Normally, on the Friday of Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, I’d be making sure I had all the ingredients for a big family dinner: turkey, apples and pumpkin for pies, etc. But this year on October 6th my husband Doug and I were at the first stop on a 12-day road trip that would take us from Toronto east to Montreal, then south to Boston and Kennebunkport, Maine. In other words, we were at my favourite large botanical garden on the planet: Montreal Botanical Garden (MBG). And their pretty entrance display was evocative of autumn, Thanksgiving and Halloween!
Before going further, let’s look at a map of the 185–acre (75-hectare) garden, which you can find online as a .pdf file here. The arboretum is filled with taxonomic collections of plants of all kind and there are Chinese and Japanese gardens and wonderful greenhouses filled with tropicals and desert plants, but because our time was limited, I chose to stay in the most densely planted part of the garden, which I’ve circled in red….
…. and enlarged and labelled below. (If I’d had more time I would have headed to the Shade Garden, which is always fabulous in its textural design and which I’ve blogged about previously, link at the end of this blog.)
Let’s start in the Perennial Garden, Jardin des Plantes Vivaces, with its long, geometrical layout. Dahlias were still looking good and the ornamental grasses were stunning.
Autumn colour was just beginning after our wet, cloudy summer in eastern Canada, but the Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) was putting on a nice fall show in the long arbor.
The beds in the perennial garden are filled with treasures, though the spring- and summer-bloomers were now forming seeds. But I was interested that Geranium Rozanne was still flowering in the centre beds.
Grasses plus asters! Is there a better combination for October? This lovely purple-flowered aster was labelled Symphyotrichum novae-angliae ‘Cloud Burst’, which must be very rare because the only reference to it online is from the Royal Horticultural Society, which lists it as a New York aster with an unresolved name. But MBG is pretty good on taxonomy so I’m going to take their word.
This is a stunning, magenta-flowered New England aster with a compact form, Symphyotrichum novae-angliae ‘Vibrant Dome’.
Bumble bees, hover flies and honey bees were all over S. novae-angliae ‘Barr’s Blue’.
It was a pleasure to find more unusual asters in the garden, like the bushy aster Symphyotrichum dumosum ‘Pink Bouquet’….
… and native species, like old field aster, Symphyotrichum pilosum var. pilosum, below.
I had never come across this vigorous Japanese aster, Aster innumae ‘Hortensis’.
There were other late-blooming perennials, too, including Japanese anemones. The one below is Anemone hupehensis ‘Prinz Henrich’.
And for those who like hardy chrysanthemums, a beautiful display from Chrysanthemum Mammoth™ ‘Red Daisy’.
I’m accustomed to seeing calamint (Clinopodium nepeta) flowering profusely in summer and attracting tons of bees – but this level of bloom in autumn was unexpected. Was it cut back after initial flowering? What a great perennial.
Autumn monkshood is one of the best plants for October, but this cultivar fit the weather. Meet ‘Cloudy’ (Aconitum carmichaelii Arendsii Group).—and just as toxic as its azure-blue monkshood cousins.
I’ve never seen pitcher sage (Salvia azurea) standing upright, which is a shame. With that sky-blue colour, it would be the perfect autumn plant. Nonetheless, the bees love it.
And, of course, there are the big border sedums. This one is Hylotelephium ‘Autumn Fire’.
But the plants that really shine in autumn are the ornamental grasses, and Montreal Botanical Garden has a large selection. Below, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Berlin’ makes a lovely partner to ‘Fireworks’ goldenrod (Solidago rugosa).
One of my favourite effects in planting design, and one I’ve written about for a magazine (see ‘Sheer Intrigue’ in this American Gardener .pdf) is the use of grasses as screens, or scrims, or veils. In the pairing below, ‘Goldgehänge’ tufted hair grass (Deschampsia cespitosa) acts as a screen for blackeyed susans.
The tall moor grasses (Molinia arundinacea) make fabulous scrims, whether it’s the airy flowers or the stems, like ‘Skyracer’, below, in front of old field asters.
I was absolutely enchanted with this combination of northern sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) and ‘Dewey Blue’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum). And it made me wonder why some people say they don’t care for grasses in a garden!
I grow big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) in my meadows at Lake Muskoka, but ‘Blackhawks’, below, is a dramatic cultivar of that native grass.
Positioned well, dahlias can add so much to perennial borders, like orange ‘Sylvia’ being graced by red Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’ and an anise hyssop, likely Agastache ‘Blue Fortune’.
Bush clover (Lespedeza thunbergii) is a good semi-woody plant for early autumn; this is the cultivar ‘White Fountain’.
I was interested that MBG features a few of the knotweeds in the perennial garden. The one below is Himalayan knotweed, Koenigia polystachya, a perennial which has reportedly escaped into the wild on the mild Pacific coast.
And I don’t know whether the pink-flowered cultivar of Japanese knotweed, Reynoutria japonica ‘Crimson Beauty’, is as invasive as the straight species (some sources say it’s not), or whether MBG simply has the means and people power to keep it under control.
In the section that features interesting bulbs and luscious swamp hibiscus (H. moscheutos), I was intrigued by the fall colour on the burgundy-leaved cultivar ‘Dark Mystery’, whose foliage had turned apricot, orange and gold.
The Food Garden was mostly finished, but the grains section looked vibrant. The amaranths, in particular, are varied and attractive. The one below is Amaranthus tricolor ‘Elephant’s Head’ — an excellent likeness, right?
Okra is as pretty in flower as it is a valuable edible. The one below was labelled Abelmoschus esculentus ‘Motherland’, but in researching okras online, I discovered this on a page from SowTrue Seeds called “Field Notes: The Utopian Project”. “Beyond the myriad okra varieties is a row of several closely-related species that are not actually okra but its cousins, if you will. Most of these don’t produce edible pods, but some do. A surprise and a historical mystery is hiding among those cousin species. It’s a bushy plant with huge leaves bigger than an open-spread hand. This variety is called Motherland okra, and it has been stewarded by Jon Jackson of Comfort Farms in Millegdeville, GA, whose family got it from West Africa. As the plants started to produce blossoms, Chris noticed that they resembled those of a couple of other unusual-looking okra varieties, one of which is Mayan okra. While most okra Southerners are familiar with is of the species Abelmoschus esculentus, and varieties of this species are also found all over Africa, India and Southeast Asia, Chris believes Motherland, Mayan, and this one USDA accession are actually Abelmoschus callei, a similar but distinct species originally endemic to West Africa. He wonders how many other A. callei varieties are out there hiding in plain sight, just considered to be okra like all the others.”
There are borders devoted to edible flowers, like this nasturtium, Tropaeolum minus ‘Bloody Mary’…..
….. and this inspiring combinations of herbs and vegetables with edible flowers, like the common fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) and purple ‘Redbor’ cabbage with the playful pink pompoms of annual Gomphrena globosa ‘Firecracker’.
The Food Garden includes plants from the four corners of the world, including this dwarf tamarillo with its unripe fruit, Solanum abutiloides, which will turn orange eventually.
The Herb Garden looked past its prime, but I was interested in this basil, which despite its Latin name, Ocimum americanum, is actually from Zambia.
The Garden of Innovation features newly-introduced annuals, perennials and tropicals….
…. including many award-winners, like the Perennial Plant Associations’ 2023 Plant of the Year, Rudbeckia ‘American Gold Rush’, from my friend, plant breeder Brent Horvath of Intrinsic Perennials. Though it’s past its prime, keep in mind that this is October 6th, long after most blackeyed susan species and hybrids have finished blooming.
Much of this garden is devoted to annuals, such as this petunia with the tiniest flowers, P. x atkinsiniana ‘Itsy Pink’.
New coleus introductions, such as Coleus scutellarioides ‘Talavera Burgundy Lime’, show off the remarkable colour combinations and adaptability of this foliage annual.
Breeders worked hard to get bearded iris to re-flower in autumn, after their June debut. This one is aptly-named ‘Lovely Again’.
I ducked under the arch wreathed with Virginia creeper to peek into the Quebec Corner garden, which looked much like the natural woodland around my Lake Muskoka cottage. However, with time passing and lunch calling, I started to exit before catching a movement in a serviceberry nearby.
And there was a bird I know mostly by its song — at Lake Muskoka we call it the “Oh Canada bird” (Oh Canada-Canada-Canada!): the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis).
Sadly, there was no time to explore the Shrub & Vine Garden, but I managed a quick look at a few beautiful hydrangeas, including H. paniculata Limelight Prime…
….and H. macrophylla Endless Summer Twist-n-Shout.
In all the years I’ve visited gardens, in North America and around the world, I’ve often been accompanied by my husband, Doug. As I approached his chair overlooking the pond near the peony and iris collection, I recalled him waiting for me (sometimes reading his book) at the Keukenhof in the Netherlands; Dutch designer Piet Oudolf’s garden at Hummelo; Kyoto Botanical Garden; the Orto Botanico in Palermo and Rome; the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and Monet’s Giverny; Savill Garden, Hampton Court, Sissinghurst and many others in England; Chanticleer near Philadelphia; Garden in the Woods and New England Botanical Garden near Boston; Seaside Gardens in Carpinteria, California; Los Angeles County Arboretum; Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami, and many, many more. He is often my chauffeur and I’m the terrible map reader (much easier with GPS now); he enjoys being in all the gardens and patiently waits for me to finish my photo shoot. So thank you, Doug.
But he did want to have lunch, so we walked back to the restaurant near the entrance where I noted the gorgeous hanging basket of begonias.
Then it was off towards the Pie-IX subway stop just a block away to head back to our hotel. We walked past the entrance gardens, still looking superb….
…. with their mix of colourful annuals, always one of my favourite examples of plant design. And, as always, I gave thanks (on Thanksgiving Weekend, no less) that I had the opportunity to enjoy the excellence that is the Montreal Botanical Garden.
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Interested in reading more about the wonderful gardens of Montreal Botanical Garden? Here are three of my previous blogs:
Each spring, I look with admiration on my drifts of an Ontario native plant that asks so little of me, but gives so much in return: Polygonatum biflorum, smooth Solomon’s seal. Its tapered shoots emerge in April in my north-facing back garden, where the clumps under the black walnut tree that looms over my sideyard pathway are surrounded by the tiny flowers of the bulbous spring ephemeral Corydalis solida.
By mid-late May, looking back towards my garden gate, the corydalis has disappeared but the Solomon’s seals stand three feet tall.
It’s still early in the garden when they flower, the grasses in my deck pots still just inches high.
The colony in the back corner of the garden grows near a Tiger Eyes sumac and has as its neighbour fall monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’), not yet visible. Both enjoy the same shade-dappled, slightly moist, humus-rich soil.
It’s a testament to the travelling power of Solomon’s seals that they do sometimes subsume other plants. This ‘Ballade’ lily tulip – one of my favourites – is resisting.
But nothing keeps Allium hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’ from rearing its pretty head.
My garden features a number of invasive plants – some native, like ostrich fern (Matteucia struthiopteris), others enthusiastic exotics, like my lily-of-the-valley, aka ‘guerilla of the valley’ (Convallaria majalis). (I’ve written about that pest before in my blog about making a perfumed garden party hat!) But Solomon’s seal is up to the challenge and can stand its ground.
One that didn’t fare so well in competition with the Solomon’s seals was wild geranium (G. maculatum), shown below in a photo from a previous spring.
At the Toronto Botanical Garden, blue Amsonia tabernaemontana, shown in the background below, makes a pretty companion for Solomon’s seal.
I love the way the pearl-drop flower buds of smooth Solomon’s seal open, curling up their green tips like dainty skirts.
In November, the leaves turn yellow-gold.
Solomon’s seal and other woodland lovers were featured in ‘Shady Lady’, one of #Janetsfairycrowns from 2021, which I blogged about last year.
My next-door neighbour grows smooth Solomon’s seal as well; it met with the approval of the resident male cardinal.
Finally, speaking of cardinals, here’s a tiny video made in my garden featuring smooth Solomon’s seal with my regular choristers, cardinals and robins.
For me, autumn is a time of richness as the gardening season nears its end in an explosion of pigments and seedheads. Those pigments, in particular, have always fascinated me and I made a concerted effort to use brilliant fall foliage colours in my own garden design. So today’s fairy crown, the 26th, features the fall leaves and fruit of shrubs and trees in my Toronto garden in early November, including Japanese maple (Acer palmatum), Washington thorn (Crataegus phaenopyrum), burning bush (Euonymus alatus ‘Compactus’), barberry (Berberis thunbergii ‘Rose Glow’) and, draped down my front, a compound leaf of my black walnut (Juglans nigra).
Every year is a little different in terms of the parade of colour. Here you see my Japanese maple showing off its regular autumn leaf change as the burning bush hedge turns colour. In the pollinator garden, the ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum seedheads are ruby-red, but the fothergilla haven’t begun to change yet. The columnar red maple (upper left) that the city chose for my boulevard (I asked for one that turns red) has taken on its disappointing dishwater-yellow. Red maples, of course, don’t always turn red in fall.
In this photo taken a different year, the fothergilla in the pollinator garden is a rosy-apricot. That’s catmint in the front giving a nice glaucous contrast with Russian sage and echinacea seedheads adding structure.
From across the street, my neighbours see my garden through the fan-shaped yellow leaves of my second boulevard tree, a ginkgo (G. biloba).
The Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) I planted in front of my living room window decades ago is a great joy to me. It’s the straight species with green leaves – in Japan it would be a common forest tree. But in my garden, since there are no drapes on my front window, it forms a lacy curtain from spring (when bees buzz around the tiny May flowers) to fall. In very late October or the first week of November, the foliage turns a range of rich hues from yellow to apricot, scarlet and crimson.
The leaves are delicate, their branching exquisite. It’s no wonder they were the subject of the renowned Japanese woodblock artists like Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi.
As I’ve written before, my Japanese maple’s brilliant autumn colour lights up my living room in early November….
….. enhancing the glass witches’ balls I’ve suspended from the window frame.
And, of course, the leaves also provided me with an appropriate costume and landscape for my little geisha.
If there’s a saying that “good fences, good neighbours make”, it can also apply to hedges – which was how I ended up making this hedge in my front garden more than 30 years ago. (My current neighbours are lovely!) Today, environmentalists tend to shun burning bush, given its invasive tendency in milder regions, but my hedge produces very few seedlings, unlike the Norway maples in my neighbourhood which are a scourge. And this neon display in autumn is truly amazing.
My belly dancer’s costume was made from the leaves of my burning bush hedge.
Though there’s no fothergilla in my crown, it is definitely a big part of the fall colour in my front garden. In this photo made just before Halloween, you can see one of my shrubs has turned a rich burgundy-red beneath the Japanese maple.
The richer, more moisture-retentive soil in my pollinator island tends to produce orange and gold colours in the three fothergilla shrubs there.
Look at those colours! Who needs the spring flowers….
…. though they are lovely, if short-lived, in late May.
And, yes, I did harvest my flamenco dancer’s multi-colored skirt from my fothergillas.
Turning colour a little later in the front garden is my paperbark maple (Acer griseum) with its red trifoliate leaves.
Moving into the back garden, you see Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) cloaking the driveway gate. I didn’t plant this vine, nor did I plant all the Virginia creeper vines that pop up throughout the garden. That’s Mother Nature’s role and she’s very enthusiastic about it (!)
I confess that I wanted the Washington thorn tree (Crataegus phaenopyrum) in my garden long ago purely for its multi-hued fall leaves.
But it turned out to be a wonderful tree for bird life – IF the birds can out-compete the squirrels for the fruit. The robin, below, managed to do that, but so have cedar waxwings and cardinals.
Here you can see the range of autumn colour in the foliage of Washington thorn.
When we bought our house in 1983, the native black walnut tree (Juglans nigra) on the property line between us and our next-door neighbour was already mature. In the 39 years since then, it has hosted raccoon families in the crook of its trunk, carpenter ants in its bark and countless cardinals practising their song in its branches.
Our bedroom sits right under the tree, but we seemed to have missed the obvious ramifications of putting a skylight in our ceiling – particularly when windy nights in September roll around and the roof is pummelled with billiard-ball-sized nuts. Though the skylight has proven strong, we’ve replaced two car windshields since the tree’s branches — and nuts — extend far over the driveway.
The walnuts are enjoyed by the neighbourhood squirrels….
….. but the natural dye in the husks creates an unbelievable mess.
The arborist has told us the tree has rot in the trunk, but my neighbour and I have had it cabled and pruned away some of the branches over our houses to reduce the nut fusillade. It is our tree, after all, it gives us shade and we feel a duty to keep it – thus its inclusion in my 26th crown.
I don’t really notice the ‘Rose Glow’ barberry (Berberis thunbergii) in my back garden until it turns rich crimson-red in autumn – then it’s a show-stopper. It’s another one of those shrubs that environmentalists shun – especially in milder U.S. regions where it seeds around freely. I haven’t seen one seedling in my Toronto garden.
I have a fairly new addition to my back garden: a little sassafras tree (S. albidum). which I wanted especially for its fall colour. This autumn – admittedly one of the best for colour in many years – it has begun to display the reds, corals and yellows for which it is known.
Those colours, by the way, are on leaves that exhibit three distinct shapes: elliptical; mitten-like and three-lobed. This is what they look like on my light table.
Designing with and celebrating fall-colored plants and shrubs is my way of expressing my appreciation for nature’s yearly preparation for winter, as it cycles through the yellow/orange “accessory” carotene pigments in the leaves of certain species to harvest and synthesize as much sunshine as possible, once the ‘green’ pigment chlorophyll breaks down in cooler temperatures. Red colour is from anthocynanis. According to the USDA, “Anthocyanins absorb blue, blue-green, and green light. Therefore, the light reflected by leaves containing anthocyanins appears red. Unlike chlorophyll and carotene, anthocyanins are not attached to cell membranes, but are dissolved in the cell sap. The color produced by these pigments is sensitive to the pH of the cell sap. If the sap is quite acidic, the pigments impart a bright red color; if the sap is less acidic, its color is more purple. Anthocyanin pigments are responsible for the red skin of ripe apples and the purple of ripe grapes. A reaction between sugars and certain proteins in cell sap forms anthocyanins. This reaction does not occur until the sugar concentration in the sap is quite high.” Because the reaction requires light, you often see leaves (or apples) fully exposed to sun that are red while those parts that are shaded stay green or yellow, like these Boston ivy leaves on my fence.
I love making the leaf montages that celebrate these pigment changes, like the one below from leaves in my garden.
A few years ago I even held a photography show called “Autumn Harvest” featuring a number of my leaf montages.
Finally, this week as I walked out onto my front porch and gazed into my garden, this is what I saw– a multi-hued tapestry that shows that nature is the best designer of all. It’s my reward for a gardening season that began seven months ago with the first snowdrops and will soon come to an end with the first hard frost.
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My year of fairy crowns is soon drawing to its wintry finale. If you missed a few, here they are:
I spent a few lovely weeks this autumn touring Greece with a group of rock gardening enthusiasts from the North American Rock Garden Society. I will admit up front that I’m not really a rock gardener. I do love trees but up until this trip, I didn’t particularly identify with plants that huddle near the earth’s surface nestled up against limestone shelves or serpentine outcrops or hanging on for dear life in an alpine scree. It might be a physical thing on my part (knees, back): when others kneel or crouch or prostrate themselves completely (like my North Carolina friend and true rock gardener Cyndy Cromwell, below, with whom I bonded on a 2018 garden tour of New Zealand)….
…I just…. stand there… looking down.
But rock garden plants aside, I am a photographer of all types of plants with my own stock image library, including lots of bulb photos. So searching for the “fall-blooming bulbs of Greece” to add to my inventory sounded like good fun.
And best of all, the tour was to be led by someone who had been a Facebook friend for six years, a young Athens native whom we plant geeks had nicknamed the ‘King of Lamiaceae’ for his special affection for the mint family, the salvias, teucriums, catmints, thymes, etc. that grow in the Mediterranean and similar climates the world over. But apart from the mints his knowledge of the entire plant world was prodigious, he had a good sense of humour, and having done his Masters degrees in California and England he was fluent in English. Though his real name is Eleftherios Dariotis, Lefteris for short, I know him by his Facebook handle, Liberto Dario. Either way, “freedom” is the theme.
If you’re not “on Facebook”, you might not know that there are thousands of interest groups that cater to your special passion, whether it’s mushrooms or madrigals or the Monkees. Needless to say, my groups revolve around the plant world. Sometime in 2013 I decided to inject a little fun into the “Plant Idents” group for which I am an administrator by using my photo library to create plant puzzles, mixing up plant photos, placing them in a numbered montage, having people guess their identities via the Latin genus name, then unscrambling the correct genus initials to solve an anagram. So instead of “Words with Friends”, we played “Plant Words with Friends”. I called them Botanagrams. A little complicated, admittedly, but they were heady fun that required everyone to make rapid-fire guesses and exchange geeky, comic asides. And woe to those with slow internet service! A few years ago I wrote a blog celebrating the puzzles, so I could remember what fun they were. Of all the nerdy ‘puzzle people’ I met and continue to call friends – Amir, Jo, Rebecca, Amy, David, Amrita, Kathy, Alys, Rosemary, Margaret, Deb and so many more – Liberto Dario usually got the really hard ones. (P.S. the anagram solution to the one below was “the vital sexy bits” for plant reproductive parts.)
Sometimes I changed up the puzzle. The one below didn’t have an anagram to solve, but was all-Lamiaceae with honey bees aboard.
So… on a night late this October, we all met at an outdoor cafe in Athens for the introductory tour dinner — and the virtual Facebook friendship became actual. Thanks to Cyndy for the photo of jet-lagged me (I hadn’t slept in more than 30 hours) and our tour guide, Liberto. As it happens, I’ve turned quite a few Facebook friendships into actual friendships: a lovely dinner in Sebastapol CA; a personalized garden tour in Santa Barbara; a fun 7-person nursery meet-up in Portland OR; and a delightful 5-person garden picnic in Seattle WA.
THE TRIP JOURNAL
Bright and early the next morning (and for 11 mornings after), it was on the road to search for the autumn-blooming flora of Greece. We stopped along the busy highway northwest of Athens beside a woodland of scrubby kermes oak (Quercus coccifera), under which we found our first Cyclamen graecum, below, with oak behind it. This little drought-tolerant oak gets its common name from a Sanskrit word krim-dja, which is also the root of the words crimson and carmine. Why? Because it is the source of an ancient red dye; indeed it is a word for red in the Persian language. However it’s not the oak itself that yields the dye, but an insect that feeds on the oak, specifically the kermes insect or κόκκος. In her book “Color – A Natural History of the Palette’, Victoria Finlay writes: “Dioscorides described how kermes was harvested with the fingernails – scraped carefully from the scarlet oak it lives on. But curiously he described it as ‘coccus’, meaning ‘berry’, and did not explain that it was an insect at all.” The kermes trade routes would weave their way through the ancient world: Spain paid its taxes to Rome in sacks of kermes from the oak they called “chaparro” and the Turks used it in carpet-dying.
In little meadows in forests of Greek fir (Abies cephalonica) at the base of Mount Parnassus, we found Colchicum parnassicum.
Later, in a coppice (charcoal) forest of Hungarian oak (Quercus frainetto) near Mount Kallidromo, we thrilled at masses of Cyclamen hederifolium emerging from fallen leaves. I loved this ecological partnership.
The next day, our hotel near Kalambaka was our base as we visited the otherworldly monasteries at the UNESCO site Meteora. It’s not easy to describe these sedimentary rock formations topped with buildings erected in the 15th-17th centuries, so I’ll just show you.
It’s easy to see why so many tourists make the trip to this part of Greece.
Later that day we travelled to a rock face in the foothills of the Koziakas mountain area of the central Pindos range near a busy, one-lane bridge over the Portaikos River. Did I mention that rock gardeners like to live dangerously?
But there were tiny roadside treasures…. common in Greece, but new to us.
Returning towards Kalambaka, we stopped at the base of Mount Olympus which was shrouded in clouds. The home of the gods in mythology – and a national park – it actually spans 52 peaks including the highest, Mytikas (2917 metres-9570 feet) and Stefani or “Zeus’s Throne” (2909 metres-9544 feet). As others searched the area for bulbs, I kicked around pieces of marble, which were plentiful, as I thought about all the marble monuments and temples we would see in Greece. And I inhaled the sweet, minty fragrance of calamint (Clinopodium nepeta), which we found at many locations, usually being foraged by a big bumble bee.
The first day of November arrived and we were in Smokovo looking “for bulb treasures on the serpentine rocks”. Nobody said anything about looking for bulb treasures in the pouring rain.
The little crocus below was our goal…. Crocus cancellatus subsp. mazziaricus, but it cancelled its showing amidst the serpentine rocks for obvious reasons. And despite having received the memo about waterproof shoes from our host, I failed to act on it. Fortunately, our lunch venue had a roaring fireplace which helped dry a lot of socks and shoes.
Returning to Athens, we stopped to pay tribute at Thermopylae where Leonidas and the Spartans fought the Persians under Xerces in 480 BC. “ The Persian army, alleged by the ancient sources to have numbered over one million, but today considered to have been much smaller (various figures are given by scholars, ranging between about 100,000 and 150,000) arrived at the pass in late August or early September. The vastly outnumbered Greeks held off the Persians for seven days (including three of battle) before the rear-guard was annihilated in one of history’s most famous last stands. During two full days of battle, the small force led by Leonidas blocked the only road by which the massive Persian army could pass. After the second day, a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by revealing a small path used by shepherds. It led the Persians behind the Greek lines. Leonidas, aware that his force was being outflanked, dismissed the bulk of the Greek army and remained to guard their retreat with 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians, fighting to the death.” (Wiki)
Saturday was all about Athens, specifically the suburb of Paiania. We began with a tour of Liberto’s two gardens, the first (unirrigated) at the lovely, peach-pink stucco summer home owned by his Chicago Uncle Sam Sianis, aka the ‘goat garden’. By the time summer rolls around, they can park their car on top of Liberto’s clever spring-bulbs-and-annuals meadow, left, which by then has finished flowering.
And why is it called the goat garden? Well, in what might be the most powerful goat-related story in major league sports, it was a Sianis family billy goat that evidently put a curse on Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs for 71 years, from October 6, 1945 (game 4 of the World Series that year) to November 2, 2016, when the curse was finally broken and the Cubs won the title. Turns out if you don’t ‘let the goat in’ all kinds of bad baseball karma is going to come raining down on you. It would take me the rest of my blog to tell you the story of the billy goat curse, so rather than explain it as Liberto is doing to folks on the trip, below….
Anybody who has run out of space in which to grow plants knows how wonderful it would be to be able to adopt an empty garden. Since his relatives are only in residence for their vacation each summer, Liberto has been free to create gardens around the house to grow his favourite plants for his mail order seed business. But I’m pretty sure the family feels lucky to be surrounded by such beauty each summer.
I especially loved these silver beauties, moon carrot, Seseli gummiferum, top and partridge feather, Tanacetum densum, below.
We were all able to sniff an aromatic leaf of sideritis, used to make traditional Greek mountain tea.
Spring would be truly lovely in this garden, but I was able to find a few flowers in bloom in November, below. Top row, from left: Eriocephalus africanus, Crocus speciosus, Salvia africana-lutea, Teucrium fruticans ‘Ouarzazate’, Bottom row, from left: Iris unguicularis, Scabiosa (Lomelosia) crenata subsp. dalaportea, Cyclamen hederifolium, Epilobium canum.
Then we headed a short distance away to Liberto’s family home and the large garden he’s made behind it: the salvia garden. Here we wandered amongst lush grasses, shrubs, small trees, citrus and many perennials from around the world, all adapted to the Mediterranean climate….
…. but especially the stars of his garden: so many different kinds of sages (Salvia species). I counted 87 taxa on his salvia seed list.
There are other plants, of course. Here are a few that caught my eye, including blue-flowered Pycnostachus urticifolia, bright red Erythrina x bidwillii, golden Tecoma stans, and some delicious-looking grapefruit.
Succulents and xeric bromeliads were displayed on a table….
…. and a small pond hosted aquatic plants.
Guests listened to Liberto explaining about his mail order business of seeds and bulbs. Those stairs lead to the production side of the garden. Let’s go up.
A series of glass cold frames holds tender bulbs from around the world. Everywhere are little pots filled with grit-rich soil and all manner of exquisite flora. It is a living library of the plant collector’s passion. To read more about what inspires him in the plant world, read this 2016 interview on Plinth. If the sun hadn’t been shining so brightly at a difficult time of day (photographers say this all the time) and if the garden hadn’t been full of wandering people, and if we didn’t have a full schedule of visits later, I would have enjoyed chronicling Liberto’s garden more closely, as I did his good friend Panayoti Kelaidis’s garden in Denver earlier in the year. But such is life.
The genus Oxalis is a special favourite; he grows more than 150 species.
Plants, plants, plants….. maybe for seeds? Plant sales? He was too busy to ask.
From this well-organized room, seeds of his favourite plants will find their way throughout the world.
Our next stop in Paiania was the Vorres Museum where Liberto has been working to transform the gardens to a more sustainable model. He joined his friend Nektarios Vorres, grandson of the founder of the museum and president of the foundation that now runs it. I wrote a blog about this lovely place with its Canadian connection.
Then it was a walk up Mount Hymettus with its view of Attica through wild olive branches heavy with fruit.
And the hillside bore seedhead reminders of the wild Greek mountain thyme (Thymbra capitata) that brings bees to nectar in order to yield the famous Hymettus honey. Fortunately, I did come home with a gift of some sweet thyme honey.
Sunday brought us to various environments in Attica: a rocky scramble overlooking the blue Aegean; a stroll along the seashore where asters were growing; then a walk through a parched, trash-strewn meadow where we found tiny bulbs growing in the dry grasses. From left, Crocus cartwrightianus (progenitor of the saffron crocus); Spiranthes spiralis, Greece’s only autumn-flowering orchid; tiny autumn squill, Prospero autumnale; and diminutive Colchicum cupanii.
Then we drove south to Cape Sounion. Before visiting the nearby temple, we enjoyed a lunch of fresh fish – calamari, sardines and bream – overlooking the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean. OCD Patients May Seek Help From Dermatologists. purchase viagra online Regular exercises levitra cialis have proved to be the shortcut to come out of the disease. It is advisable that discount viagra pharmacy should be taken at-least 30 minutes before the sexual intercourse to take place. Are you an extremely busy person and spend almost 24 hours at your office? If such is the case generic tadalafil india then you should implement the application of this medicament but only after consulting the physician.
Then it was a walk up to the beautiful Temple of Poseidon (440 BC), where I was photographed capturing a tiny specimen of yellow Sternbergia lutea in the foundation rocks.
By the time we drove back downtown, the hour was late but we were fortunate to pay a short visit to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, starting with the spectacular building….
…… then a walk down to ground level through the sprawling, night-lit gardens. Definitely a spot that merits a return.
On November 4th we drove from Athens to the Peloponnese with our first stop overlooking the Corinth Canal. It was completed in 1893 and joins the Gulf of Corinth to the north with the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea to the south, thus turning the Peloponnese Peninsula into an island. I am an armchair geology geek and to see this slab of cut limestone was a treat. It is 6.3 kilometres (4 miles) long and 70 metres (21.3 feet) wide at its base with a depth of 8 metres. The 63-metre deep (206 feet) deep limestone and earthen walls are actually the canal’s weak point, since they are affected by water from tides and boat wash and the occasional earthquake, leading to frequent landslides and long closures (4 years in the 1920s) to clean out rock and earth. Without the canal, the 11,000 ships (the largest width is 58 feet) that make the trip through it annually would need to travel an additional 300 nautical miles to reach their destination.
A long day of travel with rain and darkness at its end held a bright spot, and one of my favourite places on the tour. For who wouldn’t love a hillside overlooking olive fields dotted with wild heather (Erica manipuliflora), its botanical name commemorating its home on the Mani Peninsula. And there were bees and beehives, too; a few days later, a little lost in Athens while walking home by myself from the Acropolis, I bought a jar of heather honey to help me remember this place.
The next morning, from the beach in front of our pretty little stone hotel in Gytheion on the eastern shore of the Mani Peninsula, I looked out over the Lakonian Gulf, somewhat reluctantly climbing into the van to head to the western side of the peninsula. Our hotels were so pretty, and the days all started early.
During a brief stop to scour a steep cliff on the road out of Gytheion, Liberto met a group of French botanists and exchanged the latest in plant spotting. Only in Greece.
Less than an hour later, we were pulled over on a farm road between olive groves, where the harvest was taking place…..
…. and we happily photographed, from left, Allium callimischon ssp.callimischon, Colchicum psaridis and Crocus boryi.
But I especially cherish the memory here of the goat bells or kypria, a little musical interlude I followed down the road until the shepherd’s dogs let me know I’d come far enough. Listen….
High on a ridge overlooking the gulf, we found a little field of the beautiful, purple Crocus goulimyi. But I was also fascinated by the valonia oaks (Quercus ithaburensis ssp. macrolepis) that line the road, and with their big, frilly acorns, which are used traditionally in tanning. From then on, I would remember the crocuses as “the ones that grew with the oaks”. Crocus goulimyi is named for Constantine Goulimis (1886-1963), a lawyer and amateur botanist who wrote Wild Flowers of Greece.
Then we drove to our lovely hotel in Areopoli in the Deep Mani Peninsula, Ktima Karageorgou, set under a massive peak of the Sagias Mountains, part of the Taygetos range.
While the others investigated the mountain I played hooky and took a very chilly swim. Before dinner, we enjoyed a slide presentation of Greek bulbs and flora by Liberto.
The next morning, November 6th, we drove south on the peninsula and within the hour came to an enchanting meadow filled with Crocus niveus in a mix of white and pale purple forms. And there was lovely Cyclamen graecum here, too, near the silvery leaves of Astragalus lusitanicus.
Driving further south, we visited a ‘ghost village’ called Vathia, a collection of stone towers from the 18th and 19th centuries, each built by a Maniot family to act not merely as a home but as a defensive fortress against their neighbours. During the early 19th century when the population numbered roughly 300, poverty forced many of the inhabitants to abandon their rural life and move to the cities.
Today, a few of the towers seem to be inhabited – I saw a satellite dish and curtains on one. But most are still in ruin and likely not economic to renovate in this location. An evocative stop.
We were nearing the bottom of the peninsula when we made another stop along the road to botanize. The slopes of the mountains are etched with hundreds of stone-walled terraces. That was the way of agriculture here, a very hard life, now mostly abandoned. In the field we saw lots of painted lady butterflies nectaring on yellow fleabane (Dittrichia viscosa) and Liberto gave me a handful of fragrant Greek sage (Salvia fruticosa), another herb used to make traditional tea
We reached our destination at the bottom of the Deep Mani: Cape Tainaro (Tainaron, Matapan), the southernmost point of mainland Greece and a beautiful place to spend the next few hours. Here were the strange remains of the Sanctuary and Death Oracle of Poseidon Tainarios, top below, presumably at one time a place to present offerings to forestall death by misadventure on the ocean.
I found a few tiny fall bulbs (Prospero autumnale and Colchicum parlatoris) and fennel in the grasses here, along with abundant verbascum seedheads and Crithmum maritimum by the sea.
While others took the long hike to the lighthouse at the point, I decided to stay behind and dip my toes into the ocean at exactly the point where the Aegean Sea meets the Ionian Sea. If you want to see what I saw there, wading in the sea near the fishboats at Cape Tainaro, you might want to watch my musical video of the beautiful rivers and seashores I saw in Greece. It’s not long, and there’s a nice little splash from time to time.
This was also the afternoon when I lost my cellphone. After fruitless searches of the van and my room, I felt a little despondent as I’d used it for so much photography. But a late night email from my husband in Canada to Liberto revealed that a tech-savvy woman in the village had found it sitting on the stone wall we had last visited to look for crocuses and found my contact information. We would visit her business the next morning on our way out of town to pick it up. When I tried to give her more than a gift of honey, she refused. “Hospitality!” she exclaimed. Indeed, hospitality.
That night in Areopoli the group had a post-dinner Greek dance lesson. It was a great success. There might have been some ouzo involved….. I might have bought the bottle…. I might have been pouring shots for the group….
On November 7th, we made our way from the dry Lakonian part of the Mani Peninsula to the Messinian Mani. Our bulb wish list for this area included Crocus boryi with its white stigmas, and we were not disappointed.
We also found the very first poppy anemone (Anemone coronaria) of the season. Not the fields of red and purple poppies we’d seen in Liberto’s early spring photos, but still……
Fifteen minutes later we were walking atop limestone on the beach at St. Nicholas. On it grew yellow-flowered rock samphire (Crithmum maritimum), which Liberto said is preserved in Greece as a pickle called “kritamo”.
A walk to a little vacant lot brought us some good specimens of the tiny autumn daffodil Narcissus obsoletus (syn. N. serotinus), left. And we saw the beginning growth of the spectacular bulb Drimia numidica (Urginia maritima) whose seedhead I’d photographed with a snail aboard in Areopoli.
Our hotel was in Kardamyli, with balconies open to the sound of waves crashing on the beach below. The Kalamitsi Hotel might have been the place where most of us would have chosen to stay for a week of sheer relaxation and reading (no botanizing). My little video gives you a flavour of this part of the Peloponnese with its rugged mountains.
Our final day of botanizing took us over the Taygetos Mountain range. I’m not sure I’ve rhapsodized enough about the mountain scenery in Greece. But this view of the northern gorges en route to Kalamata gives you a sense of the majesty of these peaks.
And, of course, there was flora. Our goal here was the autumn-flowering snowdrop (Galanthus reginae-olgae), and we were not disappointed – finding it clinging to small shelves of vegetation on damp cliff faces alongside the road, below. There were also tall plane trees (Platanus orientalis) growing up from the valley floor and goats climbing the rocky mountainsides. And the most cool purple striations in parts of the rock.
Soon we were sitting at lunch in Kalamata saying our final thank-yous to Liberto. He would be taking a group of Californians to Chile a few days later followed by botanizing in the Argentine Andes and a visit to Rio de Janiero. So the botanical part of our time in Greece was coming to an end.
But we had one more beautiful stop as the sun set near Athens – a rocky hillside spangled with golden Sternbergia lutea.
Most of us chose to add four days to the trip in order to visit some of Greece’s most famous antiquity sites with Archaeology Professor Stavros Oikonomidis of Arcadia University. And, of course, there was always something notable from the world of flora… like the iconic bay laurel (Laurus nobilis) at the Greek agora in Athens…..
…. and the storied olive tree near the Eractheion atop the Acropolis.
These beautiful cypresses (Cupressus sempervirens) were growing at the monastery at Kaisariani on Mount Hymettus.
The view from Mycenae over the 3500-year-old ruins down onto the olive groves (and the fragrance as the olives were being harvested) was unforgettable. Ephedra distachya was bearing its red fruit, and I adored the tiny, perfect rock garden I found there with Cyclamen graecum emerging from a crevice in the outcrop.
And finally, Delphi. This is the place every visitor to Greece should see: a living. breathing link to a past culture devoted to the gods of mythology – Apollo and Athena – and home to the sanctuary of the Oracle of Delphi and the high priestess Pythia (a series of priestesses through the centuries). You can read more about Delphi online, but as we walked up the sacred way past the temples and monuments and limestone walls inscribed with the names of the rich and powerful who visited more than two millennia ago, I caught a little glimpse of purple. These days, you can call on an oracle quite quickly (provided you pay your roaming fees) without any need for a pythia getting involved. The answer came back before I’d walked back down the path: “!! Campanula topaliana subsp. delphica. They flower in spring. ” Somehow, on my very last day touring Greece, to find an endemic blooming out of season and so specific to this place of mythology…
…. especially since I have an entire dining room of botanical prints solely of campanulas from Flora Danica to Sowerby’s to Mrs. Loudon, etc…… it just seemed the perfect finale.
Thus ended our tour of Greece and its autumn flora and antiquities. We had checked off a good percentage of the plant list we were given at the start of the trip. But we saw and experienced so much more. Efharisto, Liberto. (That would make a great puzzle word…) Many thanks for showing us your beautiful country.
*******
And finally, a little epilogue. Man does not live by flora alone, of course. There is also music – a word that, after all, originates with the Greek word “mousikē” for “art of the muses”. Before I left for Greece, Liberto invited me to come out with him and his friends Maria and Natalia in Athens to see a favourite band from Crete. It was such a fun evening and the band was still playing when I headed back to the hotel at 3 am, mindful of my 6 am alarm(!) I was very moved by the music of Giorgis and Nikos Stratakis — Γιώργος & Νίκος Στρατάκης — and their band (music which seemed to share some Celtic rhythms with my own ancestry, especially the tsampouna or bagpipes). But I simply cannot imagine any North American band playing their own version of several verses of a 17th century romantic poem (Erotokritos from Cretefrom 1 to 6:28 min) and everyone in the audience knowing the chorus and singing it with great passion. That is most definitely the Greek spirit… or, perhaps, that elusive Greek quality ‘filotimo‘. Here is a little taste, courtesy of my video, of An Autumn Night in Athens.
Happiest of holidays to all my friends out there. Kαλές διακοπές! I’ll be back in the new year with more gardens.
Poor Venice. I saw the news about this week’s catastrophic acqua alta event that brought heavy rains and record-breaking high tide water into parts of the city. Tourists carried their suitcases above the flooded squares and shopkeepers used buckets to bail out water in the fourth worst flooding event ever, with 150 cm (5 feet) in places. The worst flooding in November 1966 brought 193 cm (6.3 feet) of water to vulnerable places. Autumn, of course, is also when it rains in Italy and Venice has no way to drain away rain or tidal water, which conspires with waves in the wind-swept lagoon to create disastrous conditions quickly. We were in Venice in November eight years ago when the famous acqua alta sirens awoke us before dawn in our pretty room….
But that year, the flooding was manageable, and even a little thrilling. We were given rubber boots by the hotel and proceeded to walk around the city.
We visited Piazza San Marco, the venerable St. Mark’s Square, where the 15th century Doge’s Palace or Palazzo Ducal…..
….and St. Mark’s Basilica merely looked beautiful reflected in the water in the square.
Pigeons and seagulls fought at the edges of the water for the crumbs thrown their way.
Nearby, Venetians and tourists walked purposefully along tables set up above the water beneath St. Mark’s Basilica….
…. as unconcerned as if they were strolling down Madison Avenue or the Champs Elysee.
The tables are simply part of the tourist experience in Venice and easy to negotiate, as long as you don’t overindulge in grappa or Chianti with your lunch.
If you climb the Campanile…….
…. which is a 1912 reproduction of the 16th century original on this spot where Galileo…..
…. on August 21, 1609, showed the Doge of Venice his new spyglass, a refractor telescope which was….
….. a grandfather of these modern binoculars…….
….. which provide a wonderful view of the city over the domes of the basilica.
From the campanile, you can see where Venice meets the lagoon shore…..
….. and how vulnerable the piazza is to acqua alta……
….. when the tide brings the sea right up onto the paving.
Even if it rains, you can still put on a colourful slicker and line up for a gondola…..
….. though the gondoliers never look very happy in the pouring rain….
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…. and squint up at the palazzos from under your umbrella.
But native Venetians take acqua alta in stride……
…. including the letter carrier, who finds high ground to keep the mail dry.
Here you can see the ravages this beautiful old palazzo has suffered as a result of its hundreds of years on this small canal.
Another great idea for a rainy day is to cross the Grand Canal on the Ponte dell’Accademia…..
….. and spend a few blissful, quiet hours in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, as I did, gazing up at the spectacular works of the Venetian School, including Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese.
Walking through the city, you might find enchanting reflections in the acqua alta, like this one of the Fabbriche Viecchi di Rialto….
….as you make your way to the markets of the Rialto, to see the wonderful displays of vegetables……
…. and fish.
You can take a vaporetto down the Grand Canal…..
….. and give your camera a workout on the fabulous palazzos along the way….
…… or tootle over to the island of Giudecca where you can pause to look back at the stunning view of the city before……
….. finding a pew to sit and reflect on the grandeur of Andrea Palladio’s magnificent, 16th century Il Redentore.
The outdoor caffès in the piazzas in Venice may be empty on acqua alta days……
….. but provided it’s not a catastrophic event like 2018 or 1966, you can always tie on some garbage bags and find something wonderful to do!
