Spring at VanDusen Botanical Garden – Part 1

Posted on May 7, 2020 by Janet

One of my great joys in returning ‘home’ from Toronto to Vancouver in May or June is the opportunity to visit VanDusen Botanical Garden. Over the past decade, I’ve made eight trips to this beautiful, diverse 55 acre (22 hectare) garden, six of them in springtime, the other two in August and September. Sadly, a summer visit is still in my future! So I’m especially familiar with the delight it offers in its rich spring flora, much of it rare in collections. Let’s take a tour together, starting with the bridge entrance from the parking lot into the new (2011) Visitor Centre. Designed by Perkins & Will Architects, it’s a LEED Platinum structure with undulating rooflines that, on a clear day (this one was cloudy), seem to echo the mountains of Vancouver’s north shore beyond. See those little green signs on the bridge wall? They’re….

…. cleverly-designed keys to the traditional “What’s in Bloom” features that most public gardens employ, but with the location pinpointed precisely on the garden’s map. (May 27, 2013)

If you read my last blog on the delightful Alma VanDusen Garden at the far west end of the garden, you’ll know that the garden was once part of the old Shaughnessy Golf Course but was saved in the 1960s from commercial development by a determined group of citizens called the Vancouver Public Gardens Association (VPGA). A fundraising effort, spearheaded by a $1 million donation from the timber magnate and philanthropist Whitford Julian VanDusen (one-third of the capital cost of creating the garden at the time), culminated with the official opening in August 1975. Though Mr. VanDusen had to be persuaded to permit it, the garden honours him in its name. This is the map, which you can explore more easily by clicking to enlarge it.

Even before we get to the Visitor Centre, we can gaze around and see some spring-flowering plants. Below is red currant (Ribes sanguineum) in the Cascadia native garden…

…. and I love this entryway combination of pasque flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris) and yellow ‘Kondo’ dogtooth violet, a hybrid between Erythronium tuolomense and E. ‘White Beauty’.

Let’s go through the Visitor Centre with its beautiful gift shop and past the folks braving the May temperatures outdoors at the Truffles Restaurant….

…. and past the alluring plants for sale….

…. and stand for a moment on the edge of Livingstone Lake to decide which of the many directions to take, for the paths fan out from here throughout the garden and we don’t want to miss anything.

Let’s head west. That takes us right past the Cascadia Garden (named for the Cascadia bioregion) with its native Pacific Northwest plants and naturalistic water feature.

I remember skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) growing along the creek in the ravine near my family’s house in the Vancouver suburbs. It was part of my introduction to nature as a child.

Here are two of the more beautiful native westerners: bigleaf lupine (Lupinus polypyllus) and an excellent variety of silk tassel bush (Garrya elliptica) called ‘James Roof’.

Western trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera ciliosa) twines its way through oceanspray (Holodiscus discolor) in the background. The Cascadia Garden offers valuable design inspiration for gardeners interested in using the native plant palette.

These are the lovely little western shooting stars (Primula pauciflora syn. Dodecatheon pulchellum). *All the plants in the Cascadia Garden were photographed on May 6, 2014

Abutting the Cascadia Garden is the Phyllis Bentall Garden, featuring a large formal pond and surrounding terrace. There are luscious tree peonies flowering here in late May-early June.

I love this glazed pot of carnivorous plants and horsetails, just beginning their seasonal growth here on June 1^st.

I’m including this image made a decade ago in late June to show how beautiful the ‘Satomi’ kousa dogwoods (Cornus kousa) look in the Phyllis Bentall garden with their coral-rose bracts.

Continuing west, we come to the Fragrance Garden, a four-square parterre filled with perfumed plants throughout the season. Later, sweet peas, wallflowers, honeysuckle, roses, chocolate cosmos and Auratum lilies show off their scented blooms.

The White Garden is still waking up below, on May 2, 2017, but……

….. there are early white blossoms: trillium white fringed bleeding heart (Dicentra eximia ‘Alba’) and white wood anemones (Anemone nemorosa). Later here, there will be perfumed mock orange and white roses.

We are now beginning the Rhododendron Walk. VanDusen has a big collection of Loderi rhododendrons, Rhododendron x loderi. R. ‘Loderi King George’, below right, was hybridized by Sir Edmund Loder in 1901 at his famous Leonardslee Gardens in England using the white-flowered Himalayan species Rhododendron griffithianum collected in Sikkim in 1847-50 by Joseph Dalton Hooker, crossed with the pollen parent Rhododendron fortunei.

The parentage of beautiful R. ‘Loder’s White’, below, is less clear but it’s believed to be cross that Sir Edmund Loder was sent from hybridizer James Henry Mangles, who died in 1884. It is listed as a cross between R. catawbiense ‘Album Elegans’ x R. griffithianum and ‘White Pearl’ (R. griffithianum x R. maximum). The North American Catawba genes in its stock lend this spectacular rhododendron its hardiness. These Loder rhodos were photographed on May 6, 2014.

Rhododendron griffithianum used in the Loder hybrids was one of the species collected in 1847-50 by Joseph Dalton Hooker, who would seven years later succeed his father as Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. He named it R. aucklandii after his friend and patron and former Lord of the Admiralty and Governor-General of India Auckland, whose name is also commemorated in the New Zealand city. But his specimen was found later to be a variant of a seemingly inferior species found in Bhutan a decade earlier by explorer William Griffith, thus was renamed R. griffithianum var. aucklandii, and would become known in the trade as “Lord Auckland’s Rhododendron”. In writing about his discovery in Sikkim, India in 1849, Hooker wrote: “It has been my lot to discover but few plants of this superb species, and in these the inflorescence varied much in size. The specimens from which our drawing was made were from a bush which grew in a rather dry sunny exposure, above the village of Choongtam, and the bush was covered with blossoms. The same species also grows on the skirts of the Pine-Forests (Abies Brunoniana) above Lamteng, and it is there conspicuous for the abundance rather than the large size of the flowers.”

Moving along the Rhododendron Walk, we come to rose-red R. ‘Cynthia’, one of the oldest hybrids, developed around 1840 at England’s Suunningdale Nursery from the North American native Rhododendron catawbiense . One of the joys of VanDusen’s display is the imaginative underplanting of the rhododendrons, something often overlooked in many public gardens. This is yellow fumitory (Corydalis lutea).

In other parts of the Walk, I notice lovely spring combinations like Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) and pink fern-leaf bleeding heart, Dicentra ‘Langtrees’. Alliums are budded up for later bloom.

Under a low magenta rhododendron is a cheerful drift of eastern leopardbane (Doronicum columnae).

The Deciduous Azalea collection on the Walk features Rhododendron molle from China and Japan, underplanted with Spanish bluebells (Endymion hispanica).

Although I have photographed the popular Rhododendron ‘Hino Crimson’ in full bloom, I love the moment when it is just beginning to flower as the sea of ostrich ferns (Matteucia struthiopteris) behind are all unfurling their croziers.

The garden has a large collection of epimediums and the Rhododendron Walk showcases them nicely amidst the ferns.

Welsh poppies are seen in several places in the garden. They used to be in the Meconopsis genus but are now called Papaver cambrica.

Interspersed among the rhododendrons on the Walk are interesting trees and shrubs hailing from Asia. The redbark stewartia (Stewartia monodelpha) will bear fragrant, white flowers in early summer and its glossy foliage turns red in fall, but its rusty-red bark is its big selling feature.

I’ve seen a lot of magnolias in my time, but there are some truly special specimens in the Magnolia Collection adjacent to the Rhododendron Walk at VanDusen. Magnolia cavalerei var. platypetala (formerly Michelia) hails from China. Its flowers are fragrant.

Now its time to veer north towards the great lawn. This route takes us past the Camellia Garden and if you time it right, as I did on May 2, 2017, you might see C. japonica ‘Goshoguruma’ with its lovely oxslip (Primula elatior) underplanting.

This is elegant Camellia japonica ‘C.M. Wilson’, introduced in 1949. Isn’t it lovely?

Nearby, I find fallen camellia petals artfully arranged in the leaves of black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’).

Post inflammatory hyper pigmentation: These dark spots present of your face or other skin best viagra pills area is called hyper pigmentation, which is caused by many reason like exposure to sun, hormonal imbalance or any medications side effect. Often expensive pharmaceutical treatment can be costly in comparison. cialis overnight no prescription The sexual incapacity leads to the inability to have children. viagra soft 100mg For example, it’s often said that blue balls develop due to unica-web.com on line viagra very healthy, and very useful, natural processes. We’ll pass the stunning Himalayan birch (Betula jacquemontii) with many evergreen azaleas surrounding it…..

….. including beautiful Rhododendron saluenense with a foraging yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskyi). Although I photograph bumble bees extensively in the east, VanDusen has helped me to learn about the native Bombus species of British Columbia.

We’ll make a brief stop at the Tree Peony collection and enjoy the blowsy, maroon-red blossoms of Paeonia suffruticosa ‘Hatsu Garasu’ under the brilliant chartreuse boughs of Acer palmatum ‘Aureum’. I love that this peony’s name means “First Crow of the Year”.

Most of the shrubs and trees we’ve seen along the Rhododendron Walk qualify as “Sino-Himalayan”, but now we’re going to move into the woodland section at VanDusen devoted to that region. And what better species to welcome us than the wonderful lavender-purple Rhododendron augustinii? There is no question that this is my favourite rhododendron, and….

….. whenever I visit, I spend time just enjoying the flowers of this Triflorum Subsection species… and the occasional bee or dragonfly.

Botanist R. Roy Forster (1927-2012), below, who was Founding Curator and Director of VanDusen Botanical Garden for 21 years from its 1975 opening to 1996, (not to mention a recipient of the Order of Canada) conceived of the exciting idea of a naturalistic woodland garden devoted to species from China and the Himalayas, especially rhododendrons. He wrote about the “montane theme” of the Sino-Himalayan Garden. “Lacking a woodland, we have had to plant our own forest of young trees.”

City of Vancouver Archives

Given that the garden’s designers were working with the relatively flat aspect of the former Shaughnessy Golf Course, it would require imagination and serious earth-moving to come up with the berms and intervening valleys. “The Sino-Himalayan Garden was built on top of the existing surface using large quantities of fill, soil, and rock.” We see that incredible hill creation below in a photo by Roy Forster from the City of Vancouver archives.

City of Vancouver Archives

Today, the many trees planted four decades ago are mature and create a woodland microclimate for the diverse taxa contained in the Sino-Himalayan Garden. Let’s tour the garden, beginning with one of the beautiful rhododendrons, below, that Roy Forster struggled at first to please. “Wind damage at times has been severe. R. hemsleyanum, a rather large-leaved species in the subjection Fortunea, was almost defoliated by wind during the winter. The new crop of leaves are smaller and it will be interesting to obsesrve if the species adapt to the new planting site. This species is endemic to Omei Shan, in S.W. Sichuan, visited by the writer in 1981. At 29^olatitude, and under 1,400M altitude, this habitat of R. hemsleyanum is a mild area indeed even when compared with gentle Vancouver!” When I see it on May 27, 2013 it looks very content with its Vancouver home.

There’s a gentle rain falling when I photograph Rhododendron sanguineum var. sanguineum in the garden on May 27, 2013. Vancouver’s rainy climate suits these Asian mountain-dwellers, many of which were moved from the Greig Collection at Stanley Park downtown.

What a beautiful grove of dawn redwoods (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), with their fluted trunks below. Often called the ‘living fossil’, fossils of this species were ‘discovered’ in 1941 in clay beds on the Japanese island of Kyushu and named Metasequoia because they reminded the paleobotanist Shigeru Miki of a sequoia. Three years later in a valley in China’s Hupei Province, a young forester named Zhang Wang collected branches and cones of a conifer he initially thought was a common water-pine (Glyptostrobus pensilis). They were ultimately determined to be the same species as the fossils found 6 years earlier and in 1947, collections of the seed were financed by Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum and distributed worldwide.

Myriad deciduous and coniferous Asian trees like dawn redwood, deodar cedar, Chinese chestnut, Sargent’s magnolia, Wallich’s pine, paperbark maple and handkerchief tree are at home in the Sino-Himalayan garden, lending shade to the rhododendrons. Below is Taiwania cryptomerioides, one of two at VanDusen.

The dappled shade from the trees and the humus-rich soil creates perfect conditions for the rhododendron species. This is Rhododendron wardii var. puralbum, the white-flowered form of the yellow-flowered species named for the English botanist and plant explorer Frank Kingdon-Ward (1885-1958). Ward found it on one of his expeditions to China where it grows in meadows in fir and spruce forests on mountain slopes in Sichuan and Yunnan. Doesn’t it look content to be here?

White-flowered cinnamon rhododendron (Rhododendron arboreum subsp. cinnamomeum) gets its common name from the cinnamon-coloured indumentum or furry coating on the underside of its leaves.

Rhododendron cinnabarinum subsp. xanthocodon derives its specific epithet from the cinnabar-red flowers of a related species.

Look at the profuse blossoms of Rhododendron anwheiense, below. How can any hybrid improve on this lovely species?

The Sino-Himalayan garden contains beautiful maples, too. This is the golden fullmoon maple, Acer shirasawanum ‘Aureum’, native to Japan and Southern Korea.

I always thrill to the backlit, neon-pink spring foliage of this Japanese maple, Acer palmatum ‘Otome Zakura’, whose name means “maiden cherry” in English.

Siberian iris (Iris siberica) is in bloom during my visit on May 27, 2013…..

….. and lovely fringed iris (I. japonica) as well.

The garden also has a collection of viburnums, common ones like Viburnum henryi and much rarer species like Viburnum parvifolium, below.

I love gazing at the waterfall, flanked by a pair of golden deodar cedars (Cedrus deodara ‘Aurea’) and splashing into a quiet pond. That’s the weeping katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum ‘Morioka Weeping’ at left…..

…. which is such fun to stand under, like a leafy curtain admitting glimpses of the water behind.

But for many gardeners who visit VanDusen in the latter part of spring, the big draw in the Sino-Himalayan Garden is the Meconopsis Dell. It’s here, in the cool, humus-rich, slightly damp soil of the dell that the Himalayan blue poppies with their alluring blue petals grow beneath giant Himalayan lilies (Cardiocrinum giganteum)…..

…. with their fragrant, wine-throated, white, early summer blossoms facing out from the top of 8-foot (2.5 m) stems.

But it’s the blue poppies (Meconopsis baileyi, formerly betonicifolia) that transfix me and most visitors. On one occasion in mid-June a decade ago, I have the pleasure of touring the Dell with Gerry Gibbens, the now-retired senior gardener in the Sino-Himalayan Garden. The blue poppies were his babies, as were all the Asian treasures in the garden at the time. But on a second visit on May 27, 2013, the weather is wet and the silky blue petals are spangled with raindrops.

There are drifts of mixed colours of Himalayan poppies, including mauve forms……

….. and one that’s a surprisingly clear pink.

Thanks to Gerry Gibbens, I admire the white form of Nepal poppy (Meconopsis napaulensis)…..

….. and deep in the shade between trees he shows me the Himalayan woodland poppy (Cathcartia villosa, formerly Meconopsis).

As I wander through the Sino-Himalayan Garden in spring, there are so many other treasures, like the cobra lilies peeking out of the understory. This is Arisaema nepenthoides.

Leaving the garden, I pass a perfectly uniform carpet of box-leaved or privet honeysuckle (Lonicera pileata), and I give a nod of thanks to Roy Forster, Gerry Gibbens and all the gardeners involved in the creation and maintenance of this exquisite Asian mountain woodland garden.

In the second half of my blog on VanDusen Botanical Garden in Springtime, coming next, we’ll visit the Fern Dell, the Alma VanDusen Garden, the Perennial Garden, the Southern Hemisphere Garden and the very special Laburnum Walk, among other places.

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If you want to read about another exceptional Vancouver garden, visit the blog I wrote on UBC’s David Lam Asian Garden.

Other public garden blogs 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;

The Joyous Alma VanDusen Garden

Posted on April 24, 2020 by Janet

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;

Otari-Wilton’s Bush

Posted on April 1, 2020 by Janet

It’s been a while since I blogged about New Zealand and our 2018 trip, but I’ll correct that today, since there was one garden omitted – and it was my favourite. If you recall, in my last blog we were sailing back to the North Island from the South Island and settling ourselves into New Zealand’s beautiful capital city of Wellington for the final chapter of our trip. Today, I want to take you to what was my favourite public garden of our entire 3-week tour, Otari-Wilton’s Bush (whose proper name is Otari Native Botanic Garden and Wilton’s Bush Reserve, but I’ll call it OWB for short). Let’s walk from the car park through the main entrance gate or warahoa…..

….. past the Kauri Lawn and the familiar trunks of the kauri trees (Agathis australis) we’d fallen in love with a few weeks earlier on the Manginangina Kauri Walk in the Puketi Forest near Bay of Islands, on our Maori culture day.

The path leads past interesting New Zealand natives towards the information centre where we can……

….. find a map. This place is massive! There are ten kilometres of walking trails over 100 hectares (247 acres) of native podocarp-northern rata forest featuring 5 hectares of gardens containing half of New Zealand’s native plants. In total, there are.1200 species, hybrids and cultivars of indigenous plants, and we have such a short time to visit! On that note, I should add that there was a reason why it took me so long to get this blog together: the complexity of the garden and our speed rushing through it meant that I didn’t feel I could do it justice without researching it a little more than the other public gardens we’d visited, which were more straightforward…. rose garden, perennial border, etc. There is not that kind of typical botanical garden approach here at OWB. It’s all about native plants and their conservation! I could have spent two days there, easily

Because it’s difficult to read the map (click on it or download it for a better look), here is the legend:

1 –      Plants for the home garden
2 –      Brockie rock garden
3 –      Wellington coastal plants
4 –      Grass and sedge species
5 –      Threatened species
6 –      Hebe species
7 –      Rainshadow garden
8 –      Flax cultivars
9 –      Pittosporum species
10 –     Coprosma species
11 –     Olearia species
12 –     Northern collection
13 –     Divaricate collection
14 –     Gymnosperm (conifer) collection
15 –     Fernery
16 –     Alpine garden
17 –     Dracophyllum garden
18 –     38
19 –     Broom garden

The garden and surrounding bush has a complicated history, from the Maori first inhabitants – Taranaki tapū or sub-tribes – who migrated to the general area in 1821 from the Wellington region; to the arrival of European settlers in the 1840s; to the allocation of 500 acres to Maori tribes; to the 1860 purchase by Job Wilton of 108 acres for farming; to the leasing by one tribe of 200 acres to three settlers; and subsequent sales by other tribes to other settlers. By 1900, prominent citizens of Wellington began to realize that the natural land around the city was in demise. As another 134 acres of tribal land was being sold to settlers, Wellington City Council stepped in and purchased it. By 1918, Otari’s status was changed to a reserve “for Recreation purposes and for the preservation of Native Flora.” In 1926, the well-known botanist, plant explorer and ecologist Dr. Leonard Cocayne presented a proposal to create a collection of indigenous plants on the site: the Otario Native Plant Open Air Museum. He was named Honorary Botanist to the Wellington City Council and effectively Director of the Plant Museum. Over the next few years, he collected 300 native plants and published the guidelines for the development and arrangement of the museum. Upon his death in 1934, he was buried on the site.

Let’s head out over the canopy bridge spanning the ‘bush’ below.

Visitors gazing out over this scene can appreciate how this part of New Zealand looked before cities and highways were built and invasive plants outcompeted native flora.

The garden has done a good job of labelling native trees to inspire visitors to choose these for their own gardens. This is karaka (Corynocarpus laevigatus).

This is the tawa tree (Beilschmiedia tawa).

This is rewarewa (Knightia excelsa).

Looking down, you can see the exquisite structure of the silver ferns or pongas (Alsophila dealbata, formerly Cyathea).

It’s easy to see why this fern enjoys such an elevated position in New Zealand.

Interpretive signage is well done in the garden.

Though it is far away, I attempt a photo of New Zealand’s wood pigeon.

After the canopy walkway, I find myself in a section devoted to plants for the home gardener. Seven fingers or patē (Schefflera digitata) is a small, spreading tree fond of shade and damp places. It’s the only New Zealand species in the genus Schefflera.

The Three Kings kaikomako (Pennantia baylisiana) was down to a single extant plant in New Zealand when it was discovered on a scree slope on Three Kings Island in 1945 by Professor Geoff Baylis of Otago University. Seeds were harvested, allowing it to return from the brink of extinction.

Gold-variegated karaka (Corynocarpus laevigatus ‘Picturata’) is a colorful Otari-Wilton’s Bush introduction of the evergreen New Zealand laurel tree. Its Maori name “karaka” means orange, and is the colour of the tree’s fruit.

The Leonard Cockayne centre can be booked for small meetings, workshops and education sessions.

Our American Horticultural Society tour group listens to Otari Curator-Manager Rewi Elliot giving an overview on the garden. You can see the memorial plaque at the base of the large rock, the burial site for Leonard and Maude Cockayne.

In the adjacent Brockie Rock Garden, I find Chatham Island brass buttons (Leptinella potentillina) is a rhizomatous groundcover adapted to foot traffic.

Slender button daisy (Leptinella filiformis) is bearing its little white pompom flowers.

Purple bidibid or New Zealand burr (Acaena inermis) has become a popular groundcover plant in Northern hemisphere gardens.

Chatham Island geranium (G. traversii) has pretty pink flowers. Its easy-going nature recommends it as a good native for New Zealand gardeners.

Like a lot of shrubby veronicas, Veronica topiaria used to belong to the Hebe genus before DNA analysis. It has a compact, topiary-like nature and tiny white summer flowers.

Silver tussock grass (Poa cita) is a tough, drought-tolerant native adapted to the poorest soils.

This is a lovely view from the Cockayne Overlook.

Below, a path is flanked by some of the sedges (Carex sp.) for which New Zealand has become renowned throughout the gardening world.

We catch a glimpse of New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) on the right along the path.

Castlepoint daisy (Brachyglottis compacta) is native to the limestone cliffs on the Wairarapa Coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Like many species here, it is considered at risk in the wild.

We had seen Marlborough rock daisy (Pachystegia insignis) at the Dunedin Botanical Garden earlier in the trip. It’s such a handsome plant.

A gardener trims the base of a sedge along the path. There are signs in the garden stating “Please do not pull out our ‘weeds’”, explaining that they may look like weeds but several are threatened endemics that are allowed to casually self-seed in the garden.

Orange tussock sedge (Carex secta), aka makuro or pukio. is common to wetlands throughout New Zealand.

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Gardeners are at work trimming the sedges with the podocarp-northern rata forest in the background.

The Wellington Coastal Garden, below, is home to native plants found on the rocky foreshores, sand dunes and scrub-coloured cliffs of Wellington. Many plants here have thick, fleshy leaves or waxy surfaces to cope with wind and salt spray.

The Rain Shadow Garden features plants native to Marlborough, Canterbury and Otago in the South Island, specifically to regions lying east of the Southern Alps where rainfall is scant. From Wikipedia: In the South Island of New Zealand is to be found one of the most remarkable rain shadows anywhere on Earth. The Southern Alps intercept moisture coming off the Tasman Sea, precipitating about 6,300 mm (250 in) to 8,900 mm (350 in) liquid water equivalent per year and creating large glaciers. To the east of the Southern Alps, scarcely 50 km (30 mi) from the snowy peaks, yearly rainfall drops to less than 760 mm (30 in) and some areas less than 380 mm (15 in). The tussock grasslands are common in New Zealand’s rain shadow.

To northern hemisphere eyes, New Zealand has a lot of strange plants, but none tickle our fancy more than toothed or fierce lancewood (Pseudopanax ferox). You’ll see its mature tree form a little further down in our tour of the garden but I love this photo illustrating the juvenile form, often described as Doctor Seussian or like a broken umbrella. It is now seen in gardens throughout the world, mostly owing to the 2004 Chelsea Flower Show where it starred in New Zealand’s gold-medal-winning garden exhibit.

This is my favourite image in the garden because it celebrates plants that typify the New Zealand native palette – the buff sedges and the wiry shrubs in ‘any-colour-but-green’. Save for the sword-like leaves of the cabbage palm (Cordyline australis) at the top of the picture, there is nothing ‘luxuriant’ about the plants in this garden. They evolved their sparse foliage to outsmart hungry predators or to protect themselves from wind, heat and salt.

As an illustration, here is Coprosma obconica, considered threatened in its native niche, with its “divaricating” growth habit (branching at sharp angles) when young. Note that its tender foliage is in the centre of this wiry sphere, thus protected from the nibbles of herbivores.

But then there are the big grasses and phormiums, which lend the opposite lush feeling. I love this garden, too, with its collection of flaxes, both the large New Zealand flax or harakeke (Phormium tenax) and the smaller mountain flax or wharariki (Phormium colensoi, formerly P. cookianum). In milder climates of North America, we see P. colensoi cultivars used extensively, e.g. ‘Maori Maiden’, ‘Black Adder’, ‘Sundowner’, etc. This is P. tenax ‘Goliath’.

A closer look at ‘Goliath’. The Māori grow harakeke plants especially for weaving and rope-making. Note the leaves of the Carex, illustrating the mnemonic “sedges have edges”.

At the base of the steps is a beautiful stand of South Island toetoe grass (Austroderia richardii, formerly Cortaderia). It is related to the South American pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana) which has become an invasive in New Zealand (and also coastal California).

Below we see the juvenile (right) and mature (left) forms of fierce lancewood (Pseudopanax ferox) growing side by side. Note the stout trunk and the different leaves on the adult tree. Botanists theorize that the tree evolved its narrow, young form with its hooked leaves to thwart herbivory by New Zealand’s flightless bird, the giant moa, which was hunted to extinction by Polynesian settlers five hundred years ago. Once the plant reaches a certain height – around 3 metres or 9 feet in 10-15 years – it gets on with the regular business of being a tree. The forms are so different that early taxonomists mistook them for different species.

Nearby is a garden labelled “the hybrid swarm”, featuring offspring of crossings of two other lancewood species, Pseudopanax crassifolius or horoeka and P. lessonii or houpara.

One of the tour members calls to me that she has heard the tui bird and I pass a stand of Richardson’s hibiscus (H. richardsonii)…..

…. as we go exploring into denser garden areas.

Sure enough, there it is – not the best photo, but it’s a treat to find it here. The Māori call this bird the ngā tūī, and this particular bird’s black-and-white colouration (its iridescence isn’t notable in this light) illustrates why the colonists called it the parson bird. It is one of two extant species of honeyeaters in New Zealand, the other being the bellbird. If you read my blog on Fisherman’s Bay Garden, you might have watched the YouTube video I made of that lovely garden with the entire soundtrack comprised of the bellbird’s song.

But time is fleeting and we still have the Fernery to visit. I stop for a moment to photograph Kirk’s daisy or kohurangi (Brachyglottis kirkii var. kirkii). It is in decline and classed as threatened, mostly due to predation from possums, deer and goats.

Common New Zealand broom (Carmichaelia australis) is not related to European broom (Cytisus scoparius), which is as invasive in New Zealand as it is throughout the temperate world.

Here is a large specimen of bog pine (Halocarpus bidwillii).

I pass a small water garden surrounded by rushes.

Crossing back over the canopy walkway, I come to the totara (Podocarpus totara) with its stringy, flaking bark. This specimen was planted in the 1930s and could live for more than 1,000 years. It is one of 5 tall trees in the Mixed Conifer-Broadleaf Forest type here; the others are kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides), matai (Podocarpus taxifolia), rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) and miro (Prumnopitys ferruginea). Totara wood is strong and resistant to rot; it was used traditionally by the Māori for carving and to make their waka or canoes. On trees 150 to 200 years old, an anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory medicinal product called totarol can be extracted from the heartwood on a regular basis. A dioecious species, female trees bear masses of fleshy, red, edible berries that the Māori collected in autumn by climbing the trees with baskets.

Now I’m on the boardwalk heading back through the Fernery to the parking lot and our bus. It was April 10, 1968 when Cyclone Giselle brought sudden winds of 275 kilometres per hour (171 mph) to Wellington, sinking the interisland ferry Wahine in sight of the harbour, with 53 lives lost of the 734 aboard. But the cyclone, the worst in New Zealand’s history, also knocked down trees throughout the country, including a swath cut through the forest at Otari-Wilton’s Bush. The opening created light favourable for the growing of ferns, and thus the fernery was launched late that year.

I see New Zealand’s iconic silver fern or ponga, which has had a botanical genus name change from Cyathea dealbata to Alsophila dealbata, courtesy of DNA sequencing. Look at the ferns colonizing its trunk.

Later, I get a closer look at the plants climbing another silver fern, which were identified for me by an Otari botanist for my 2018 blog New Zealand – The Fernery Nation. The climbing thread fern is Icarus filiformis (formerly Blechnum filiforme) or pānoko. The broadleaf plant is scarlet rātā vine or in Māori akatawhiwhi (Metrosideros fulgens).

I pause at a few low-growing ferns, including Cunningham’s maidenhair (Adiantum cunninghamii).

…… and the rhizomatous creeping fern Asplenium lamprophyllum.

But it’s the tree ferns that are most spectacular here. Milne’s tree fern (Alsophila milnei) has also had a genus name change from Cyathea. It is endemic to Raoul Island.

Kermadec tree fern (Alsophila kermadecensis) is also native to Raoul Island.

Mamaku or black tree fern has also been moved out of Cyathea; it is now called Sphaeropteris medullaris. It can grow very tall, up to 20 metres (60 feet).

I take a quick glimpse into the native bush, which encompasses 100 hectares here as our guide calls for me to hurry. I’m the last one on the bus!

Leaving the garden, I glance back at the beautiful pou whenua carved with the creatures of the forest. Given that “Otari” is a Māori word for “place of snares” recalling its heritage as a traditional place for bird-hunting, it is fitting that it is now celebrated as a place for watching birds and all manner of wildlife and plants.

As I run for the bus, I stop to take one last photo, of the unfurling crozier, or koru in Māori, of rough tree fern or whekī (Dicksonia squarrosa). Traditionally, the koru symbolizes perpetual movement, a return to the point of origin. It seems that the people of Wellington and those who fought to reclaim the bush for nature and education have done that here very well.

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If you enjoyed this blog, be sure to read my New Zealand series of blogs:

At the Vorres Museum

Posted on November 28, 2019 by Janet

One of the first stops on our Greek tour had a very Canadian connection. In the leafy Paiania neighbourhood, a suburb of Athens, we visited the beautiful Vorres Museum of Folk and Contemporary Art. Donated to the state in 1983 by its Greek-Canadian owner Ionos Vorres (1924 – 2015), it is an interesting complex, evoking both the clean, modern lines of contemporary Greek architecture and the rustic, whitewashed homes of a 19^th century Attica village. Connecting those notions philosophically and physically by converting a few old houses and a stable to create a world-class collection of ethnographic folk art reaching back 2,500 years and a sleek gallery of contemporary art was the genius of Ion Vorres (Ian).

Viewed from the upper part of the property, the building surrounds a courtyard on three sides, the folk museum on the right, the modern gallery on the left.

We began our tour in the art gallery, passing a fountain of lantana to enter.

A light, airy space with pale brick walls, the gallery was designed in the late 1970s by Michael Fotiadis, co-designer with Bernard Schumi Architects of the new Acropolis Museum. Additions were made in 2004.

In the 1970s, when Ion Vorres began to collect works by 20^th century artists such as Yannis Gaitis, ‘Human Landscape’ (1975), below, the National Gallery in Athens did not have a collection of modern paintings.

So Vorres became both collector and benefactor. That tradition continues today at the museum, with annual residencies and educational programs in which school children visit to do activities while discovering noted artists such as Dimitris Mytaras, below, and his ‘Yellow Tombstone’ (1970).

Given the times of much of the work in the gallery, created during the far-right Military Junta of Greece (1967-74), there is a distinct political slant that adds to the mystique of the works. Our tour guide was Ion Vorres’s grandson Nektarios Vorres, President of the Vorres Foundation, which oversees the museum. He stopped at his favourite work, ‘Hommage to the Walls of Athens, 1940-19…’ (1959) by Vlassis Caniaris, in which the artist recreated the images of the protest-laden walls of Athens during the Nazi occupation. Before the occupation ended, of course, the Civil War began in 1943 and lasted until 1949.

Hear Nektarios Vorres speak about the painting, below.

A personal note here. When I visited Greece in 2011 during a tour that began in Istanbul and travelled through the islands of Rhodes, Patmos, Lindos, Santorini, Mykonos and Delos, our one day in Athens happened to coincide with a national day of protest on the talks with the European Union. It was the time of ‘the debt crisis’ and nothing was open. My husband elected to travel to Delphi even though the site was closed, just to see the countryside. I decided to go downtown and watch the protests. I perched on a street railing and watched the people parade by: teachers, nurses, government workers, young, old, holding their flags and banners.

It occurred to me then that I come from a young country that has never been in the grip of a national crisis, economic or otherwise. Canada has fought in European wars, but war has never come to us. We have not been occupied, nor seized by the military, nor torn apart by civil war, nor invaded repeatedly in our brief century-and-a-half since confederation, unlike Greece and its tumultuous events over thousands of years. It is impossible for me to understand the depth of history that rests in the Greek psyche, the kind of scribbled history that Vlassis Caniaris was capturing on the Walls of Athens. But I could indeed watch this small moment in history pass by in downtown Athens.

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Then we came to Giorgis Derpapas‘s stately 1975 portrait of Ion Vorres, below. After graduating from the (American) Athens College at the age of 18, Vorres joined the OSS underground in 1942 and fought behind the enemy lines during the Nazi occupation of Greece. In 1944, he travelled to Canada where he received his BA from Queens University followed by an MA from the University of Toronto. He became a Canadian citizen and stayed and worked for some years, writing on art and architecture, organizing exhibitions, and authoring The Last Grand Duchess, about the exiled Grand Duchess Olga, sister of Czar Nicholas II. He returned to Greece in 1962, eventually selling the family company. But he was lured back to Canada for Expo 67 and named director of the Greek Pavilion, the only Canadian citizen to run a foreign pavilion.

Back home again, Ion Vorres looked for a way to celebrate the culture he saw rapidly disappearing as Greeks abandoned the countryside for the city, a massive flow of population that occurred after the Second World War. Determined to conserve important artifacts of Greek rural life, he began collecting; as the word went out people came to him with what Nektarios called their “old junk”. He lived in a small section of one of the houses as he oversaw the development of his museum while playing an active role in Greek cultural life, serving on boards and as an international cultural advisor. He was also Mayor of Paiania from 1991 to 1998. Among his honours were the Order of Canada (2009) and the Greek title Grand Commander of the Order of Honour (2014). In his final years, the debt crisis loomed large for Ion Vorres, as it did for all Greece’s cultural sites, reducing financial support from the state to which he’d bequeathed the museum and limiting the open days to weekends only. Today, a 10-member board of directors runs the foundation and the museum caters to special functions as well as fulfilling its mission focus.

We finished our tour of the gallery with a retrospective on the work of Jannis Spyropolous.

Then it was into the museum for a tour that was more like walking through a rambling home from the 19th century. Furniture, art, religious icons, textiles, household items….

….. and old millstones, all beautifully displayed with vases of tumbling bougainvillea blossoms.

I walked past shelves of coloured glass…..

…. with enticing views of the stone walls and their adornments in the garden beyond.

We finished in the old kitchen with its impressive paintings and….

….. collection of commemorative ceramic plates.

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Then in was out into the garden, but not before a little introduction by Nektarios and our tour guide Eleftherios Dariotis, below left, who has been working on a more sustainable approach to the Vorres Museum courtyard gardens and their collection of Mediterranean plants. Not only has he redesigned the plantings to incorporate many indigenous and drought-tolerant plants, but he has also embarked with Nektarios on a brand-new dry garden behind the museum.

I loved this little cottage garden adjacent to the museum with its lime tree and a mix of interesting plants.

Against the white wall grew perfumed Hedychium gardnerianum, or Kahili ginger lily from the Himalayas. While we usually refer to botanical names as Latin, their roots are very often Greek. In this case, the genus name comes from the Greek words “hedys” for fragrant, and “chion” for white, referring to another species.

And there was the popular South African plant Leonotis leonurus, or lion’s ear, its etymological roots in the Greek words “leon” for lion and “otis” for ear, describing the fuzzy upper lip of each flower.

Nearby was a 70-year old pomegranate (Punicum granatum) full of fruit.

Easy-care sages (Salvia sp.), a Dariotis specialty, spilled over a wall.

A dark-leafed taro (Colocasia) adorned a millstone in a little pond.

This is the view from the other side.

A little greenery against the white wall.

Though native to the Caribbean, sweet acacia (Vachellia farnesiana) was imported into Europe in the 17^th century.

Because of the configuration of the museum and gallery, there are numerous walled courtyards in which to stroll, each with its own selection of sculpture and plantings. And the dry stone walls are spectacular as background. Whether formal….

…. or informal, they are stellar examples of decorative stonework.

We toured our way to the courtyard just inside the….

….. tall gate and the driveway lined with more stone walls.

Then we climbed stairs to the upper part of the property……

……….. and listened to Eleftharios and Nektarios talk about the new garden……

…… taking shape here beyond the little pile of spare monuments(!) One day soon, visitors to the museum will be able to explore the wealth of indigenous Greek flora growing on this gentle slope: a leafy, yet no less important, heritage of the country that the Vorres family celebrates here in Paiania.

Visiting Cougar Annie’s Garden – Part Two

Posted on October 27, 2019 by Janet

If you’ve read Part One of our visit to Boat Basin and Cougar Annie’s Garden, you’re waking up with me now on Day 2. After a night in cabin #6, we rose ready to explore the rainforest and take a little more time to visit Annie’s garden. I looked out our cabin window at the trees growing on the ridge. I saw yellow cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis, formerly Chamaecyparis). Though it grows from Alaska to California, it derives its botanical name from the fact that it was first collected near Nootka Sound, just north of Boat Basin. Its wood is much used for buildings and was the material Peter Buckland used to make the long sushi table, among other structures.

I could also see Pacific silver fir or amabilis fir, Abis amabilis.

When I walked up the forest path towards the outhouse, there was Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia) growing amongst the salal.

Caitlin was already out photographing when Doug, Mary Ann and I finished a leisurely breakfast and began our walk down the ridge road. Caitlin had warned us it was steep, and this photo doesn’t really illustrate how steep. You can see the ghostly cedars along the road. Peter said: “Dead, standing cedars we call ‘grey ghosts’. They make excellent posts and beams, structurally and aesthetically. Most have grown in wet ground where nutrients are low, suppressing growth. Grey ghosts are effectively hardwood. Their interior is deep mellow brown in colour, ideal for interior finishing, viewable at Central Hall and several cabins. Logging cut down grey ghosts and left them to rot, a process that takes centuries due to the preserving oils within cedar. All was not lost. During the first twenty-five years of construction when logging roads provided access to nearby clearcuts many grey ghosts were recovered.”

As the road flattened, I saw lots of young lodgepole or sea pine (Pinus contorta).

We came upon Peter’s garden in a clearing with raised beds filled with …..

….. the dahlias we’d seen in vases, the ones that recall Cougar Annie’s mail order business…

…… as well as mesclun lettuces (Peter contributed the salads to our two dinners) and….

….. shiso (Perilla frutescens) and squash.

Heading towards Annie’s garden, I saw some old gem-studded puffballs on the road….

…. and passed Peter’s beautiful woodshed, almost filled and ready to supply a winter of heat to the pot-bellied stove in his house.

As we took a path from the road through the trees into Annie’s garden, I wished it was June rather than early October. Had we arrived in spring or summer, we might have seen some of the colourful blossoms of the perennials, shrubs and trees still surviving, with Peter’s help, and illustrated on this poster.

We wandered about, imagining how Annie’s house must have looked in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when she was still filling plant and bulb orders to be sent throughout Canada…..

…. and growing her own pleasure garden, now setting seed in another autumn.

I saw a big drift of montbretia (Crocosmia crocosmiiflora) and a….

…. hydrangea ensconced in the heather.

A dark blue gentian poked its head up from the leaf litter…..

…. and we found a few grapes growing on a vine.

Hebe grew along a path, below, along with spireas, weigelas, azaleas, rhododendrons and other shrubs.

I chuckled when I saw a Steller’s jay flitting through the branches of a fruit tree. Cougar Annie couldn’t stand these cheeky birds and there was usually one simmering in a broth on her stove (or so the story goes).

Like much of the Pacific Northwest, Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius) is a troublesome invasive at Boat Basin and Peter keeps it clipped in the garden to prevent seeds escaping.

But the rainforest is always waiting in the wings to reclaim this relict garden. Here native salal (Gaultheria shallon) was blooming for a second time in the season. In some coastal parts of western North America, evergreen salal forms tall, almost impenetrable thickets. It is commonly used by florists as a filler in bouquets.

Its fruit is edible and has a unique flavour, according to Wiki. Native people ate them fresh or dried into cakes, and the Haida and other B.C. first nations used them to thicken salmon roe. They make a good fruit leather and are also used as a purplish-blue dye.

If the rainforest wants to take back the garden, the little structures have all but surrendered to the ravages of time. I surprised a pine marten who quickly scurried back into the shelter of this ruin….

…… and I was fascinated by the collection of post office papers and bulletins that Annie’s son Frank tried to keep filed when he was still running the little post office….

….. where old magazines talked of even older British monarchs and J&B scotch.

Peter found us in the garden and asked if we’d taken the Walk of the Ancients yet. We hadn’t and he offered to give us a tour. I asked if he would first demonstrate his ‘fool the eye’ diminishing perspective under the pergola he built into the garden. He happily acquiesced.

We passed the old truck that Annie’s son Frank had bought used; it only worked for a few runs before dying and was left here to the forest.

Then we were on The Walk of the Ancients, the path through the redcedar giants (Thuja plicata). As Peter notes in the handout for the trail: “The stage is now set. A majestic and magical scene lies ahead. It is best to move slowly, to look both around and upwards into the forest canopy. Look for evidence of the people who that came before in search for, and in respect of, the great red cedar. Remember that it was just over 200 years ago that Captain James Cook landed at Friendly Cove, which is only nineteen kilometres northwest of this trail. This event signalled the twilight for early native culture. Consider also that ‘modern’ logging developed the clearcuts of Hesquiat Harbour in only ten years.”

Peter has made signs pointing out trees of interest, and has provided a written guide for visitors.

The first was a tree with a hollow bottom. “The hollow base formed because the tree grew upon a nurse log or stump which subsequently decomposed into humus. This exposed the tree’s core to moisture and air resulting in centre rot well up the tree. While rot precludes structural use of the wood, the hollows offer many advantages to various visitors. Black bear will hibernate in hollow trees located up the mountain slopes. Mink and pine marten are often seen darting in and out of the root holes sometimes packing clams dug at the beach. Red squirrels, bats, and various birds live in the rotted interior where holes develop up the trees.”

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The scene below is called “Canoe Revival”. Says the guide: “The use of an old canoe tree stump as a nurse log by a younger cedar is quite common. Perhaps this is nature’s way of perpetuating the canoe log supply!”

Somewhere in there is the old sea wall.

Moss hangs luxuriantly on the windfall trees here.

This tree was signed ‘Bark and Boards”. You can see where the bark has been stripped away. According to the B.C. Government website: “The western redcedar has been called ‘the cornerstone of Northwest Coast aboriginal culture’, and has great spiritual significance. Coastal people used all parts of the tree. They used the wood for dugout canoes, house planks, bentwood boxes, clothing, and many tools such as arrow shafts, masks, and paddles. The inner bark made rope, clothing, and baskets. The long arching branches were twisted into rope and baskets. It was also used for many medicines. The wood is naturally durable and light in weight. It is used for house siding and interior paneling as well as outdoor furniture, decking and fencing. Because of its resistance to decay and insect damage, the wood of large, fallen trees remains sound for over 100 years. Even after 100 years, the wood can be salvaged and cut into shakes for roofs.”

Mary Ann stopped to photograph this beautiful burl. (And I stopped to photograph Mary Ann!)

I loved this grouping of “Companions”, in the rear. Redcedar, western hemlock and amabilis fir, all rising from the same place in the forest. This is a true “ecosystem”, featuring the major species of this forest near sea level. (I don’t know what the mossy trunk is.)

To provide a sense of scale, Peter stood under #9, Silver Giant. This redcedar is at least 700 years old.

“Old Friends” are two redcedars growing together, one pointing in the direction of the bog nearby.

As we headed towards the bog, I smiled at the sight of a big banana slug on the path, familiar to me from my B.C. childhood. Ariolimax columbianus is native to the forest floors of North America’s Pacific coastal coniferous rainforest belt, where it decomposes dead plant material, mosses, mushrooms and animal droppings into humus.

Peter pointed out a young cascara (Rhamnus purshiana), whose bark is used by first nations people for digestive ailments and constipation..

Then we toured the Bonsai Bog.

The boardwalk wound through a boggy, stunted forest….

….. and rested upon the sphagnum.

Bog Labrador-tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum, formerly Ledum) has white flowerheads in early spring.

Peter explained that he built the boardwalk atop Cougar Annie’s old trapline. This was the path she took with a lantern held close to her rifle so she could spot the cougar eyes.

Club moss or ground cedar (Lycopodium clavatum) reached across the boardwalk….

…. and the red fruiting bodies or “apothecia” of toy soldier lichen (Cladonia bellidiflora) brightened a rotting tree trunk.

The red sphagnum moss (Sphagnum sp.)…..

…… contained little carnivorous sundews (Drosera rotundifolia).

Until I saw Boat Basin, I was unaware that red-fruited bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) was circumboreal, having seen it in boggy places in Nova Scotia and Ontario.

Gray reindeer lichen (Cladonia rangiferina) is another circumboreal species, and is an essential food for reindeer (caribou).

Though they’re native to eastern Canada bogs from Ontario to Newfoundland, Peter has grown some North American cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) in the bog, which seem to be doing very well.

Our bog walk finished, Peter returned to his chores and Mary Ann, Doug and I walked back up the road past the “ghost cedars” for lunch and a nap. Rain was forecast for later and we were happy to have seen the Walk of the Ancients and the Bonsai Bog in dry weather.

Barbecued chicken was on the menu for our final dinner and Peter added his homegrown salad greens to our feast. In our cabin, we threw some logs into the woodstove and retired early, listening to the rain beat down on the roof and on the rainforest around us.

Our floatplane was arriving at 9 am so an early breakfast was in order. But I couldn’t resist one last look out at the rainforest, even if it was pouring rain.

The rain stopped in time for Peter to drive us and our bags down the road to the dock on Hesquiat Lake. A black bear galumphed in front of the truck for a bit before turning into the forest. We watched the Atleo floatplane land and taxi down the lake, arriving with a few Atleo employees who were bringing in supplies to Boat Basin for their annual company weekend. The pilot Sinclair then stowed our bags and we hugged Peter goodbye and crawled into the plane.

As we flew southwest towards Tofino, I gazed back over the wisps of cloud weaving through the dark, forested peaks of this rugged west coast of Vancouver Island. I couldn’t quite believe how much we’d seen and learned in less than 48 hours.

And I felt thankful to a crusty old lady named Annie and her determined friend Peter, who helped us see the trees and the forest, not to mention the garden.

Here’s a last look at Clayoquot Sound from the air.

*******

To enquire about booking a trip to Cougar Annie’s Garden and the Temperate Rainforest Study Centre, visit the Boat Basin Foundation Website.

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Category Archives: Public Gardens

Spring at VanDusen Botanical Garden – Part 1

The Joyous Alma VanDusen Garden

Otari-Wilton’s Bush

At the Vorres Museum

Visiting Cougar Annie’s Garden – Part Two

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