May at Chanticleer-Part 2

Posted on July 30, 2022 by Janet

When we paused our tour of Chanticleer Garden outside Philadelphia in my previous blog, we were just leaving the shade-dappled woods and the creek garden. Let’s keep going now toward the ponds, where I stood behind one of the garden’s many cypress trees with a view all the way up the hill to the house, which you can just see at the top.

May 23rd is early for aquatic plants, so not much was in bloom yet….

… but the big koi swam toward me, perhaps hoping for a little fish food. I loved seeing the copper iris (I. fulva) at the shore, a native of southern swamps and wetlands.

Nearby was the carnivorous yellow pitcherplant (Sarracenia flava).

Yellow Thermopsis villosa was in bloom behind the big, bobbing heads of Allium giganteum. By mid-summer, the ponds are filled with water lilies and lotuses.

But I am a flower-lover at heart, and the gorgeous cottage garden display in front of the Arbor was calling my name.

The pink-flowered plant is showy evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa), a perennial wildflower native to the rocky prairies, meadows and open woodlands of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and neighbouring states.

One of the horticultural surprises at Chanticleer is the inclusion of tender plants, such as bromeliads and succulents, in the garden beds. This striking combination of tender Agave parryi (in a pot), Clematis Abilene and pink showy evening primrose caught my eye.

And I had never seen hyacinth squill (Scilla hyacinthoides) used so effectively in a northeastern garden!

This sunny, textural area at Chanticleer adjacent to the ponds and arbor is called the Gravel Garden, and it is the domain of my friend, horticulturist Lisa Roper.

One of the longest-serving employees, since 1990, she has been in charge of this particular garden and the neighbouring Ruin since 2013. She also does much of the photography for Chanticleer. We marked the occasion of my visit with a lovely photo, made by Chanticleer’s young Irish garden intern, Michael McGowan.

I first met Lisa back in 2014, when I photographed her trying out a penstemon in the mix of plants in a bed in the Gravel Garden. She works hard to get the mix of colours, textures and bloom times right.

And in 2018, she spoke at the Toronto Botanical Garden about this remarkable space at Chanticleer.

Back to the Gravel Garden, by late May the tulips and daffodils had finished blooming but there were still interesting bulbs to carry the eye through the garden, like the fuchsia-pink Italian gladioli (Gladiolus italicus) to the left of the gently ascending stone steps….

…. with its beautiful markings,

….. as well as foxtail lilies (Eremurus robustus) just beginning to flower…..

….. and, of course, the hyacinth squill (Scilla hyacinthoides).

Although the site is gently sloped, there are flat places along the journey through the garden…..

… and even a comfy place to sit, if you fancy a rather firm (concrete) cushion! That’s false hydrangea-vine (Schizophragma hydrangeoides) passing itself off as a fluffy, green throw on the sofa.

The spicy scent of the Dianthus ‘Mountain Mist’ was divine on that warm May Day. The orange flower is Papaver rupifragum with dark-purple columbines (Aquilegia vulgaris) to the left.

There are numerous stone troughs set along the path. This one contained Aloe maculata with ‘Elijah Blue’ fescue (Festuca glauca).

Century plant (Agave americana) was a strong focal point in a sea of self-seeding Orlaya grandiflora. This lacy, white-flowered annual is used extensively at Chanticleer.

Old-fashioned Italian bugloss (Anchusa azurea ‘Dropmore Blue’) was adding a vivid blue touch.

Even though the lighting is harsh, I loved this contrast: orange Spanish poppy (Papaver rupifragum) with Veronica austriaca ssp. teucrium ‘Royal Blue’ with purple and mauve columbines.

At the top of the Gravel Garden, we looked towards the wall of the Ruin Garden, which is also Lisa Roper’s responsibility. The salmon pink flowers are red valerian (Centranthus ruber ‘Coccineus’.) The shrub with white flowers at right is Chinese fringetree (Chionanthus retusus).

The Ruin is on the footprint of Adolph Rosengarten Jr’s (1905-90) former home, Minder House. (I wrote about “Dolph” in my first blog on Chanticleer in 2014.) With his sister Emily’s house serving as Chanticleer’s administration building and the main house in which Adolph Rosengarten Sr. and his wife Christine lived still standing, his house was deemed a better site for an evocative garden, so it was razed in 1999. Landscape architect Mara Baird created three stone-walled garden rooms. Here we see the library, with its fireplace.

Here’s the view from inside the Ruin Garden.

The succulents in the wall pockets are Agave attenuata ‘Ray of Light’. Climbing hydrangea (H. anomala subsp. petiolaris) is on the wall at left.

Although it was getting warm for the spring violas, I loved the tousled look of the floral mantel. The tree at left is the snakebark maple Acer davidii.

I really liked this bluestone trough with its exquisite plants: Agave mitis, Alluaudia procera, Aloe maculata, Echeveria ‘Perle Von Nurnberg’, Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii, Euphorbia tirucallii, Festuca glauca ‘Elijah Blue’ and Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi. I learned that by looking up the Plant List for the Ruin Garden!

San Francisco sculptor Marcia Donahue created the floating faces in the “Pool Room”.

I would love to have had the time to explore the Minder Woods beyond these pond cypress trees (Taxodium distichum var. imbricatum) as well as the Asian Woods I’d explored years earlier, but time was fleeting and a long drive north to Corning NY lay ahead of us.

So we headed down the slope toward the Great Lawn past this ebullient display of Allium ‘Globemaster’, oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) and meadow sage (Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’).

Further on, there was a chartreuse expanse of dyer’s woad (Isatis tinctoria)….

….. and the ice-blue amsonias that look so lovely in spring and again in autumn when the foliage turns golden-yellow.

In the wonderful book “The Art of Gardening” (Timber Press 2015) written by director Bill Thomas and the gardeners of Chanticleer and photographed by my friend Rob Cardillo, it says: “Spouses dragged here by the family garden-lover find we aren’t stuffy, and it’s actually not a bad place for a walk.” I would add that my husband Doug thought it was a great place to rest and enjoy the view after that walk!

Just beyond on the Great Lawn looking out over the Serpentine was another comfy chair in cool green.

Each year, the Serpentine features a different agricultural crop; this year it was red spring wheat (Triticum aestivum ‘MN-Torgy’).

Climbing the slope towards the house was a much more gentle and beautiful process than my last visit in 2014, with the new elevated walkway built the following year. I could have spent hours meandering up this curved steel walkway with its fabulous plantings.

Have you ever seen so many columbines (Aquilegia canadensis)? Here they’re interplanted with ferns and many other perennials.

On the left is the honeysuckle Lonicera sempervirens ‘Major Wheeler’, on the right yellow Lonicera reticulata ‘Kintzley’s Ghost’.

Part-way up the elevated walkway was the Apple House, which had once been used by the Rosengartens to store fruit from their orchard.

I was surprised to see crossvine (Bignonia capreolata) growing on the walkway. It would certainly not be hardy in Toronto but perhaps it overwinters safely in Philadelphia.

Clematis montana var. grandiflora grew in a pretty tumble near the top.

Marcia Donahue’s cheeky rooster sculptures greeted me as I headed towards the house.

As always, the main house terrace was beautiful with its repeated chartreuse foliage and accents in teal-blue and lemon. The chairs were designed and built by Douglas Randolph.

As with all things Chanticleer, a visiting plant-lover could spend hours in each garden, just exploring the inspired plant choices. This is Japanese roof iris (I. tectorum); at rear is a pollarded Salix sachalinensis ‘Golden Sunshine’ with alliums, likely ‘Gladiator’ and Delphinium grandiflorum ‘Diamonds Blue’ peeking out from behind.

Behind the house is the swimming pool and pool house with plantings chosen to play off the colours of the water and copper roof. (In full sun at midday, this garden was hard to capture, but you can see the agaves, roses, etc. in my 2014 blog.)

As a meadow gardener, the Flowery Lawn is one of my favourite places, with its enchanting, ever-changing cast of floral characters. You can see the bulb foliage now ripening in the midst of the purple ‘Gladiator’ alliums and biennial dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis). Here and there are scarlet ‘Beauty of Livermere’ Oriental poppies (Papaver orientale) and ‘Apricot Beauty’ foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) with white orlaya and cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris). In summer, there’s anise hyssop and bachelor buttons here, part of a season-long parade of plants that enjoy this crowded scene.

Foxgloves and delphiniums (‘Magic Fountains Dark Blue Bee’) were at peak perfection in the east bed. Note the fennel and yellow snapdragons planted for summer bloom.

As we walked toward the parking lot to resume our road trip, I spotted this arresting combination – one of thousands of brilliant, carefully-considered pairings at Chanticleer. Look how the autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora) echoes the centre of the Itoh peony ‘Sequestered Sunshine’. It was just the last of countless reminders of why Chanticleer remains my favourite garden in North America.

May at Chanticleer Garden-Part 1

Posted on July 22, 2022 by Janet

One of my great pleasures when travelling is to photograph gardens along the way, and no garden is more deserving of a stop than my favourite small garden in North America, Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, PA. So when we were returning from New Jersey on May 23^rd, I spent 3 hours touring and photographing, beginning in the fabulous Teacup Garden near the entrance. Back in June 2014 when I wrote my 2-part blog on Chanticleer (see Part 1 and Part 2), this garden was completely different. Designed anew each year by horticulturist Dan Benarcik, on this May day it was a tropical extravaganza with the teacup fountain at its centre and four sturdy pillars creating a sense of enclosure.

It was lush and lovely with ‘Black Thai’ banana (Musa balbisiana), left; red-leaved Imperial bromeliad, (Alcantarea imperialis), centre; and broad-leaved lady palm (Rhapis excels), right.

I climbed the staircase with the dogwood-motif railing, fabricated by horticulturist Joe Henderson. Beside it grew tree philodendron (Thaumatophyllum bipinnatifidum).

It was a good vantage point to look back on the Teacup Garden from the start of the Upper Border….

….. with its long, flanked, mostly white flower beds. Shade-dappled in the morning light and bisected by a simple mown path, it was illuminated with the fabulous annual Orlaya grandiflora.

Here and there, the orlaya was paired with bearded irises, including lovely ‘Aunt Mary’, below.

Through the border you can glimpse the pretty building that now contains Chanticleer’s administration offices and classrooms. The estate itself dates from 1913, when it became the summer home of Adolph Rosengarten Sr., his wife Christine and their children Adolph Jr. and Emily. Like many wealthy Philadelphians, the area along the Main Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad became a sylvan retreat from the heat of the city. The building below was erected in 1935 as a wedding gift for Emily.

Rosengarten & Sons was one of the oldest chemical manufacturers in the U.S. Established in 1822, it took over the plant and assets of a similar firm in 1904 to form Powers, Weightman, Rosengarten Co. In 1927 the company merged with financially-troubled Merck & Co. of Rahway, NJ, with George Merck as president and Frederic Rosengarten, Adolph’s brother, as chairman of the board. By then, Adolph Rosengarten Sr. – who became the largest Merck shareholder—and his family had converted Chanticleer to their principal home. In 1942, the fortunes of Merck & Co. – already a chemical powerhouse – would increase substantially with the first successful treatment of an American patient suffering from septicemia with the new drug penicillin. Discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928, it was “the marvellous mold that saves lives”, but it would take a huge effort by the major pharmaceuticals, including Merck, to develop it commercially.

Back to the Upper Border, I also enjoyed seeing the spectacular Allium schubertii, here with Salvia ‘Summer Jewel White’.

In every garden throughout the 50-acre estate (of which 35 acres are open to the public), plant combinations are inspired, such as the white Allium stipitatum ‘Mount Everest’ with eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), below.

Leaving the Upper Border and circling the corner of the administration building, I came upon a lush, textural shade garden composed of hostas and plants with exceptional foliage, like Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) and solomon’s seals (Polygonatum spp.)

Heading towards the lower level, I passed through plantings with sumptuous May peonies, amsonia and old-fashioned weigela.

And I passed a gazebo topped with a weathervane featuring one of the estate’s many “chanticleers”, i.e. rooster in French. It was Adolph Rosengarten Sr. who named his home after Chanticlere, the estate in William Thackeray’s 1855 novel “The Newcomes”, a place that was “mortgaged up to the very castle windows” but “still the show of the county.” Today, the 9-member board of Chanticleer Garden includes six Rosengarten relatives.

The stone “railings” of the staircase to the Tennis Garden feature drought-tolerant plantings of lantana and Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’. In the background is Calycanthus x raulstonii ‘Hartlage Wine’.

The Tennis Garden has had a revamp since I saw it in 2014. Now the beds are designed to look like the sweeps of a tennis racket, recalling the days when the Rosengartens played here.

Heuchera ‘Caramel’ is used as edging along the path to draw the eye through this garden.

It was peony time on May 23rd so the Itoh Interspecific hybrid ‘Bartzella’ was looking luscious.

To one side of the Tennis Garden was the Long Border, which was using the cerise-pink perennial plume thistle (Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’). Beside it was the catmint Nepeta ‘Hill Grounds’, with dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis) in the background.

What a great combination, the plume thistle with bachelor’s buttons (Centaurea cyanus).

Moving beyond, the Cutting Garden was filled with Allium ‘Purple Rain‘, just fading, and little clouds of dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis)…..

…. which looked lovely with peonies, like ‘Prairie Moon’, below.

There is an abundance of striking furniture at Chanticleer, including this bench under a giant katsura tree near the Cutting Garden. Note that the bench has a vegetable motif, with its beet and pumpkin back and carrot legs!

Speaking of edibles, the Vegetable Garden was at its sumptuous peak….

…. including oakleaf lettuce and lots of brassicas.

And though most of the strawberries were still green, I managed to spy a few that were almost ready for eating!

My favourite transition at Chanticleer is the Fallen Tree Bridge, fabricated by Przemek Walczak, who is also the horticulturist for Bell’s Woodland and the upper Creek Garden beyond. The bridge has been enveloped in greenery since the last time I saw it in 2014.

Isn’t this the coolest interior? It leads from the sunny, tended garden areas near the Cutting Garden into the cool, shady woodland where’s Bell’s Run Creek flows.

A planter is inset into the strut at the shady end of the bridge, complete with a lots of ferns and sedges and a nesting house for leafcutter bees. These are the thoughtful details that make Chanticleer so special.

I knew which trees were overhead because of the beautiful blossoms of tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera) scattered on the ground.

I wish I’d had several more hours at Chanticleer to explore the plants of Bell’s Woodland carefully – what a treasure of natives, including….

….. large-flowered valerian (Valeriana pauciflora), below, with northern maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum).

Bell’s Woodland has a large collection of clematis vines, all arranged on rustic supports.

Bell’s Run Creek runs through the woods and features myriad marginal aquatic plants, including yellow flag (Iris pseudacorus) with native yellow pimpernel (Taenidia integerrima).

Just when I thought it might be nice to sit and rest my feet, a bench appeared beside a sparkling fountain. Surrounding me were ferns and carpets of candelabra primroses (Primula japonica).

A handsome bridge crossed Bell’s Creek.

Scattered amongst the primroses were moisture-loving perennials, including Siberian iris (I. sibirica ‘Here be Dragons’), below.

Chanticleer uses the fertile fronds of ostrich ferns (Matteucia struthiopteris) to mark the perimeters of certain plantings so gardeners mowing the turf paths don’t damage emerging plants like primroses (or, earlier in spring, camassias).

I don’t know of any other garden that pays so much attention to subtle ways to educate the public, like the plant lists that are available to peruse in each garden area. They can be purchased as paper copies, but are also published online each year. The detailed plant lists obviate the need for plant labels.

The waterwheel is a relic from the Rosengartens’ time at Chanticleer. It was installed in the 1940s to lift water from the creek to the ornamental fountains on the house terraces. Today, it merely pumps water to the little fountain in my photo above. Note the delightful iron fence with the ‘fern frond’ motif that echoes the waterwheel’s shape. This is the work of horticulturists Przemck Walczak and Joe Henderson, who crafted it in the garden’s metal shop.

Chanticleer is a master class in paving styles, including this path through the primroses. And I loved the split bamboo hoops inserted as edging.

What a tranquil feeling I had, walking through the Creek Garden woodland……

…. right to the little waterfall, below, leading into the Pond Garden.

I’ll finish this first part of my blog with a small musical video I made of some of the water features I encountered on this lovely spring stroll through my favourite garden.

Bring Me Little Water

Posted on February 10, 2020 by Janet

Water in the garden. What garden doesn’t benefit from the sound of water, the reflective qualities of water, the ability of water to create a shimmering focus in any scene? Monet was a master at water in the garden; in fact, he was obsessed with trying to capture the light as it played on the water where he grew his famous water lilies. I watched the light play on his garden when I visited one spring.

And water, of course, brings an abundance of wildlife to drink and bathe. Even a simple birdbath adds life to the garden. (The one below was custom-made for the gardener.)

My friend Marnie Wright has a birdbath in her garden near a bench where, if she’s quiet, she can watch them bathe.

Her birdbath is a little piece of art in itself.

But Marnie also has a meandering pond where she can indulge her love of aquatic plants and moisture-loving marginals. Have a look at my blog on Marnie’s beautiful garden in Bracebridge, Ontario in the Muskoka region near my own cottage.

Visiting public gardens can be inspiring for ideas on water gardens. At Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, PA (I wrote a 2-part blog on this, my favourite North American garden), the pond garden is large, with complex plantings. Here you see one side through a scrim of alliums….

……. and here through variegated water iris, I. laevigata ‘Variegata’…..

….. and then looking right into the pond at the water lilies (Nymphaea) and the pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata) on the far side.

Chanticleer’s ponds meander through a damp area with moisture-loving primulas and carnivorous plants just beyond; but the planting in the other direction is inspiring and very floriferous.

Near Chanticleer’s entrance, the Teacup Garden features a different take on water gardening…. a simple, sophisticated, overflowing “teacup” fountain.

At New York Botanical Garden, the Native Plants Garden makes extensive use of water, and moisture-loving plants like Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium) and cardinal plant (Lobelia cardinalis). If you want to read more about this wonderful garden in the Bronx, have a look at my blog.

At Wave Hill in the Bronx, it’s always fun to see the formal pool with its elegant lotuses. I included this gorgeous water feature in my blog on Wave Hill.

At New York’s fabulous High Line, water is introduced in a subtle way in the Scrim water feature. Moisture-loving plants flank this artificial wetland, where visitors – especially children – are known to cool their feet on hot summer days.

When I visited the Missouri Botanical Garden one incredibly hot July day, I enjoyed seeing Dale Chihuly’s blown glass ‘Walla Walla onions’ floating on the pond surface beside the large, platter-like leaves of the Victoria water lilies (Victoria amazonica).

At Filoli near San Francisco, formality dictates the perfect axis of the ornamental pools that lead the eye across the next garden room to the spectacular green hills in the mist beyond.

In my visits to Portland’s serene Japanese Garden, I’ve been impressed with the variety of water features, from the very large, below, to the small water basins. These all represent specific symbolism in Japanese landscape design.

This is the yatsuhashi zig-zag bridge, meant to deter the evil spirits that might follow you.

After my last visit to the Japanese Garden in 2018, I wrote a blog that included its wonderful water features. But you can see all of them here in my accompanying video, including the noisy shishi-odoshi or “deer scarer”.

At Vancouver’s Van Dusen Botanical Garden, a zig-zag bridge leads across an arm of the pond to the impressive Southern Hemisphere collections.

My favourite part of The Butchart Gardens just outside Victoria, B.C. in the sunken Japanese garden. Here is a wealth of water features, including a stone basin and bamboo spout fountain in a shady grotto…..

…. and a shishi-odoshi “deer-scarer” fountain that clacks regularly as the bamboo spout fills with water…..

…..and a few serene ponds, including this small one with a waterfall.

At Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Hillwood Estate in Virginia, the Japanese garden arrayed down a hillside features several water features, including these dancing water spouts.

On a tour of the D.C. area, I admired this multi-spouted fountain in the garden of Debbie Friedman, principal of Bethesda Garden Design.

Not far away was the garden of my friend Barbara Katz, with its impressive hillside waterfall and lily pond, below. I wrote a blog about Barbara and Howard’s beautiful garden.

In Austin, Texas, I was enchanted with the wonderful garden of Jenny and David Stocker. In one of their ‘garden rooms’, a galvanized stock tank is used to grow aquatic plants.

But their swimming pool almost seems to be a water feature in itself, given the flowery landscape flanking it. How wonderful it would be to swim lengths beside all those blossoms! I wrote a blog about the Stocker garden.

Fun-loving Lucinda Hutson might know more about tequila than anyone else in North America! The Austin garden of the woman who wrote the best-selling book Viva Tequila is a colourful trip into the fantastic, indoors and out! Naturally, Lucinda got her very own blog. Her little pond and its trickling fountain occupy a corner of a siren-themed patio, below.

A sophisticated Austin garden called Mirador featured a potager with a sleek concrete water feature. You can see more of this stunning Texas landscape in my blog.

Garden writer Pam Penick also features a stock tank in her garden (yes, I wrote a blog on Pam’s garden too) but she’s added a little faucet fountain to enjoy the trickle of water and keep the tank aerated.

Pam also has a pretty blue urn fountain, one of many blue touches in her Austin landscape. It requires a receptacle below the rocks so the water can re-circulate, but is a less labour-intensive alternative to a pond.

My Denver friend and plantsman-extraordinaire Panayoti Kelaidis has a rectangular pond abutting his plant-filled patio at the base of a rock wall filled with alpine plants. Naturally, the pond features myriad plants as well! I wrote about Panayoti’s garden in a June blog last year.

Although Tatiana Maxwell’s stunning Boulder CO garden featured a large pond, I loved this little touch of water using two overflowing bowls. This also utilizes a below-grade receptacle to circulate the water.

There were a few water features in the Fort Collins, CO garden of Carol and Randall Shinn, but I especially liked this Corten-and-concrete wall fountain because it’s such a good example of how to bring the splash of water into a restricted space. You can read my blog about the Shinn garden here.

In Rob Proctor and Dave Macke’s exquisite Denver garden, a little faucet fountain poured into a watering can, below. That was just one feature of hundreds of perfect vignettes in this well-known garden about which I blogged last year.

In the colourful, art-filled Englewood, Colorado garden of Dan Johnson (of the Denver Botanic Garden) and Tony Miles, there were a few brilliant touches of water. I adored this container water garden surrounded by a large plant collection…..

…. and look at this tiny little gesture, below. Anyone could do this, with a small pump and some ingenuity! (Okay, maybe some glass cutters and some silicone, too….)

Chicago Botanic Garden’s Evening Island is a landscape surrounded by lake, so water is always part of the view here. I made a video of my lovely August morning on Evening Island a few years ago.

Garden designer Kellie O’Brien’s lion’s head wall fountain in Hinsdale, near Chicago.

Further afield, my 2018 garden tour of the north and south islands of New Zealand offered lots of design inspiration. Naturally, the spectacular pond of Di and Ian Mackenzie’s Akaunui (my blog on their garden is here) might be a little ambitious for most of us, but it does point out the beauty of the reflective quality of a large body of water.

In the Cloudy Bay area of Marlborough, Rosa Davison’s large pond at Paripuma (see my blog here) has no reflection at all – but then she installed it as a sanctuary for grey ducks which, of course, appreciate all the duckweed on the surface!

At Upton Oaks near Blenheim, which I blogged about in 2018, Sue Monahan carefully sculpted a circular hedge to echo the contour of her formal lily pool.

The Giant’s House, Josie Martin‘s otherworldly Akaroa garden is filled with her mosaic sculpture (see my blog here) and water is used cleverly in a few places. But I loved this water feature surrounded by “mosaic swimmers”.

At Penny and Rowan Wiggins’s garden The Paddocks near Auckland, a simple sphere sculpture burbled with the splash of water. There are many such fountains available in a range of sizes and styles.

Back in Canada, this large reflecting pool at the Montreal Botanical Garden features a collection of stainless steel “island containers” planted with moisture-loving flora.

At the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington, Ontario, the reflecting pools also feature aquatic flora, but planted in containers below the surface.

At the residential level, I’ve stayed at James and Virginia Mainprize’s pretty bed-and-breakfast in Niagara-on-the-Lake where I admired their little water garden, which was nicely integrated into their border.

Garden tours are excellent sources of design inspiration and this Cabbagetown garden in Toronto inspired me with its Japanese-themed bamboo and copper spouts spilling into a small pond. However, the mechanics here might be a little beyond my skill level!

And I thought this wall fountain designed by Toronto’s Kim Price was simply stunning. What a way to take a garage wall and turn it into a thing of beauty!

Speaking of vertical wall fountains, the Toronto Botanical Garden where I spend a lot of time photographing has one of the coolest water walls. Designed by PMA Landscape Architects , it offers the element of water without using a lot of space.

No matter what season…..

….. it adds a lovely splash to the entrance courtyard at the TBG.

On the Westview Terrace behind the front part of the Toronto Botanical Garden’s building, a lively focal point is the diagonal water channel that begins at a waterfall tucked between two raised plantings abutting the rear portion of the building. A stone slab bridge lets visitors cross the channel.

For parties at the TBG, they’ve been known to move containers into the channel.

In autumn, it’s particularly lovely when the grasses are in flower and the shrubs turn colour. That’s Indigofera kirilowii with the bright yellow leaves on the right.

Oh! I wonder how this old photo of my daughter and her groom got in here? (Didn’t they look lovely? They’ve got three kids now…)

So… that brings me to my own pond. It’s pretty old now. I dug it myself in 1987, acquiring a shoulder injury that required nerve surgery along the way! But it continues to be the main focal point in my garden as it visually anchors the dining patio.

It has been rebuilt once after the liner failed.

At that time, I added the boulder fountain, drilled through to admit the PVC tubing leading from the pump.

It looked pretty and worked for a few years, but the pump eventually failed and was replaced by another pump, which also failed. Do you sense my theme? Ponds like this are not low-maintenance.

In fact, if you’re not going to pay a pond service company to clean out all the leaves and debris that a pond like mine collects each season – as well as replacing the rocks that fall in during the freeze and thaw periods – you’ll have to do it yourself. And from personal experience (those boots are mine), it’s not a job for the faint of heart.

Even though the only book I’ve written was called Water in the Garden, on behalf of Canadian Gardening magazine (1995), I would recommend thinking small on water features.

But I will add that, despite the work involved in keeping it somewhat clean-looking, my pond pays me back in spades on that spring or summer morning when I look out and see the birds taking turns to bathe in it. Because the cardinals and robins simply don’t care how messy it is.

*****

Okay, let’s get to the title of my blog How would someone “Bring me little water”? Maybe as the waiter did in the rainforest in Costa Rica, with a sweet stick insect sticking to the side?

El Remanso Lodge; Osa Peninsula; Costa Rica

Or maybe someone would bring me a little water in song. For me, the ideal person to do that would be Moira Smiley. A singer-songwriter, composer and teacher with her own group called VOCA, I would want her to use her famed body percussion (clapping, stomping, bodybeats) to “bring me little water”, as she did with these young people at the Los Angeles Choral Workshop, teaching her own version of the 1936 song composed by Huddie Ledbetter, aka Lead Belly (1888-1949).

And here she is with her own singers doing her official version of “Silvy”.

If you want to learn how to do body percussion, Moira will teach it to you, too!

When I was 12, my mother took me to see Harry Belafonte in Vancouver. He sang ‘Sylvie’ as a plea from an incarcerated man to his lover, the lyrics lamenting that Sylvie “brought me nearly every damn thing, but she didn’t bring the jailhouse key”. Here is Harry Belafonte singing the song from his Live at Carnegie Hall album that very same year.

And here’s the very rustic inspiration by Lead Belly himself. When he wasn’t in jail or on drugs, Ledbetter sang to earn his money. He said ‘Sylvie’ was inspired by his farmer uncle calling for his wife to bring him water out to the hot fields.

BRING ME LITTLE WATER SILVy (Moira Smiley, orig.Huddie Ledbetter, Lead Belly)

Bring me little water, Silvy

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Bring me little water now
Bring me little water, Silvy
Every little once in a while

Bring it in a bucket, Silvy
Bring it in a bucket now
Bring it in a bucket, Silvy
Every little once in a while

Silvie come a runnin’
Bucket in my hand
I will bring a little water
Fast as I can

Bring me little water, Silvy
Bring me little water now
Bring me little water, Silvy
Every little once in a while

Can’t you see me coming?
Can’t you see me now?
I will bring you little water
Every little once in a while

Every little once in a while
Every little once in a while
Every little once in a while

*********

This is the 12th blog (marathon?) in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading, have a look at the others beginning with

Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
Miss Rumphius and the Lupines

If you enjoyed this blog, please feel free to leave a comment below. I love to read them.

Beguilingly Brown in the Garden

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Janet

“Brown in the garden”. Remember my January resolution to blog about every colour for all of 2016? Well, it’s September and I’ve delayed writing about brown as long as I could….

No, “brown in the garden” is not a phrase you often hear, unless it’s wondering what to do with those Japanese maple leaves that are curling up and turning brown in summer (uh-oh). Or the white pine needles that are turning brown in October (they’re getting ready to fall silly… no evergreen is truly ever-green.)

In the winter, you might notice bronze oak leaves remaining on trees, even through the snowiest and coldest weather. That is a function of tannins that remain in the leaves once chlorophyll breaks down, protecting and preserving them in the same way an old-fashioned ‘tanner’ would use these substances to turn animal hides into leather. This tendency to hang onto the twig as a brown leaf after most deciduous trees have lost their leaves is called marcescence. Beeches, below, also exhibit marcescence, and their winter leaves can be quite fetching in the garden..

I love this winter combination of columnar beeches (Fagus sylvatica ‘Atropurpurea’) and switch grass (Panicum virgatum) at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Many warm-season grasses also retain tannins in the leaf and enough structural integrity to stand upright through winter weather. Shown below in snow is switch grass (Panicum virgatum), but you may note this strong winter presence in maiden grass (Miscanthus), feather reed grass (Calamagrostis), fountain grass (Pennisetum) and northern sea oats (Chasmanthium) as well.

Toronto’s Music Garden relies on ornamental grasses to provide much of its interest for the long winter months.

Brown seedheads also have their own charm, and many look beautiful against snow. This is anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum ‘Blue Fortune’) consorting with a grass in winter.

Purple coneflower seedheads (Echinacea purpurea) persist very well through winter, and feed hungry birds as well.

Even in the gardening season, flowers that turn brown add a textural note to plantings. In my own cottage meadows, I love the September shaving-brush seedheads of New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis).

These are the seedheads of Phlomis tuberosa ‘Amazone’, with the fading flowers of echinacea. Not surprisingly, this duo is in the Entry Border of the Toronto Botanical Garden – a border designed by Piet Oudolf, whose philosophy is to create a meadow-like tapestry of plants that lend beauty even when out of bloom.

And look at these giant alliums, also in the entry border at the TBG. Of course they were beautiful when they were rich violet-purple, but I do love them as brown seedheads consorting with the rest of the plants a few weeks later.

Speaking of the Toronto Botanical Garden, I spend so much time there, chronicling the changes in the various gardens, but especially in Piet Oudolf’s Entry Border, that I’ve come to appreciate the plants that persist beyond their starring roles. So I’ve made a video to show the function that “brown” fulfills as a substantive colour in autumn and winter, after the colourful flowers have faded. There are many plants shown in these images, but especially good for persistence of seedheads are Liatris, Echinacea, Achillea, Stachys, Astilbe and, of course, all the ornamental grasses. Have a look……

Piet Oudolf also designed the plantings at the High Line, where brown is a colour, too. Below is a pink astilbe in the process of turning bronze, then buff, making it the perfect colour companion for the blackeyed susans.

Lovely as they are in the winter garden, many grasses also have spectacular brown flowers that create lovely colour combinations in the summer garden, too, like this fluffy brown cloud of (Deschampsia caespitosa) with airy sea lavender (Limonium latifolium), also in the border designed by Piet Oudolf.

And here it is softening purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) at the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington, Ontario. Doesn’t that little cloud of brown add a grace note to that scene?

This is feather reed grass (Calamagrostis acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) with blue Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) – demonstrating that blue and (golden) brown make lovely dance partners.

Speaking of blue and brown, this is a very good combination: Amsonia ‘Blue Ice’ with Heuchera ‘Caramel’.

Heucheras, of course, have been bred over the past few decades to produce a fabulous range of colours, many of which veer towards brown. I love the rich tones of ‘Mahogany’, below.

Even some evergreens can be called brown, like this weird little arborvitae, Thuja occientalis ‘Golden Tuffet’ (which isn’t even dead!)

Many tropical plants seem to exhibit brownish tones. For example, luscious Canna ‘Intrigue’, here with coleus at the Toronto Botanical Garden….

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…. and that strange multi-colored tropical shrub copperleaf (Acalypha wilkesiana), with its patchwork peach & brown leaves. Though you sometimes see this as the cultivar ‘Mosaica’, the reddish-olive-brown shows up in varying degrees in a few forms of that species. ‘Haleakala’ has a completely brown leaf.

I love Cordyline ‘Red Star’, which is the centrepiece of this fabulous urn by the Toronto Botanical Garden’s gifted horticulturist Paul Zammit. Though it often looks more burgundy, here it reads as rich brown, especially with the matching heucheras.

Phormiums or New Zealand flax have been a big part of the tropical gardener’s arsenal, and many are bronze- or olive-brown. This is lovely ‘Dusky Chief’.

And where would gardeners be with annual sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas)? One of the richest is mocha-coloured ‘Sweet Caroline Bronze’, shown below with Pelargonium ‘Indian Dunes’.

There are countless cultivars of the annual foliage plant coleus (Plectranthus scutellarioides), and a few hit the brown jackpot, like ‘Velvet Mocha’ below.

Pineapple lily (Eucomis comosa) ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ has olive-brown foliage that really adds depth to a garden, like the Ladies’ Bed at the New York Botanical Garden.

Brown-flowered perennial plants are, admittedly, in short supply (many gardeners likely wondering why you’d even want a brown flower) but there are strange and lovely bearded irises that come in copper and cinnamon shades, like ‘Hot Spice’, below.

And we simply cannot leave a discussion of brown in the plant world without talking about the genus Carex. Whether it’s Carex testacea, like this fun bronze-headed sculpture in Marietta & Ernie O’Byrne’s Northwest Garden Nursery in Eugene, Oregon……

….. or Carex buchananii in my very own sundeck pots a few years back.

I loved the way the Toronto Botanical Garden’s Paul Zammit used Carex buchananii in this spectacular run of windowboxes, along with orange calibracoa, the golden grass Hakonechloa macra ‘All Gold’, golden cypress and kitchen herbs.

And, yes, C. buchananii can be counted on throughout the snows of winter. (Whether it reappears in spring depends on how cold winter got!)

BUT….. gardeners do not live by plants alone. There are furnishings! And they can be brown & beautiful, like these cool, dark-brown metallic planters at Chanticleer Garden, in Wayne PA. (Check out the carex inside.)

Speaking of Chanticleer, I loved this rugged brown wood-and-COR-TEN steel bench and pergola in their Tennis Garden – and look how lovely brown furnishings are with brilliant chartreuse foliage.

Weathered COR-TEN steel is all the rage these days, being a stable, rusty finish that needs no upkeep. It was used to spectacular effect to make this canoe-like planter at New York’s High Line, holding interesting, moisture-loving plants flanking the garden’s water feature.

Water features are another way to bring a shot of brown into the garden. Have a look at the drilled ceramic urn fountain, below, which I photographed at Seaside Nursery in Carpinteria, California.

Let me finish up with a few sculptural details in shades of brown. Let’s start with whimsy – and a little Pythagorean creation from Suzann Partridge’s annual Artful Garden show. Isn’t she sweet?

And then let’s move to elegance: a handsome, rusty obelisk perfectly placed within a flowery border at Northwest Garden Nursery in Eugene.

Finally, I’ll sign off with a little farewell to summer: a September bouquet filled with brown prairie seedheads and grasses, from my Lake Muskoka meadow to you. And a reminder to remember that brown is a colour too!

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Tag Archives: Chanticleer

May at Chanticleer-Part 2

May at Chanticleer Garden-Part 1

Bring Me Little Water

Beguilingly Brown in the Garden

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