstrating that blue and (golden) brown make lovely dance partners.
Speaking of blue and brown, this is a very good combination: Amsonia ‘Blue Ice’ with Heuchera ‘Caramel’.
Heucheras, of course, have been bred over the past few decades to produce a fabulous range of colours, many of which veer towards brown. I love the rich tones of ‘Mahogany’, below.
Even some evergreens can be called brown, like this weird little arborvitae, Thuja occientalis ‘Golden Tuffet’ (which isn’t even dead!)
Many tropical plants seem to exhibit brownish tones. For example, luscious Canna ‘Intrigue’, here with coleus at the Toronto Botanical Garden….
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…. and that strange multi-colored tropical shrub copperleaf (Acalypha wilkesiana), with its patchwork peach & brown leaves. Though you sometimes see this as the cultivar ‘Mosaica’, the reddish-olive-brown shows up in varying degrees in a few forms of that species. ‘Haleakala’ has a completely brown leaf.
I love Cordyline ‘Red Star’, which is the centrepiece of this fabulous urn by the Toronto Botanical Garden’s gifted horticulturist Paul Zammit. Though it often looks more burgundy, here it reads as rich brown, especially with the matching heucheras.
Phormiums or New Zealand flax have been a big part of the tropical gardener’s arsenal, and many are bronze- or olive-brown. This is lovely ‘Dusky Chief’.
And where would gardeners be with annual sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas)? One of the richest is mocha-coloured ‘Sweet Caroline Bronze’, shown below with Pelargonium ‘Indian Dunes’.
There are countless cultivars of the annual foliage plant coleus (Plectranthus scutellarioides), and a few hit the brown jackpot, like ‘Velvet Mocha’ below.
Pineapple lily (Eucomis comosa) ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ has olive-brown foliage that really adds depth to a garden, like the Ladies’ Bed at the New York Botanical Garden.
Brown-flowered perennial plants are, admittedly, in short supply (many gardeners likely wondering why you’d even want a brown flower) but there are strange and lovely bearded irises that come in copper and cinnamon shades, like ‘Hot Spice’, below.
And we simply cannot leave a discussion of brown in the plant world without talking about the genus Carex. Whether it’s Carex testacea, like this fun bronze-headed sculpture in Marietta & Ernie O’Byrne’s Northwest Garden Nursery in Eugene, Oregon……
….. or Carex buchananii in my very own sundeck pots a few years back.
I loved the way the Toronto Botanical Garden’s Paul Zammit used Carex buchananii in this spectacular run of windowboxes, along with orange calibracoa, the golden grass Hakonechloa macra ‘All Gold’, golden cypress and kitchen herbs.
And, yes, C. buchananii can be counted on throughout the snows of winter. (Whether it reappears in spring depends on how cold winter got!)
BUT….. gardeners do not live by plants alone. There are furnishings! And they can be brown & beautiful, like these cool, dark-brown metallic planters at Chanticleer Garden, in Wayne PA. (Check out the carex inside.)
Speaking of Chanticleer, I loved this rugged brown wood-and-COR-TEN steel bench and pergola in their Tennis Garden – and look how lovely brown furnishings are with brilliant chartreuse foliage.
Weathered COR-TEN steel is all the rage these days, being a stable, rusty finish that needs no upkeep. It was used to spectacular effect to make this canoe-like planter at New York’s High Line, holding interesting, moisture-loving plants flanking the garden’s water feature.
Water features are another way to bring a shot of brown into the garden. Have a look at the drilled ceramic urn fountain, below, which I photographed at Seaside Nursery in Carpinteria, California.
Let me finish up with a few sculptural details in shades of brown. Let’s start with whimsy – and a little Pythagorean creation from Suzann Partridge’s annual Artful Garden show. Isn’t she sweet?
And then let’s move to elegance: a handsome, rusty obelisk perfectly placed within a flowery border at Northwest Garden Nursery in Eugene.
Finally, I’ll sign off with a little farewell to summer: a September bouquet filled with brown prairie seedheads and grasses, from my Lake Muskoka meadow to you. And a reminder to remember that brown is a colour too!
