Even before visiting Richard Hartlage’s luscious, eclectic garden in Seattle, I felt I’d known him for years. In fact, every time I turned a corner at the Toronto Botanical Garden in June, he was there in the beautiful flowers of the shrub that greeted me, Calycanthus x raulstonii ‘Hartlage Wine’.
That plant was the result of a cross made by Richard Hartlage in 1991, while an undergrad student at North Carolina State University, between white-flowered Chinese sweetshrub Calycanthus chinensis with its large tepals and camellia-like blooms and the American native Carolina allspice C. floridus, with its strap-like tepals and strawberry-grapefruit scent. (At one time, it was considered a bigeneric cross, since the Chinese species, originally named Calycanthus chinensis in 1963 was renamed Sinocalycanthus in 1964, but in 1979 it was moved back into Calycanthus.) The hybrid name honours the late J.C. Raulston (1940-1996) who was then director of the NCSU Arboretum, later named the JC Raulston Arboretum. (I photographed C. chinensis at the Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia and C. floridus at the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington, Ontario.)
A beautifully-rounded shrub, the flowers are sterile, so new plants must be made through layering or softwood cuttings. Though not as perfumed as Carolina allspice, ‘Hartlage Wine’ has a slight fragrance. The leathery leaves turn yellow in fall.
More than 30 years later, Richard Hartlage is still in love with plants of all kinds. That much was clear, arriving at his house, below, in the Montake area of Seattle as I did this July with my fellow gardeners on our annual Garden Fling. He calls his house colour ‘vermilion’ and I love it; there is much-too-much conformity and conservatism in the world of exterior colour choices. (I read in a Seattle Times story by Lorene Edwards Forkner that the hue is echoed in a massive spring tulip display.) An indigo-purple portico with a bold street number frames the front door. And those steps? Chunky granite slabs, then aluminum tread!
Who’s heard of using aluminum in a residential setting? So it’s clear that there’s an innovative hardscaping mind at work here, even as the diverse plant palette suggests someone who is enamored with flora, fragrance… and fun.
And, of course, as the CEO and President of the 12-person design firm (not counting his 4 schanuzers) Land Morphology, Hartlage’s home garden is his experimental laboratory. His history in gardening and design is deep. In the late 80s, he was plant propagator at North Carolina’s famous Montrose Garden, followed by stints at other NC gardens. He was Morris County Parks Commissioner in Morristown New Jersey in charge of two arboretums before moving to Seattle in 1996 to become Director/Curator of the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden, where he introduced the Great Plant Picks program during his 7-year tenure there. Beginning in 2003, he spent 10 years with the large design/engineering firm AHBL as an associate principle managing the landscape architecture group before launching Land Morphology in 2013. Projects include numerous residential designs (including Stephen Colbert and other New Jersey clients like the Mountsier Estate); Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle; the new Herb Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden; and a new Castle Garden at Yew Dell Botanical Garden down the street from Hartlage’s Crestwood, Kentucky childhood home. Just completed is the impressive planting design for Seattle’s new 26-block Waterfront Park, in collaboration with architect Field Operations (High Line-NY, Navy Pier-Chicago), featuring more than 124,000 plants representing over 500 varieties of natives and ornamentals.
A few months after our visit, there were railings on those aluminum stairs above and an airy, iron arbor over the upper walkway (more vertical gardening opportunity) – topped by heraldic schnauzers in the place of lions!
Design by Richard Hartlage, Land Morphology – photo courtesy Land Morphology
Richard’s beloved schnauzers have been worked into the back garden’s design as well!
Design by Richard Hartlage, Land Morphology – Photo courtesy Land Morphology
Back to my July visit now, on either side of the steps that lead to the house on the steeply-sloped property is a serpentine hedge of Korean boxwood (Buxus sinica var. insularis ‘Wintergreen’). Suffice to say I’ve photographed countless boxwood hedges over the decades – including the spectacular potager at France’s Villandry – but this is the only one I’ve seen that meanders like an undulating green paintbrush across a slope. In its midst are lilies, alliums, ornamental grasses, persicaria and perennial geranium.
Small matching trees emerge from the serpentine hedge.
Spent allium seedheads are left to create texture and interest, along with deep-purple drumstick alliums (A. sphaerocephalon).
Scented lilies, alstroemeria and hydrangeas are part of the summer plant palette, along with perfumed Gladiolus murielae in the clay pot.
A spectacular lily that might be the Orienpet (Oriental x Trumpet) hybrid ‘Debby’.
A massive terracotta pot serves as focal point on the slope terrace.
Spears of gladiolus pop up here and there. These ones look like direct descendants of G. dalenii.
Luscious, light-blue mophead hydrangeas (H. macrophylla) partner with Taiwanese schefflera (Heptapleurum taiwanianum) and lilies in front of the house.
The bracts on this dogwood were still beautiful.
The back garden, though small, was filled to the gills with interesting and textural plants, myriad containers, whimsical furnishings…. and loads of people! So if my photos tend to be vignettes, be assured that the overall view was fabulous. I noticed that metal grid screens and hanging basket frames seemed to be occuping an aerial dimension – in part, perhaps, to screen out the view of neighbours.
As someone who has painted her neighbour’s property-line garage wall (with permission) to become her own garden backdrop, I liked that the same arrangement seems to have happened here, with interesting materials. And amidst myriad containers, an attractive rectangular trough brings the reflective magic of water to the garden, including waterlilies and….
…. a retro spring-rider playground duck configured as a fountain peeking out of the sedges and rushes!
Nearby is a spring rider seahorse, its platinum finish reminding me of the silvery Adonis mannequin in Andrew Bunting’s Swarthmore garden which I wrote about last year. The hardscape in the Hartlage back garden is a mixture of rectangular granite pavers and grit forming walkways amidst planting beds and containers crammed with plants of all kinds.
Yuccas mix with sedums and an interesting campanula, possibly C. incurva?
A very happy moon carrot (Seseli gummiferum) was in full bloom in another crevice container.
Erigeron, irises and phlox grew in a glazed blue container.
Comfy saucer chairs provide seating amidst the plantings.
And what is the unconquered, unplanted frontier in almost every garden? That’s right: the driveway. So leave it to Richard Hartlage to boldly go where few have ventured – right down the middle of his concrete driveway. I love this idea.
As usual, I could have spent hours in this garden capturing the small nuances and plant combinations. My friend Pam Penick did a great job on her blog, so give it a read. And Seattle photographer Miranda Estes has a beautiful gallery from 2019 of the garden as it was then. Thank you, Richard Hartlage, for sharing your lovely, eclectic, leafy home sanctuary with us.
**********
Read more of my blogs on beautiful summer gardens of the Puget Sound and Seattle:
During my September Garden Bloggers’ Fling in the Philadelphia area, my favourite small garden was Andrew Bunting’s delightful property in Swarthmore. Perhaps that’s no surprise, given that the owner is the Vice-President of Horticulture with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Founded in 1827, the PHS is the oldest horticultural society in the U.S., responsible for the annual Philadelphia Flower Show as well as a host of endeavors including 120 community gardens; maintenance of public landscapes in the city and suburbs including museums, the art gallery and public squares; street tree programs; the 28-acre estate garden at Meadowbrook Farm; Landcare, in which vacant city lots are turned from blighted properties to neighbourhood parks; pop-up ephemeral gardens; and a program to train former convicts to be gardeners.
Since buying the house on its one-third acre in 1999, this garden is where Andrew has experimented with an eclectic roster of plants and an evolving approach to design – in fact, five redesigns in his time there. I especially loved seeing his home through the tall, wispy wands of ‘Skyracer’ purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea), a grass that shines in my own garden in autumn. Beyond is a gravel garden bisected by a broad flagstone walk with a small patch of lawn that creates a nice balance of negative space, as well as lavenders and verbascums and other drought-tolerant plants, many native. A stone trough acts as a birdbath and a terracotta urn features a chartreuse explosion of colocasia (likely ‘Maui Gold’).
Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii) with its needle-like leaves is prominent in the front garden; its blue flowers are attractive in spring but its brilliant gold fall color gives it long-season appeal. Barely visible in the foliage is a wooden chair. Originally white, the front door and window shutters were painted gray, picking up the colors of the flagstone.
Behind the amsonia is Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ and, at left, willow-leaf spicebush (Lindera glauca var. salicifolia), which also has good autumn colour.
The vine around the door and on the house’s front wall is self-clinging Chinese silver-vein creeper (Parthenocissus henryana). I love the mailbox and house numbers.
My colour-tuned eye picked up the echo between the red glasses indoors and the big caladium and chartreuse-and-red coleus in Andrew’s windowbox.
Our time was limited and there was so much to see, but I could have spent hours studying the gravel garden, including many native plants like giant coneflower (Rudbeckia maxima), below. Andrew’s influences around gravel include Beth Chatto’s garden in England, the Gravel Garden designed by Lisa Roper at Chanticleer (see my latest blog here) and Jeff Epping’s work at Olbrich Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin. The gravel is 1/2 inch granite but Andrew says it’s more like 1/4 inch.
Here is native wild quinine (Parthenium integrifolium).
And American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) with its vibrant violet fruit.
Andrew removed much of the original driveway beside the house which was too narrow for cars and turned it into a shady sideyard garden with a path leading to the old garage – which became a charming summerhouse. Those little purple flowers are Vernonia lettermannii ‘Iron Butterfly’, a good fall bloomer and, incidentally, a Pennsylvania Horticultural Society 2023 Gold Medal Plant Winner!
Turning the corner at the back of the house, I saw more evidence of a plantsman’s wonderland with assorted tropicals in pots and a potting bench topped by colourful annuals.
Andrew was holding court in the back garden, so I asked him to pose. His own history in horticulture is very deep. Even at a young age, he knew a career in gardening was in his future – and it relates to the name of his own garden. As he has written in an essay about becoming a gardener, “My grandfather farmed in southeastern Nebraska, just outside a little town called Belvidere. I loved those couple of weeks on the farm every summer. Something about that agrarian lifestyle resonated with me then, and still does today. I loved the crops in the field, my grandmother’s vegetable garden, and the smell of hay.” He did internships at the Morton Arboretum, Fairchild Tropical Garden and the Scott Arboretum, where he worked in the late 1980s for three years. In 1990 he visited more than a hundred gardens in England, meeting Rosemary Verey, Beth Chatto, Christopher Lloyd and working for a while at Penelope Hobhouse’s Tintinhull. That autumn, he travelled to New Zealand and worked for a designer for 3 months. Returning to Pennsylvania, he got a part-time position at Chanticleer as it was becoming a public garden, working there for 18 months while starting his own landscape business on the side. In 1993, he became curator of the Scott arboretum at Swarthmore College and stayed there for 22 years, until becoming Assistant Director and Director of Plant Collections at Chicago Botanic Garden in 2015.
I saw Andrew during a garden symposium in Chicago in 2018, below, when he spoke about how he directed the content and curation of CBG’s permanent plant collection. Next, a job offer at the Atlanta Botanic Garden arose and he became Vice-President of Horticulture and Plant Collections at Atlanta Botanic Garden, giving him the chance to grow broad-leaved plants. Then the opportunity at Pennsylvania Horticultural Society opened up and he returned to Swarthmore and the abundance of public gardens that make the Philadelphia area “America’s Garden Capital”.
When Andrew bought the house in 1999 the back yard was filled with a jungle of pokeweed. With the help of his landscape crew and a bobcat, he installed a 35 x 12 foot patio spanning the back of the house. It’s the perfect setting for a lush ‘garden room’ created with pots of banana, canna and palms. These tropicals get carried down to the cool, damp, cellar-like basement for winter through the entrance partially shown at left.
There are potted plants everywhere, many on vintage tables…..
…. and étageres.
Textural foliage combinations caught my eye, like this chartreuse sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas) with Euphorbia x martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’ euphorbia and a fancy-leaved pelargonium.
There are bromeliads here too, like Portea petropolitana.
Most chairs in the garden were built by Chanticleer’s Dan Benarcik – and can actually be ordered custom online as kits or fully assembled! Note that the granite gravel has been used here, which Andrew says is a less expensive solution than flagstone paving. At right, you can see the entrance to the covered part of the summerhouse, aka the old garage.
So many artful touches here, combining with the rich plant palette to create a beautiful outdoor living space.
Let’s take a peek into the summerhouse, where a comfy leather sofa awaits. As Andrew once said in an online Masterclass chat with Noel Kingsbury and Annie Guilfoyle, many people in the Philadelphia area go to the New Jersey shore or the Poconos in summer, but he prefers his own garden – “less traffic and more access to gardening”. And I can imagine sitting in here behind the screen doors during a summer thunderstorm, candles lit, perhaps with a little glass of something tasty.
The back of the summerhouse is more open to the elements and features the perfect stage set. I don’t know what the silvery Adonis mannequin was once wearing on his sculpted torso, but I’m willing to bet it was Ralph Lauren, now nicely accented with tillandsias and begonias.
Nearby are more colocasias and blue Salvia guaranitica.
I loved all the seating (still more Dan Benarcik chairs), this time on a shady patio with a dining table.
Sometimes the seating is more about atmosphere and lichen-rich patina than it is about an actual place to sit.
In a shady spot at the back of the garden is a naturalistic pond because… every garden needs a little water.
I was sad not to have time to take a peek behind the back fence into the neighbour’s yard, where there’s an Andrew-designed large, shared quadrangle vegetable garden, but it was late in the season for veggies anyway. Mostly, I was happy that we were able to see this lovely garden in dry weather, since we were soon to find ourselves on the soaking end of Tropical Storm Ophelia.
Late spring… early summer… it’s flight time for the ‘cranesbills’ – all those lovely perennial geraniums that add that soft, billowy, romantic effect to perennial borders. Over the years, I’ve collected a series of combinations featuring many of these valuable perennials. Perhaps you might find some inspiration in those that follow – the bees will certainly appreciate it!
Our North American native spotted or wild geranium (Geranium maculatum) gets its name because of the spots on its leaves. Here it is with native golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea) at the Toronto Botanical Garden.
Here is G. maculatum with Welsh poppy (Papaver cambricum) at VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver.
In my own garden, below, I grew Geranium maculatum under Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum). I must check to see if it’s still there, or if it’s been swamped by the aggressive Solomon’s seals.
G. maculatum looked lovely amidst hostas at Chanticleer Garden outside Philadelphia.
I just saw this combination at the Toronto Botanical Garden a few weeks ago: Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica ‘Excelsior’) with bigroot geranium (G. macrorrhizum ‘Czakor’).
Also at the TBG, here is the variegated form of bigroot geranium (G. macrorrhizum ‘Variegatum’) with catmint (Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’).
Bloody cranesbill (Geranium sanguineum) is a popular, early-flowering cranesbill with magenta blossoms. Here it is with Phlox carolina at the Toronto Botanical Garden.
It makes an attractive, front-of-border mound, below, along with lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis).
This was an interesting monochromatic combination, of bloody cranesbill with Dianthus ‘Oakington Hybrid’.
I thought this was a pretty June border on a garden tour: bloody cranesbill with Siberian iris and bearded iris.
I believe the cranesbill below is Geranium sanguineum ‘Max Frei’, partnering with Veronica ‘Glory’ at the Toronto Botanical Garden.
There’s a pale-pink form of bloody cranesbill, G. sanguineum var. striatum (formerly G. lancastriense), that makes a very pretty partner to late forget-me-nots.
Peonies offer a vast palette of possibilities as cranesbill companions, including the spectacular Itoh Hybrid intersectional peonies (herbaceous-shrub crosses). Below is ‘Cora Louise’ with Geranium’ Brookside at the Toronto Botanical Garden.
Here’s lovely ‘Brookside’ (G. clarkei x G.pratense) with Sicilian honey lily (Allium siculum)….
….. and with Campanula ‘Sarastro’…..
….. and Veronica longifolia ‘Eveline’ and Achillea tomentosa ‘Moonlight’ at the Toronto Botanical Garden.
Here is ‘Brookside’ clambering around the wine-red flowers of Knautia macedonica, also at the TBG.
Geranium Rozanne® (‘Gerwat’) is a similar-looking cranesbill, but a cross between G. himalayense x G. wallachinianum ‘Buxton’s Variety’. Very popular and long-flowering, it was the Perennial Plant Association’s 2008 Plant of the Year. Here it is with the yellow Itoh peony hybrid ‘Sequestered Sunshine’….
….. and billowing atop lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis).
Rozanne adds a little lavender ‘zing’ to this green vignette of Molinia caerulea ‘Variegata’ and the striped leaves of Iris pallida ‘Variegata’.
Despite this, foreign pharmacies generally offer the lowest prices of cheapest cialis uk because it is generic. viagra is a lot cheaper than the branded one, and both have the equal compound, Sildenafil Citrate. However, there is other side of the vardenafil pharmacy coin as well. For viagra without prescription cute-n-tiny.com more details, please visit Leimo hair loss breakthrough. So, is it really about being viagra for women vain to look or feel more pleasing and youthful? Perhaps, to some, but it is your body and your decision.
Flowering shrubs such as hydrangea can be enhanced by an underplanting of many varieties of cranesbill, like the unidentified one below.
The pale-pink flowers of French cranesbill (Geranium endressii) add a delicate note to Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum).
Magenta Armenian cranesbill (G. psilostemon) is rather fleeting in bloom, but looks lovely with Bowman’s root (Porteranthus trifoliatus, syn. Gillenia), below, at the TBG.
Just around the corner, it was used with tufted hair grass (Deschampsia cespitosa) in a lush design.
At wonderful Chanticleer Garden near Philadelphia (have you read my 2-part blog on this favourite garden?), I found G.psilostemon looking spectacular with chartreuse meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria ‘Aurea’).
Out at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Gardens one spring (another favourite garden I’ve blogged about), I was taken with this vignette featuring the hybrid Geranium ‘Brempat’ with Allium cristophii and dark Heuchera ‘Crimson Curls’.
Nearby at VanDusen was the dark-coloured mourning widow cranesbill Geranium phaeum ‘Samobor’ emerging in a chartreuse sea of Bowles’ golden grass (Millium effusum ‘Aureum’).
The delicate-looking but vigorous mourning widow geranium has a white form (Geranium phaeum ‘Album’) that Piet Oudolf uses in his designs, including with Baptisia ‘Purple Smoke’ in the entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden. (I’ve also written a 2-part blog about Piet’s design for this border.)
I also loved the way he interplanted Paeonia ‘Bowl of Beauty‘ just coming into flower with the white-flowered mourning widow.
This delicate, monochromatic combination, also in the Oudolf–designed entry border at the TBG features Geranium x oxonianum ‘Rose Claire’ with Astrantia ‘Roma’.
Hostas and cranesbills always look good together, as demonstrated by Geranium x cantabrigiense ‘Biokovo’, below.
Geranium clarkei ‘Kashmir Purple’ makes an interesting contrast to the tiny white flowers of flowring sea kale (Crambe cordifolia).
Geranium ‘Johnson’s Blue’ is an old-fashioned hybrid, a cross between G. himalayense and G. pratense. Doesn’t it look spectacular with the purple bellflowers (Campanula latifolia var. macrantha) and meadow sage (Salvia nemorosa) flanking the rose garden at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden below?
Purple always works with chartreuse, and G. Johnson’s Blue’ is the perfect companion to Heuchera ‘Lime Rickey’.
Toronto’s Spadina House is my favourite cottage garden in the world, with a mass of artful flowers tumbling around expansive vegetable gardens. Meadow cranesbill (Geranium pratense) is much-used in the garden, as with lanceleaf coreposis (C. lanceolata), below….
….. and foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea)….
….. and small yellow foxglove (D. lutea).
I also found it growing in the fabulous Denver garden of plantsman Panayoti Kelaidis and his partner Jan Fahs. This romantic planting of roses, gas plant (Dictamnus albus var. purpureus) and G. pratense is actually Jan’s domain! (And, of course, I wrote a blog about PK and Jan’s garden.)
When I was having dinner at the spectacular Deep Cove Chalet restaurant in Victoria, B.C. one spring, I was enchanted by this unusual and richly-coloured combination: G. pratense with peach alstroemeria, yellow Phlomis russeliana and pink spirea.
Though most cranesbills flower from late spring into early-mid-summer, there are a few species that hit their stride in late summer and continue blooming well into fall. I saw one of them one August at the Piet Oudolf-designed Lurie Garden in Chicago (another fantastic garden from my blog). For my final homage to the versatile cranesbills, meet pink-flowered Japanese cranesbill (G. soboliferum) with lilac prairie petunia (Ruellia humilis).
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’….
The positive impacts keep going give or take levitra vs cialis 4 to 6 hours. There are very few that give away purchase tadalafil india the best ever results. The advantages There are numerous advantages of taking Kamagra pills, the first and foremost being that you can achieve and maintain an erection which helps him to perform well in the bedroom, it buy viagra prescription is always important to keep stress away. Impotence is a common condition for men online viagra store of any age.
…… 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.
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.
I have a free summer afternoon in Toronto and call my dear friend, garden writer and designer Marjorie Harris. Could I come to see her and bring my camera? Of course, says she gracefully. Thus, on a hot afternoon at the very end of July, I walk up her midtown street. It’s never difficult to find Marjorie’s house. It’s the one with the luscious green floral tapestry in front. And it’s the one with the biggest ‘Sun King’ aralia (A. cordata) I’ve ever seen. It seems to extend its golden foliage over most of the frontage, on a narrow city lot that measures 20 x 137 feet (6 x 42 metres).
It’s also the garden with rare Japanese umbrella pines (Sciadopitys verticillata) hiding in the undergrowth, along with hellebores and golden hakone grass…..
….and a tiny, jewelled ‘Hana Matoi’ Japanese maple keeping company with Japanese painted fern.
But seriously…. that aralia! I can’t think of another perennial that creates such an element of privacy as this one. However, as Marjorie reminds me, her garden soil is really rich in compost (“lashes of compost” is a favourite phrase of hers) and she has an irrigation system that targets water on plants that really need it.
Marjorie and I spend a half-hour chewing the fat on the front porch. She and I have known each other for three decades. She is a straight shooter (calls a smart woman a “dame”), well organized, energetic and very involved in the cultural heartbeat of the city. And she is still head-over-heels about the garden she created behind the Annex home she has shared with her husband, novelist Jack Batten, for over 50 years. In it, they raised their children — two each from previous marriages — and enjoy visits from their three grandchldren.
She’s just as beautiful as she was in the mid-90s, when she was the editor of Toronto Life Gardens. I wrote articles and book reviews for her in those days, like the one below on landscape designer Neal Turnbull. It’s hard to imagine this was 23 years ago! (Click for larger versions of the photos).
Later, she became editor-in-chief of Gardening Life magazine and we worked together then, too. (Interestingly, in her Summer 2005 editorial, below, she talks about Larry Davidson of Lost Horizons Nursery, from whom she acquired many of the choice trees and shrubs in her garden.) Sadly, most of our beautiful, glossy gardening magazines have since disappeared from the publishing landscape in Canada, which is a crying shame. But that’s a story for another day.
She’s been an ardent feminist all her life. Once, when I was looking through old magazines in my office, I found a 1973 Vancouver Sun Weekend magazine I had saved because it contained an article on the company I worked for at the time (a jade mine… long story). But as I flipped through the pages, I also found a piece titled The Invisible Women by Marjorie Harris. The topic was “women’s liberation”. That was the beginning of her freelance career, after time spent on staff at Maclean’s and Chatelaine,
And, of course, she’s written tons of books, including the masterful Botanica North America, (to which I contributed some images). Published in 2003, this heavy tome was a rich, encyclopedic treatment of selected naive plants of the biomes of North America.
She was the Globe & Mail‘s gardening columnist for years and does features for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), among many other gigs. As well, she has her own landscape design business, and designed four gardens on her own block. And she goes to France every winter with Jack and makes us all jealous as we shovel the snow back home!
Ah bien, let’s stop chatting on the front porch and head out to see the back garden. And “seeing the garden” is a brilliant reality at Marjorie’s house, even before you actually go outside, because of the fabulous folding glass doors that span the lowered dining room. Designed as part of a 2005 renovation by Lisa Rapaport of PLANT Architect Inc., the glass expanse opened up the view to Marjorie’s exquisite woodland — a mélange of carefully chosen shrubs and trees, many evergreen, whose architecture creates four seasons of interest.
Now let’s step outside into the garden and look back at the house through the colourful tapestry of trees and shrubs. Beside the urn is a red-leaved Japanese maple (Acer palmatum ‘Dissectum Atropurpureum’). “It was my first expensive plant,” says Marjorie. “I paid $20 for it at Ron’s Garden Centre in the 1980s. Couldn’t believe I’d spend that much money on one plant at the time. It led to madness of course“.
At first it’s not easy to discern a path forward through the abundance, with interesting plants drawing my eye from ground-level to the leafy canopy above. That’s part of Marjorie’s design strategy. As she says: “I find that too often designers miss out on the mid layers in a garden design: I think mainly about foliage and how leaf shapes relate to one another and then I think about the height of each plant’s maximum effect and how that relates to the whole garden.”
Fittingly, I have to reach above my head and point my camera down to capture this delicious duo, a fullmoon Japanese maple (Acer shirasawanum ‘Aureum’) with colourful barberries below.
On the fence is Clematis ‘Betty Corning’, a spectacular, easy vine that Marjorie laments as being essentially unavailable in the trade.
There are few annuals allowed out here and those invited to stay must pay their rent, like purple-leaved Strobilanthes dyerianus with chartreuse ‘Margarita’ sweet potato vine. Behind is a glaucous evergreen Marjorie bought to decorate her Christmas table at the corner jug milk store one autumn, “then out to the garden to see just how big it might get,” she recalls. “I love it“.
It’s the exquisite little touches that draw the eye, like this ‘Geisha Gone Wild’ Japanese maple and gold hosta.
There could be various causes for male impotence including oral drugs like viagra canada , levitra, buy generic levitra, natural remedies, education, hypnosis, injections, urethral suppositories, pumps and many other ways. It’s obvious that you’re not providing any useful content, and only trying to cialis without prescription bring in a bunch of hits from Google. The cause may be of any the main medicine is cheap cialis davidfraymusic.com. Signs Roughly all the shop levitra anxiety symptoms have become quite well known as a result of over time individuals want skilled anxiety.
A few choice conifers lend structure and interest in Toronto’s interminable winter, like ‘Algonquin Pillar’ Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra). “My garden looks good every day of the year except for about 10 days in early spring,” says Marjorie, “when it’s flooded and looking kind of crappy, with all the stuff I haven’t cut down for the winter being brazen enough to be obvious. That I usually clean up myself just because of the shame of it.”
She spends a lot of time looking up at her trees, a remarkable collection, especially given the size of the garden.
There is a beautiful katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) with its heart-shaped leaves and burnt sugar autumn aroma…..
….. and a gorgeous Kentucky coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus), below, with its intricate compound leaves, the largest of any Canadian native tree.
It’s a favourite among her Carolinian forest natives, including tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera), sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus) and ruby-flowered Calycanthus, below. “Oxydendron croaked on me,” she admits, “as have several others. I keep trying.”
Walking towards the back of the garden, I reach an obelisk adorned with clematis and a nicely pruned blue falsecypress (Chamaecyparis), another one of Marjorie’s Christmas decorations. Back in the 1980s, Marjorie’s garden featured a unique geometric checkerboard design, with half the spaces in flagstones and the other half choice plants. In 2002, she hired Earth Inc. to design and install pergolas. “All seemed fine,” recalls Marjorie, “until the dining room was added in 2005 and then the checkerboard just began to look too fussy.” So a more streamlined path was substituted leading to this series of pergolas, which allowed space for a more interesting mix of woody plants.
The metal grate under the pergola covers the sump pump. “The property is build on Seaton Pond flood plain, which rises every spring now that there are not enough trees to drain it properly,” Marjorie explains. “There is an underground stream which is an off-shoot of Taddle Creek, which comes through our garden and under the house. Hoses take the excess ground water out to the street storm sewer; and the stream is dealt with by in-house sump pumps and out through the sewage system.”
Marjorie’s pink floss tree (Albizia julibrissin), below, has now survived three winters. It’s the cultivar ‘Ernest Wilson’, purchased from Jim Lounsbery’s Vineland Nurseries and named for the famous plant explorer who found it in a Korean garden in 1918 and brought seed home to Boston’s Arnold Arboretum. He wrote about it in a 1929 bulletin. “The origin of the plant in the Arboretum affords a good illustration of the importance of obtaining for northern gardens types which grow in the coolest regions they can withstand. The particular tree was raised from seeds collected in the garden of the Chosen Hotel at Seoul, Korea, by E. H. Wilson in 1918. It grows wild in the southern parts of the Korean peninsula but appears quite at home in the more severe climate of the central region. A few seeds only were collected and seedling plants were set out in the Arboretum when about four years old; several were killed the first winter but one came through with but slight injury and since that time has not suffered in the least. From its behavior during the last seven or eight years there seems reason to believe that this Korean type will prove a useful and valuable addition to gardens. It has a long flowering season, continuing in blossom throughout August. Albizia is a member of a tropical tribe of the great family Leguminosae and it is astonishing that this tree should be able to withstand New England winters. Apparently it is happy in fully exposed situations, where good drainage and a sandy loam prevail.”
Shredded umbrella plant (Syneilesis aconitifolia) comes from one of Marjorie’s favourite wholesalers, Connon Nurseries, and has the most interesting flowers.
Here is a closeup of those unusual flower panicles.
At the back of her garden is a raised planter filled with an eclectic collection of plants. Says Marjorie: “If a plant looks awful in a client’s garden, I will replace it and I usually bring it home and put it in the Jardin de Refusée. If I don’t want it, one of the crew will and we baby these things along and then they become a respected part of our own gardens. I’ve never sold one of these babies back to clients even though they’ve done well in my garden. In this garden, you have to drop dead to be removed.”
I try not to take that last sentence as a metaphor as I walk back towards the house, past a young striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum), centre, and a ‘Slender Silhouette’ sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua), right. “Getting the right plant in the right place is a whole lot harder than most people understand,” notes Marjorie. “They want copies of stuff they see in magazines and online and most of the time just won’t work in our climate, our neighbourhoods. Finding the ideal plant is always my goal, and will it work with the ecosystem I’m trying to build up to satisfy both birds and bugs I want to draw into the garden. I cannot express how boring those so called minimal “modern” plant designs are. They don’t work ecologically and they require huge amounts of work to keep on looking neat. Nature is not neat.”
But gazing back past the Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’, left) and the ‘Herman’s Pillar’ barberry (Berberis thunbergii), right, below…
….. I think that this lovely paradise in the Annex represents a leafy manifestation of Marjorie’s life and career: long, rich, full of interesting things acquired with care and intent, and a joy in every season.
Finally, here’s a little taste of a mid-summer day in the garden. The birds and cicadas are a bonus. Thanks for the visit, Marjorie!
