Fairy Crown #10-June Blues

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My tenth fairy crown for June 10th created at the cottage on Lake Muskoka features an array of flowers picked from my meadows and wildish garden beds. If it’s a little quiet-looking, that’s because it’s still very green in the meadows, and the plants that predominate, such as lupines and blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) are, well, solemnly blue.  Along with those two, my crown has golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea), white nannyberry flowers (Viburnum lentago), white oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum superbum) and the tiny pink flowers of black huckleberry (Gaylussacia baccata). And, in an effort to reflect the bad with the good, there are some caterpillar-chewed oak leaves, courtesy of the spongy moth (LDD or gypsy moth) caterpillars.

In fact, it’s a time of year I think of as ‘June blues’; in reality, it’s more lavender-purple, but it’s remarkable that so many plants with similar flower color bloom simultaneously. I fashioned a bouquet one June, setting the finished product in the meadows where the lupines grow. In it were the lupines as well as false blue indigo (Baptisia australis), blue flag iris (Iris versicolor), pale lilac showy penstemon (Penstemon grandiflorus) and a few of my “weeds”, oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) and buttercups (Ranunculus repens).

I grew the lupines from seed – a fairly complex operation that involved soaking the seed in warm water for 24 hours, then planting them in my sandy, acidic soil in a spot at the bottom of a slope that stays damp all the time. Fortunately, it worked and plants that were carefully transplanted and kept watered the first year have self-sown successive generations of new lupines that are very drought-tolerant. This is how they looked in the first few years, though now the big prairie species in the meadow have elbowed them to the margins. Though marketed as the eastern native wild lupine, L. perennis, my plants were in fact likely hybrids with L. polyphyllus from the west coast.  

Nevertheless, they attract numerous queen bumble bees seeking to provision their nests in spring. 

There is something so enticing about lupine flowers, so I like to focus on them with my camera to see what might be hanging out there, whether spiders….

…. or baby grasshoppers. 

Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) is a North American native plant whose pea-like flowers resemble those of lupine. 

Bushy, it grows to about 4 feet (1.2 m) and is happy in my gravelly, sandy soil on a slope that gathers a little moisture. In autumn, the foliage turns an amazing gunmetal-gray and the seedpods shake with a noise like a rattlesnake’s tail. Its common name derives from its use by Native Americans and settlers as a substitute dye plant for true indigo (Indigofera tinctoria).  So far, it has spread very slowly nearby.

Bumble bees and many other native bees are very fond of Baptisia australis.

If I admitted to liking a plant that is on every state and province’s invasive plant list, I would get into trouble. So I’ll just say that since oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) is on every Muskoka highway margin and dots the old fields in the area, I don’t mind at all if it pops up here too.

It cannot compete with my prairie grasses and perennials in the meadows, but it likes to hang out in spots of unplanted earth and at the edge of the path in front of the cottage, along with weedy buttercups (Ranunculus repens).  There’s a childhood memory of oxeye daisies. I remember sitting in the hayfield across the street from my house in Victoria, British Columbia, pulling the white petals from the flowers as I recited “he loves me, he loves me not” – and, of course, being delighted when I sat with a sad, petal-free flower convinced the boy across the street was my Prince Charming. Buttercups were part of my childhood too; we’d hold them under each other’s chin to see if we liked butter. Yes, butter.  There were no grownups around to tell us it wasn’t the predictive ability of a flower, but the reflective quality of its shiny yellow petals to create this magic.

Sometimes the oxeye daisies pop up near the lupines.

Native hoverflies, short-tongued bees and butterflies often visit the daisies as well.   

But path-cutting through the meadows – a necessity in early summer – quickly makes compost of the weedy buttercups and oxeye daisies… until next year.

I grew my golden alexanders (Zizia aurea) from seed and though quite particular about adequate soil moisture and a location out of hot sun, they are self-sowing here and there.  A short-lived native perennial from the carrot family, they prefer moist prairies and open woodland and are a host plant for black swallowtail caterpillars.

Though nannyberry (Viburnum lentago) is native to woodland in much of the northeast, I planted it behind the cottage in a spot with moist soil where it is shaded during the hottest part of the day.

Each spring, it bears clusters of white flowers that the bees adore, producing dark-blue summer fruit that the birds eagerly consume. Multi-stemmed, it grows to about 15 feet tall (4.6 m) and 10 feet (3 m) wide with glossy leaves (you can see them on my crown) that turn bright red in autumn.

There is a tiny sprig of pink, lantern-shaped flowers sticking up from the top of my fairy crown; they belong to black huckleberry (Gaylussacia baccata), a native shrub that grows near the lakeshore where its roots are periodically saturated with water from spring floods. Bumble bees nectar in the flowers, and in August….

…… the shrubs yield dark-blue berries that are sweet, though a little seedy. 

Finally, my crown bears a few oak leaves with and chewed edges.  I made it at the beginning of June 2021, when gypsy moths, aka spongy moths or LDD moths (Lymantria dispar dispar) were beginning to consume the red and white oaks, white pines and many other plants on our hillside…..

….. including my beautiful nannyberry.

It was a devastating and historic predation; by mid-July, the woodlands in our region looked like February, so bare were the deciduous tree branches, below.  (You can read last year’s saga with the gypsy moths on my blog here.)

But abundant summer rainfall nurtured the tree roots and they leafed out again with full canopies in August, though the moths laid abundant eggs on our poor trees once again. This year, we’re in a wait-and-see mode, given our cold days this past winter and the chance that a virus might decimate their population. But I sprayed all the egg masses I could reach on the oaks and pines on our acre a week ago, using my homemade cooking-oil-and-soap spray. Fingers crossed.

But let’s not leave on a sad note.  Here is my deconstructed #10 crown, with its familiar components:  lupine, blue false indigo, oxeye daisy and black huckleberry flowers. And here’s to June!

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Here are all my fairy crowns to date:
#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom

Fairy Crown #9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom

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My crown for June 5th was simple and a little bride-like – or so my friends told me. It consists of two flowers only:  palest-pink beautybush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) and azalea ‘White Cascade’ (Rhododendron hybrid).

The Japanese have a special word for the view in the distance, the landscape framed by your property, the elements that exist outside your own space: they call it shakkei.  For most of us, our borrowed scenery is not a distant mountain range or a bucolic meadow rolling to the ocean, but the plants and trees growing in properties adjacent to our own gardens.

My shakkei is a pair of large beautybushes (Kolkwizia amabilis) belonging to my neighbour Claudette that cascade over my own fence and dominate the view along my side garden path, sometimes in late May but usually in early-mid June.

I thought Claudette — my neighbour for 39 years and a former French teacher — should be photographed for this blog with one of the progeny of her original shrub, and she kindly obliged.  Merci beaucoups, madame.

Beautybush is often called ‘old-fashioned’ but I rarely see it in residential gardens, or botanical gardens, for that matter, which is a shame because it is a majestic shrub in bloom. A member of the honeysuckle family and a cousin to weigela, it typically grows to 10 feet tall (3 m) with a vase-shaped, arching habit that you can see in my photos. Here it is in my friend Rob Proctor’s fabulous garden in Denver, which I blogged about a few years ago.

I love the story of the 1901 discovery of Kolkwitzia amabilis by legendary plant explorer Ernest ‘Chinese’ Wilson (1876-1930) while collecting in the mountains of Hubei, China for Veitch’s Nursery of England. The shrub was about 5 feet tall and out of bloom, though he recorded in his notes that it had spinose fruits. He collected seeds which Veitch’s grew on until, six years later, small plants labeled as “Abelia” were sent to Boston’s Arnold Arboretum where Wilson had been employed. Finally, in June 1915 the shrubs flowered for the first time. According to a story in Arnoldia, the Arboretum’s newsletter, “Their early-summer displays of pink blossoms, profusely borne on arching branches, so impressed Wilson and others that it was christened beautybush.”

Photo courtesy of Arnold Arboretum – Copyright President & Fellows of Harvard College-Arnold Arboretum Archives.

Seeing it in Claudette’s garden in full flower with swallowtail butterflies…

…..and bumble bees competing to forage in the pale-pink blossoms flecked with amber nectar guides, I cannot help agreeing with its discoverer.

Here’s a little video I made of insects enjoying the flowers:

And though I wouldn’t consider it a prime candidate for floral design, here’s a very tiny bouquet that shows the inner markings of the corolla.

Much of my love of gardening came from watching my mother tend her garden in the suburbs of Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada’s mild ‘banana belt’. She grew camellias, magnolias, flowering cherries and a collection of brilliantly-colored Japanese azaleas – and I was her willing student.  Though I garden in a much colder climate, in her honor I planted the ultra-hardy ‘Cascade’ azaleas (Rhododendron ‘Cascade’) beneath my sundeck.  It is the sole survivor of many rhododendrons I planted over the decades, most of which eventually succumbed to imperfect conditions or summer drought. But ‘Cascade’ kept ticking along, and is an important color component of this little white-and-green-hued area, along with old-fashioned, white-edged Hosta undulata var. albo-marginata.    

Here it is with my romping Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) peeking through the flowers.

The fairy crowns are coming fast and furious now – it’s a job trying to keep up! Want to see more from earlier this season?
#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums

Fairy Crown #8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums

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My crown for May 31st wafted its fragrance around my head and made me wish I could bottle its sweet perfume.  That would be the scent of the Meyer lilac (Syringa pubescens ‘Palibin’) that I planted in my fragrance garden long ago. The white flowers are from my big alternate-leaved dogwood (Cornus alternifolia), an Ontario native shrub. And the fluffy spheres are an ornamental onion, Allium hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’.

Much of the joy of lilac time is that it only lasts a week or so – if you just grown one type – so I’ve learned to savour that scent on the air or in a vase on my kitchen table, along with dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis).

Unlike the towering common lilac (Syringa vulgaris) which, if left unpruned, grows so tall that it flowers out of nose range, my Palibin dwarf lilac is just the right height to sniff at 5-6 feet (1.5-1.8 m) and a little wider. Some people grow it as a tightly-clipped hedge, but I prefer to let it have its natural shape.

True, it has a light scent, not the old-fashioned perfume of the Hyacinthiflora hybrids or common lilac, but it is nonetheless an ultra-hardy and low-maintenance fixture in my fragrance garden, and swallowtail butterflies enjoy nectaring on the tiny florets.

Its ancestor was found as a cultivated plant grafted on privet roots near Beijing, China in 1908 by Frank Meyer, who brought it to the U.S. It was named in his honour, Syringa meyeri, before being reclassified as Syringa pubescens subsp. pubescens ‘Palibin’. (Despite the fact that it was never found in Korea, it is often confused in the trade with the Korean lilac species, S. patula and its cultivar ‘Miss Kim’, as well as littleleaf lilac, S. microphylla.)   

No such taxonomic confusion surrounds one of my favourite garden plants, the alternate-leafed dogwood (Cornus alternifolia). Native to a large swath of northeast North America, it is sometimes called pagoda dogwood for its layered branching.  It occupies a corner of my garden that sits just a few inches lower than the rest of the back yard, and appreciates the extra moisture there.  It is approximately 18 feet (5.5 m) tall and almost as wide.

It derives its Latin and common names from the fact that, unlike other dogwoods, the leaves are arranged alternately, rather than opposite. Some people refer to it as “pagoda dogwood” for its layered branching.

When it blooms in late May or early June, it is completely covered with creamy-white clusters of tiny flowers that attract native bees. I now have a few offspring of my original shrub seeded throughout my garden, which fills me with joy. And this morning I noticed the familiar flowers reaching over the fence from my next-door neighbours’ yard. I’m not sure they’ll know it was a gift from me, but it seems that my dogwood is intent on taking back native habitat from boring back yards! Hurrah!

In late summer, birds and squirrels make quick work of the blue fruit clusters….

….. and in October, the foliage turns a lovely rose suffused with gold.

Then there are the alliums, or ornamental onions. When I first planted Allium hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’ a few decades ago, I didn’t expect that it would be quite so exuberantly happy in my garden. Translated, that means it seeds itself around vigorously, especially in spots that dry out in summertime. 

The good news:  the bees love the violet-purple globes on 3-foot (90 cm) stems; the bad news:  the plants look seriously ugly as the leaves turn yellow.

Rather than let them grow in a thicket, like I do in places, the best approach is to intersperse them among herbaceous plants, such as Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum), below, with old fashioned dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis). The latter is a biennial that took decades to creep under the fence from my next-door neighbor’s garden. It is native to Eurasia and considered an invasive in some parts of North America where early settlers brought it to grow in their gardens. Driving home from New Jersey last week, I saw it growing in drifts along the side of the highway in Pennsylvania and upstate New York.

Perhaps no other weed has as many common names:  dame’s rocket, damask-violet, dame’s-violet, dames-wort, dame’s gilliflower, night-scented gilliflower, queen’s gilliflower, rogue’s gilliflower, summer lilac, sweet rocket, mother-of-the-evening, Good & Plenties, and winter gillyflower (Wiki).  As for its Latin name, Hesperis comes from the Greek word hespera, meaning evening, referring to the plant’s nocturnal fragrance.

In my front garden, Allium ‘Purple Sensation’ pops up, along with the hybrid Allium ‘Globemaster’, amidst the emerging foliage of grasses and summer perennials.   Dramatic purple exclamation points in a sea of green, they offer a charming interlude in this quiet, green period between the last spring bulbs and the sages and catmint of June.

And then there’s an unassuming little native perennial that most of my neighbours would consider a weed. Virginia waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginianum) grows in shady spots in my garden and, unlike the European weeds that like to colonize every square inch of freshly-dug soil, it picks its spots carefully. Its name comes from the white patterns that adorn the foliage of many, but not all, plants.  When its tubular, white flowers bloom above the lobed leaves in late May, they are very popular with bumble bees and other native bees.

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Want to see more of my Fairy Crowns?
#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka

The Rochester Lilac Festival

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Earlier this month – on Friday, May 13th to be exact – my husband Doug & I began a 12-day road trip through the northeast U.S. to celebrate his university reunion in New Jersey and to tour as many public gardens as we could fit in along the way. On that first day, we drove from Toronto to Rochester, New York in order to enjoy the first of three May weekends at the Rochester Lilac Festival at Highland Park. It bills itself as the largest free festival in North America and given the already-filled parking lots and hordes of people milling in the park, I can believe it. Walking towards the lilac plantings, we passed booths with huge lilac bouquets….

….. and themed t-shirts….

….. and vendors of cut flowers that were NOT lilacs.

And, yes, there was cotton candy.  It’s a festival, after all.

Given the hot temperatures and sunny skies as we arrived at mid-day, photo conditions were terrible for photography – but oh-so-perfect for perfume, which wafted everywhere!

But I did manage to create some photos on the shady side of the shrubs, including one cultivar I later nominated as one of the top 3 lilacs of the (admittedly abbreviated) roster we viewed.  Meet Syringa vulgaris ‘Jessie Gardner’, a 1956 introduction by the Gardener Nursery in Wisconsin.

There are more than 500 varieties (species, cultivars, hybrids) of lilacs and more than 1,200 lilac shrubs arrayed on the gently sloped hillsides of Highland Park. Because they originate in extremely cold climates in Europe and Asia, lilacs have no problem surviving winter in upstate New York and southern Canada.  Other big collections are held at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison and the Katie Osborne Lilac Garden at Ontario’s Royal Botanical Garden. I have also photographed the lilac collection at the Montreal Botanical Garden and rare species lilacs such as Syringa sweginzowii from China in the David Lam Asian Garden at UBC Botanical Garden in Vancouver, below.

There are many lilac types that provide a long season of flowering, from April into June in certain climates. Flowers are officially assigned Roman numerals for colour: I-White, II-Violet, III-Bluish, IV-Lilac, V-Pinkish, VI-Magenta, VII–Purple. Interestingly, we often refer to certain flowers being “lilac coloured”, which according to its origin in the “IV-Lilac” hue of the common lilac Syringa vulgaris is neither the lavender-blue nor the mallow-mauve that people often mistake as “lilac”.  In doing my various explorations on colour, I’ve grouped true lilac-coloured flowers in this montage.

Part of the difficulty of assigning a colour to lilacs is that the flowers change colour as they age, which you can see below with S. vulgaris ‘Professor Sargent’, named in 1889 by German botanist and nurseryman Franz Späth for Charles Sprague Sargent (1841-1927), first director of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum.

I am very partial to the Hyacinthiflora Hybrids, aka the Early Hybrids, partly because I live in a place where winter lasts well into “spring” and these fragrant lilacs tend to flower a few weeks ahead of the common lilac and its cultivars, and partly because the Canadian breeder Dr. Frank Leith Skinner (1882-1967) of Manitoba had a major role in their development. They are hybrids of S. vulgaris and the broadleaf Korean lilac, S. oblata or S. oblata var. dilatata. So the second of my Top 3 lilacs at Rochester was Syringa x hyacinthiflora ‘Excel’, a 1935 Skinner introduction which performs exactly as its name suggests, with excellence!

Another beautiful Frank Skinner Hyacinthiflora Hybrid is pure white ‘Sister Justina’, below, introduced in 1956.

Nearby was a common lilac cultivar, Syringa vulgaris ‘Frederick Law Olmsted’, hybridized by Father John Fiala (1924-90) and named in 1987 for Olmsted, the man sometimes called the father of American landscape architecture, who with his partner Calvert Vaux designed many well-known landscapes including New York’s Central Park and Rochester’s own Highland Park, the site of the lilac festival!  Father Fiala was legendary in lilac circles for authoring the book “Lilacs: A Gardener’s Encyclopedia”.  

Father Fiala also bred this beauty, S. vulgaris ‘Albert F. Holden’, also in my ‘Top 3″, with its deep-violet, very perfumed flowers with a silver reverse (similar to ‘Sensation’, but not as crisply white-edged). It was named for the man who endowed the Holden Arboretum in Kirtland, Ohio.

Rochester features many of the so-called “French hybrids” bred by the nurseryman Victor Lemoine and his son Emile between 1870 and 1950.  Among them are S. vulgaris ‘Linné’ from 1890, sometimes called ‘Linnaeus’ – the ultimate tribute name in botany.

Syringa vulgaris ‘Leon Gambetta’ with its double flowers, below, was introduced by Lemoine in 1907, its name honouring the French lawyer and republican politician who proclaimed the French Third Republic in 1870 and played a prominent role in its early government.

‘Jules Ferry’, also introduced by Lemoine in 1907, was named for a former Prime Minister of France during the Third Republic.

‘Paul Thirion’ was introduced by Lemoine in 1915 and is a popular and fairly common lilac.  Lemoine named it for a horticulturist at Nancy Parks, France. It is classed as VI-Magenta in colour.

Syringa vulgaris ‘Frank’s Fancy’, bred in the 1970s by Edward Mezitt of Weston Nurseries in Massachusetts and named for his friend Frank Goodwin, looks very magenta to my eye but is classed as VII-Purple. Blame it on the light.

For me, this is a classic and beautiful lilac truss:  mauve buds opening to pinkish-lilac florets on S. vulgaris ‘Frau Wilhelm Pfitzer’ introduced by Germany’s Pfitzer Nursery in 1910.

Syringa vulgaris ‘Silver King’ was bred by Wisconsin’s Dr. A. H. Lemke in 1941; its flowers are classed as III-Bluish but they are as close to silver as you’ll see.

Another type of lilac flowering at this time is the hybrid Chinese lilac, Syringa x chinensis, sometimes called the Rouen lilac because it was discovered in 1777 flowering in Rouen, France.  It is a cross between common lilac, S. vulgaris and Persian lilac, S. persica, from Iran.

Then there is S. x chinensis ‘Bicolor’ with its purple eye on pale pinkish flowers.

Seed of this unusual lilac, Syringa ‘Rhodopea’ was collected by botanist Václav Stříbrný in 1900 in the Rhodope Mountains in Bulgaria and cultivated in the botanical garden in Prague.  It has a different bearing and, according to the International Lilac Register is “not a uniform clone”, which accounts for it not always being included in the S. vulgaris clan.  Speaking of the Register, it is an invaluable resource to those searching for information on lilac cultivars and can be accessed here as a .pdf file.

Finally, I had to commemorate our Rochester visit with a husband-and-wife selfie, because who wouldn’t want to remember what it was like to stand amidst these perfumed shrubs on a warm afternoon in May? 

As we packed up the crumbs from our picnic lunch (devilled egg sandwiches made in my Toronto kitchen at dawn!) and made our way back to the car to drive on to Utica for the night, I asked a young mother if I could take a farewell photo for my blog, which she happily agreed to. What lucky children to run amongst the lilacs.

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LILAC PEOPLE

Speaking of selfies, what fun it was during my few hours at the Rochester Lilac Festival to run into someone I knew only as a Facebook friend.  Brian Morley of Kansas City, Missouri is a man of many talents. Not only does he co-own a fabulous business called Bergamot & Ivy Design with lush, innovative floral designs, he is also an accomplished lilac hybridizer and is on the Board of Directors of the International Lilac Society. It is a small world, but perhaps not so small when people who love lilacs gather in a famous spot devoted to the genus Syringa.  And we gave each other’s lilac wardrobe choices an approving nod!

During my freelance career, I have been fortunate to correspond with renowned lilac experts, including the late Freek Vrugtman, International Lilac Registrar and Curator Emeritus of Ontario’s Royal Botanical Gardens, which features a large collection of lilacs in its Katie Osborne Lilac Dell, below.

Freek Vrugtman proof-read my May 2008 story on Hyacinthiflora lilacs for Canadian Gardening magazine, below….

…… and we chatted by email when I had a question on lilacs.  After his death on March 3, 2022, the RBG published a memorial tribute which included the following passage:  “Working with RBG’s other staff, including Charles Holetich and Leslie Laking, Freek directed considerable attention to the collection and became the International Registrar for Lilacs in the Genus Syringa in 1976, as RBG became the International Cultivar Registration Authority, or ICRA, for Lilacs. Whenever a new cultivar was bred anywhere in the world the breeder would submit a request to Freek for its entry into the International Registry. Freek would review all such applications and guide the breeder through the process. As Registrar Freek became widely known as the international expert on Lilac cultivars.“

When I had a lilac identification question Freek couldn’t answer, he passed it on to the RBG’s lilac specialist, Charles Holectich: “What do you think, Charlie?”  Way back in 1994, when I was writing my weekly newspaper garden column for the Toronto Sun, I interviewed Charles Holetich for some hints on caring for these lovely spring shrubs.  This is my column from May 22, 1994 – twenty-eight years ago!  Below that I’ve included the interview as a Q&A.

JD:  What’s the best location for lilacs?

CH:  Lilacs prefer open, sunny locations and neutral soil, though they will grow in slightly alkaline or slightly acid conditions and are found in both.

JD:  What about drainage? 

CH:  They dislike wet feet, so if planted in clay-type soil which has a tendency to retain moisture, you should make a hill about 2 feet high and 8-10 feet wide, so excess moisture seeps away.

JD:  If it’s located in full sun, does a lilac shrub need to be fertilized?  

CH:  If it has too much foliage and not enough bloom, that means it’s high in nitrogen.  In order to induce flower buds, you should feed it with a high phosphate (middle number) fertilizer like 4-12-8 or 5-45-15.  This should be done immediately after flowering because next year’s buds are being formed in June, July and August.

JD:  What about all those seedheads?  Must they be removed and how can you reach the top ones on a big shrub?   


CH:  When summer has adequate rainfall, then it doesn’t matter because there’s sufficient energy to bring enough nutrients from the soil to satisfy the formation of both seedheads and flowering buds.  But in drought summers, you should remove seedheads and water deeply, about 5-6 inches once a month. 

JD:  Pruning confuses a lot of lilac owners too. 

CH: I think the ideal for a multi-stemmed lilac is to have 9-15 stems of different thickness positioned so they don’t rub each other.  Once this is achieved, then every two years or so, you should remove one or two of the oldest stems at ground level, keeping up to 3 new shoots.  Then the next year, you can decide which of the three is the best to keep and remove the others.

JD:  How tall should a lilac be kept pruned?

CH:  I’m a strong believer that a lilac should be deliberately kept pruned at between 6-9 feet.  

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To all the passionate lilac lovers, growers and breeders, I tip my fragrant hat, fashioned with trusses of my own Syringa pubescens ‘Palibin’ and lily-of-the-valley (or, as it’s accustomed to being addressed in my garden, “guerilla-of-the-valley”….)

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Want to read more about spring shrubs?  Read my blogs on:
The David Lam Asian Garden at Vancouver’s UBC
Spring at Van Dusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver (2 parts)
Spring at Ontario’s Royal Botanical Garden
The Rosy Buds of May and Beyond
A Shade Garden Master Class (Montreal Botanical Garden)

Fairy Crown 7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka

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My 7th fairy crown for late May was created at our cottage on Lake Muskoka, a few hours north of Toronto. It features native wildflowers and fruit: red-flowered eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), common blue violets (Viola sororia), wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium), the poet’s narcissus (Narcissus poeticus var. recurvus) and a little weed for good measure, yellow rocketcress (Barbarea vulgaris).

If my city garden takes a somewhat naturalistic approach to gardening, it is nonetheless situated in a traditional urban neighborhood. It might be the most flowery front garden on the street, but I’ve worked to make it fit in with the lawns up and down the block by having a hedge as a side boundary; by retaining old clipped boxwood shrubs on either side of the front stairs; and by paying attention to pleasing floral succession, from the earliest snowdrops to the last asters. And my neighbors do love it. In contrast, the meadows and garden beds I created atop Precambrian bedrock at our cottage on Lake Muskoka a few hours north of Toronto are truly wild-looking – and there’s no need to fit in with any neighbors. (I wrote about gardening at the lake in my extensive 2017 blog titled ‘Muskoka Wild’.)

I don’t grow tulips there — they’re just not right for the lake — but my fairy crown for May 20th features the last daffodil of the season, the poet’s daffodil (Narcissus poeticus var. recurvus).

Daffodils grow amazingly well in the acidic, sandy soil here since they love to dry out in summer, popping up each spring amidst the big prairie grasses and forbs.

Besides the poet’s daffodil, one of my favourites is the highly scented Tazetta variety ‘Geranium’, below. 

My grandchildren have all experienced nature on Lake Muskoka. This is Oliver exploring another perfumed daffodil, ‘Fragrant Rose’.

And there is nothing more satisfying than a bouquet of perfumed daffodils on the table in April or May.

On many occasions, I’ve tucked a bunch of daffodils in my bag as I head back to the city.

Daffodils flower concurrently with our little native common blue violet, Viola sororia.

Viola sororia is native to Muskoka, as it is to much of northeast North America. It doesn’t take up a lot of room and grows wherever it pleases, but always with a little shade and moisture at the roots.  

Apart from violets, the landscape here features a large roster of native plants, including the lovely eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) that pops up in the lean, gravelly soil where many plants might struggle. I try to sow seed of this species, being careful to leave the seeds uncovered since light is necessary for germination.

But wild columbine is very particular about where it wants to put down roots, and always surprises me when I see the first, ferny leaves pop up in a new location in spring. 

Hummingbirds are said to enjoy the dainty flowers of eastern columbine, but I confess I’ve never seen them doing so.  I would have to lie in wait on rocky ground by the shore, not as much fun as sitting comfortably on my deck watching them fight over the ‘Black & Bloom’ anise sage (Salvia guaranitica).

Muskoka and wild blueberries just go together naturally, and somebody’s grandmother always made the very best wild blueberry pie in August. In our family, it was my husband’s mother, and she taught her grandkids her secret recipe, including my daughter. So I’m always happy to see the queen bumble bee pollinating those first wild blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) flowers in May.

But just in case the chipmunks find our berries before we do, we always make a stop at the wild blueberry stand on the way to the cottage from town.

Wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) bloom in Muskoka now, too, and on parts of my path above the lake they form a perennial groundcover so dense that I am sometimes afraid to step into their midst, lest I damage them.

But there are always enough strawberries ripening months later to make my grandkids pause on their way to the lake to sample the fruit…

…tiny, admittedly, but oh-so-sweet and juicy.

Similarly, May is when the dark-pink flowers of black huckleberry (Gaylussacia baccata) adorn the shrubs in the shade of the white pines along the lakeshore.  The deep-purple fruit will ripen in August and though somewhat seedy, it is sweet and good for eating raw or baking.

There’s a native serviceberry here at the lake too, but don’t expect to see billowing clouds of white flowers like those big species further south. Its Latin name Amelanchier humilis gives a clue as to its shape, “low, spreading serviceberry”.  Still, native andrena bees love nectaring on it in May, as do the bumble bee queens, which nonetheless must remain wary of  crab spiders looking for their own meals.

My crown’s golden jewels are flowers of the common European weed in the mustard family, yellow rocketcress (Barbarea vulgaris). In Europe, it’s called ‘rocket’ or ‘bittercress’, suggesting a strong-tasting, edible green. Indeed, my foraging friends would recommend picking the basal leaves as they emerge in spring or the rapini-like flower buds (raab) to cook in recipes.  Failing that, just wait for the mustard-yellow flowers to appear and wear them in your fairy crown!

I use my smallest vases to display these delicate blossoms of spring on the table – a welcome celebration of nature’s return to the shore of a lake that was thick with ice just weeks earlier

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Want to see more of my Fairy Crowns? 

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady