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Fairy Crown #4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza

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In my garden, the month of May brings the familiar song of the cardinal high up in my black walnut tree, the flurry of house sparrows making nests in the cedar hedge and the buzz of queen bumble bees emerging from their winter nests to forage for pollen.  Most of the early bulbs have now faded away and it is prima donna season for shimmering white daffodils and tulips in a rainbow of warm hues. My fairy crown for early May is a celebration of mid-spring abundance featuring tulips in peach, pink and lilac; ‘Geranium’, ‘Stainless’ and ‘Thalia’ daffodils; peachy ‘Gipsy Queen’ hyacinth still in flower; blue-and-white grape hyacinths (Muscari aucheri ‘Ocean Magic’); wine-red snakeshead fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris); a truss of magenta ‘PJM’ rhododendron; the delicate red blossoms of my Japanese maple (Acer palmatum); and the first tiny, blue flowers of perennial Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla).

Now is also the time when I rummage through my cupboards searching out small vases, shot glasses, votive candle holders and favorite mugs to hold these long-awaited blossoms to bring the joy and fragrance of spring indoors.

My front garden flanks the city sidewalk – no fence, no obstacles for neighbours and passersby who wish to stop and gaze or capture the flowers with their cell phone. And it’s never more popular than now, when the bulbs bloom in riotous profusion in what will be a towering prairie months later – no single-color blocks for me! 

I’ve never understood gardeners who turn down their noses at tulips. Yes, they’re gaudy!  Isn’t that the point?  We need color after a long winter.

The ‘Shogun’ tulips continue to open while the big Fosteriana tulip ‘Orange Emperor’ starts to flower as well.  I mentioned how much I love orange, right?

Each autumn, I add to the assortment, but old favourites include the big Darwin Hybrids ‘Pink Impression’….

… and ‘Apricot Impression’…

…. and the elegant lily-flowered tulip ‘Ballerina’. 

Other tulips in my spring repertoire that have hung around for more than a few seasons are the luscious double ‘Lilac Perfection’….

…. and the double fringed tulip ‘Crispion Sweet’.

Fragrance in daffodils is important to me, as are longevity and a tendency to multiply. I love the spicy scent of the old Tazetta cultivar ‘Geranium’, with its clustered, shimmering-white flowers with orange cups, like a hardy paperwhite.

And the Triandus hybrid daffodil ‘Thalia’ – sometimes called the orchid narcissus – is another winner. Its dainty, white flowers with their reflexed petals are lovely in spring nosegays, especially with blue grape hyacinths.

Here is ‘Thalia’ in the garden; you can see how it multiplies. And you can also see my favourite little Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’ still in bloom behind.

I do have a fondness for white daffodils (as well as ‘Golden Echo’), and I love those with salmon-pink trumpets, like ‘Pink Charm’, below.

Finally, there’s the Large Cup daffodil ‘Stainless’ with pure white flowers, on the left below.  

The hyacinths from my last fairy crown fade in colour but stay in flower for a long period. Because I love plant combinations of blue and orange, I mix the bulbs of peach-orange ‘Gipsy Queen’ hyacinth and blue-and-white grape hyacinth Muscari aucheri ‘Ocean Magic’ together with delightful results!  

That little grape hyacinth is a stunner in tiny bouquets, too. Here it is with Narcissus ‘Thalia’, Muscari latifolium and Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’.

Snake’s head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagaris) is an elegant dark horse in the mid-spring garden with its pendulous, checkered, wine-red flowers. The specific ephithet meleagris means “spotted like a guinea fowl” so another common name is the guinea hen flower.

Though it’s not featured in my crown, another bulb blooming in my garden at this time is summer snowflake, Leucojum aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’ (which, despite its name, is a spring-bloomer).  I don’t have nearly enough of these elegant flowers.

We often think of Japanese maples (Acer palmatum) primarily as specimen trees, but stand near one in flower on a sunny day in spring….

…. and try to count the native bees buzzing around the tiny, pendulous, red blossoms, like this spring-active Andrena bee.  That’s the little dangling red jewel over my right eye in the fairy crown.

My old tree is planted in a south-facing site in front of our living room windows where it is protected from the cold, north wind – and serves as my leafy curtain from May through November.  Here it is outside my 2nd-floor window (and that’s my husband strolling out in a spring shower.)

Heading into my back garden, we find the tiny blue flowers of Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla), a frothy groundcover perennial under spring bulbs. It thrives in part shade and is low-maintenance, ultra-hardy, long-flowering and unbothered by pests or disease. There are many variegated-leaf cultivars, but I am partial to the regular species with its lush green leaves. Here it is growing with rhubarb and European wild ginger (Asarum europaeum).

My back garden has a thriving population of ostrich ferns, which is a nice way of saying they’re very successful invaders. Growing amidst them are lots of mid-season tulips whose names I’ve long forgotten, but I believe the magenta-pink one is ‘Don Quichotte’. Aren’t they pretty?

Not all plants in a garden last indefinitely. Some barely hang on, others fight disease, some struggle with winter temperatures – and that’s the case with my Mezitt-hybrid Rhododendron ‘PJM’. At one time, I had three of these hardy, small-flowered shrubs near my lily pond, but over the years they declined, leaving just one to greet spring with its clusters of outrageously brilliant magenta flowers – and a place of honor in my fairy crown.

Speaking of my crown, I’ll leave with a little bouquet of my deconstructed Fairy Crown #4.  What could be prettier than these lovely May flowers?

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Want to see more of my Fairy Crowns? 

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 

Fairy Crown 1 – Spring Awakening

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A fairy crown.  A flowery tiara. A chaplet.  A corona for Corona-virus times!  When I got the brilliant idea to mark another gardening season with a series of “What’s in Bloom” floral wreaths for my head, below….

…I was not inventing something new. People have actually been crowning themselves with flowers and greenery for millennia. Take Dionysus, for example, the Greek god of all things wine and too-much-fun (the Romans called him Bacchus). This is how Caravaggio imagined him, circa 1598, with a Bacchanalian wreath of grape leaves.

During a visit to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles a few years ago, it was a painting by the Victorian artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema that made me peer a little closer. In ‘Spring’, from 1892, the artist had created a procession of celebrants wearing floral crowns wending their way through the streets of Rome.  The Getty’s website says: “It is unclear exactly which festival Alma-Tadema meant to depict, but the many references from ancient Rome all indicate a springtime celebration of fertility and abundance, perhaps most resembling Floralia, honoring Flora, goddess of flowers. British May Day traditions were also rooted in the Floralia festival and were revived during the 1800s to celebrate spring and nature in the face of rapid industrialization. On May 1, children decked themselves and their village with flowers, danced, and crowned a May Queen.”

When I was a little girl, I attended a Catholic convent in Victoria, B.C. called St. Ann’s Academy. It was on a beautiful property filled with gardens and orchards that the nuns tended… religiously. (Sorry, couldn’t resist). In my 3rd grade class photo from 1956 (!) below, you can see the massive rhododendrons behind us.  Today, St. Ann’s is a Provincial Heritage Site and ‘events venue’ with a small museum. But my point here is that every May 1st, or May Day, we girls would have a procession through the grounds carrying flowers to a statue of Mary while singing “Mary we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May”. Thinking back now (as an atheist), it still seems like the most beautiful idea, the floral crowning part at any rate. Who wouldn’t want to be “queen of the May”?

It was her own Catholic iconography that Mexican painter Frida Kahlo invoked when she painted her 1940 Self-Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser.  From the Frida Kahlo website:  “Frida’s necklace of thorns is just a single strand, but it draws even more blood. In the background, leafless broken-off twigs profiled against an opalescent sky look like the dead twigs woven into Frida’s necklace in the self-portrait with the hummingbird. No doubt the dry white buds that mingle with the twigs (and that droop from Frida’s headdress as well) likewise refer to her desolation. Although Frida has flowers in her hair and wears the earrings in the shape of hands that Picasso gave her when she was in Paris, she looks like someone dressed for a ball for which she has no escort.  Frida’s work from the year in which she and Diego Rivera were separated demonstrates a heightened awareness of color’s capacity to drive home emotional truths.”

My photo project, on the other hand, was dedicated whimsically to the Goddess Flora…..

…. as featured in Botticelli’s famous Primavera, circa 1482, with its 500 identifiable plant species.  How many can you identify?

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After seeing one of my spring crowns, my son said I was ready to go to Coachella. I had to look up why that would be.  Ah…. a music festival in California! Of course, they wear flower crowns there and it’s all groovy, except, most are fake flowers! That would never do.  And I did note that some famous floral designers had designed massively ornate headdresses for garden muses to celebrate 2019 Garden Day in the UK. They were lovely, but not really what I had in mind. I just wanted to celebrate the flowering cycle for my garden by…. putting it on my head! It seemed like my inner child was whispering to me, as if Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell had made a perfectly reasonable suggestion about head-wear. So I decided to call it a ‘fairy crown’, and my first edition for April 7th features the earliest spring-bloomers in my Toronto garden, common snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), purple and orange crocuses, bright-yellow winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) and the sweet, hard-working little Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’.  (Some friends suggested I do the series as “how-to make fairy crowns”, which made me laugh. My crowns last as long as it takes to make a selfie, then proceed to fall apart everywhere.)

After five long months of winter, the return of spring to my Toronto garden is a glorious time.  Endorphins rise in me like sap in a maple tree. And while it’s not quite time to retire the snow shovel and winter coat, everything that’s magical about gardening lies in the weeks and months ahead. Each spring I make little bouquets of my first tiny bulbs to create that joyous feeling indoors, too. It’s often still chilly in the garden and cutting a few flowers for the kitchen table lets me explore them up close with my camera – and my nose!  And it always starts with sweet-scented snowdrops.  I made this image for a project a long time ago, using a crystal shot glass from an antique “gentleman’s travelling bar” that my father-in-law gave to my husband.  The caption is dramatic, but not far off reality. By late March, the gardener is parched for beauty; spring lets us drink it in.

But spring teases in our part of the world, thus the common name for snowdrops.

For the past decade, I’ve kept track of the date of the first snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) to bloom in my garden with the earliest appearance being March 7, 2012 and the latest April 16, 2014.  That’s a difference of almost 6 weeks, illustrating the vagaries of winter in the northeast. No matter when they bloom, there’s still a chance that a late snowfall will cause them to close their petals and serve as an appropriate reminder as to how they earned their common name. Snowdrops are easy to grow from a small bulb that should be planted in autumn as soon as they become available, since they deteriorate quickly. But I’ve moved flowering clumps around in spring with great success, something that can’t be easily done with other bulbs.  They prefer humus-rich soil in part shade, but like to dry out in summer.

But when they flower with all their sweet-scented goodness after the dearth of winter, there is nothing like a pristine clump of snowdrops, which is why the gardening world has so many “galanthophiles” who grow, rave about and trade various species and cultivars of snowdrops.

Though I appreciate that kind of obsession, for me the common snowdrop is perfection, though you must either get down on your knees or pluck a few for a nosegay to truly appreciate the shimmering, white flowers with their green-edged inner tepals. The bonus? They emit a delicate perfume – much easier to savor in a bouquet than in the garden.    

Within a few days of the snowdrops opening, the silken, purple “Tommy” crocuses (Crocus tomassinianus) appear. Here they’re joined by an early showing of the Dutch hybrid crocus ‘Pickwick’ whose fellow hybrids usually appear a week or so later.

A few days of spring warmth and sunshine encourage all the crocuses into bloom together. When that happens, my front garden looks like the Easter bunny arrived to sprinkle crocuses, instead of hiding eggs – and it becomes a favourite spot for passersby to click photos. Because my front garden is never ‘tidied’ much in autumn, it’s a trick to get out and cut back the old stems of the prairie perennials from last year while the soil is still frozen so the little bulbs can shine. But they always come up through scattered leaf mulch and stubble – all good food for the earthworms and soil organisms.

Here are four of the Dutch hybrid crocuses, their names lost in the mists of time.  When I originally planted the crocus bulbs en masse in the 1990s, many were dug up immediately by squirrels. In fact, a few days later, the garden looked like the craters of the moon. Now I immediately mulch bulb plantings with leaves (even getting some from my neighbours’ boulevards) and water them down so the squirrels don’t have a ‘nose’ for the freshly cultivated soil.

When it’s warm enough to fly (15C-59F), honey bees seek out the pollen-rich crocus flowers.  They’re especially fond of Crocus x luteus ‘Golden Yellow’.

Look at this happy vignette, with crocuses joined by Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’.   

Of all the spring irises I’ve tried and lost, this little iris is a true survivor, shrugging off harsh winters and late snowfalls to show off her indigo-striped, pale-blue flowers alongside her crocus companions. Hardy, easy and beautiful, she makes good-sized clumps over the years and is an attractive cut flower in a tiny vase. A small caveat: she does tend to get a virus that causes blue splotches on her petals and is transmissible to other members of the iris family. But since I have none growing near her, I don’t bother about it.

Gardeners in the northeast are accustomed to spring sputtering forward slowly and occasionally backtracking to winter (like this year). It’s been known to happen in my garden, and I shared the rhyme below on my Facebook page on April 3, 2016.

There once was an iris named Kate
Who sulked when winter stayed late:
“I’m tired of the cold and this foul April snow.
Had I known, I’d have remained well below!”

It happens to crocuses, too, but they have adapted to cold, snowy weather by keeping their flowers closed and their pollen protected.

Winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis), those lemon-yellow flowers in my fairy crown, have evolved a similar adaption to protect their pollen from inclement weather, as you see below.

The odd snowflake aside, spring has now sprung in my garden and the robins are seeking out earthworms once again.

And if you don’t feel inclined to make your own fairy crown, you can always cut a few stems of these tiny treasures to bring indoors and appreciate at nose level.  Spring is here at last!

Gardening for the Birds

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At this point in a Toronto winter, with loads of snow remaining on the ground and most days still well below freezing, it is such a joy to watch the bird life in my garden. There isn’t the chirpy avian soundtrack of spring, not yet, but the flash of cardinals zooming at full speed right into their nest in the big cedar hedge, the busy foraging of juncos, the darting to and fro of chickadees – it’s all a pleasure. Over the years, I’ve observed the birds here in my garden through my large kitchen windows; at the cottage on Lake Muskoka; in various public gardens; and in the nearby cemetery where I photograph trees and shrubs. In doing so, I’ve compiled a visual record of how gardens can attract birds without using bird feeders. Here are some ideas.

Conifers for Shelter and Food

Birds need places to nest and take shelter in winter, if they’re not migrating. My garden has two eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) at the back of the garden that I planted in the 1990s. They’re not beautiful, they developed multiple trunks and lost limbs and look a little ragged, but the birds do love them, like the male cardinal below.

Between my next-door neighbour’s property and mine is a large white cedar or arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis) hedge. This might be the very best garden habitat for birds. We keep it sheared so its growth is dense, helping to protect its inhabitants from the weather and predatory raptors. I’m always amazed that the birds know exactly where their home is inside this long leafy condominium, and fly at very fast speed right at it, disappearing into the lacy branches.  (That purple birdhouse is more for looks – the birds haven’t taken up residence

In autumn, I see birds eating the arborvitae seeds, too, like the house sparrow below.

At our cottage in Muskoka just a few hours north of Toronto, chickadees, below, pine siskins and loads of other birds forage in the white pine trees (Pinus strobus).

Song sparrows with their wacky, beautiful melodies use the pine trees too….

…. as does the occasional ruffed grouse.

Fruit 

There is nothing that attracts more birds to a garden than the fleshy fruit of trees and shrubs.  Of course, that can be a negative if you’re trying to harvest your own grapes or cherries and need to net the fruit to deter birds as it ripens. But in my garden I have a few excellent woody plants whose fruit is dedicated to the birds. The first is crabapple – in my case, a weeping Malus ‘Red Jade’ over my pond (that sadly has likely lived its last summer, with increasingly intractable viral blight).  Its small fruit and proximity to the water has always made it an extra-special treat, for robins….

…. and northern cardinals.

I have a pair of large, native serviceberry shrubs (Amelancher canadensis) that are a cloud of white blossoms in early spring followed by summer fruit that ripens from red to blue. It’s quite delicious, but I rarely get to pick a handful before the fruit has been eaten by robins….

…… or sparrows….

….. or cardinals, like this one tucking into a fruit on my deck railing.

My Washington hawthorn (Crataegus phaenopyrum) is a favourite tree. Though its late spring flowering is not exactly an olfactory treat, its mottled autumn colour and abundant clusters of red fruit (haws) make up for it.  The fruit seems to need some cold weather to reduce the astringency, but I love watching the robins on it….

….. and the cedar waxwings, below. However, it’s usually my garden’s intrepid squirrels that finally strip the tree clean.

Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) is one of the most abundant native shrubs in the northeast, but it can be problematic in a garden. In short, it suckers far and wide. Though I grow a select cultivar called Tiger Eyes (‘Bailtiger’) featuring chartreuse foliage followed by lovely, apricot fall colour, it has the same tendency to pop up in surprising places quite removed from the main plant. That’s it below with another bird-dining favourite, white flowered, alternate-leaved dogwood (Cornus alternatifolia) behind it.  It is my favourite shrub of all; I cannot recommend it highly enough where it is native, i.e. throughout much of eastern North America. Interestingly, my neighbour’s pale-pink beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) on the far right, an Asian native, has seeds that feed many birds in winter

Cornus alternifolia produces clusters of dark-blue fruit that are consumed quickly in early summer. 

As for the Tiger Eyes sumac, lots of birds enjoy rooting for the seeds in the fuzzy red fruits, including blue jays….

…. and the cardinal family that lives in the hedge adjacent to it.

I made a little video of the male cardinal foraging on my sumac.  (It’s not easy to hold my little, old Canon SX50 zoom camera steady from my kitchen window, which is 40-50 feet away from the sumac, so I’m always happy when I can capture a scene like this).

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At the cottage on Lake Muskoka, the sumacs are all wild and their suckering doesn’t bother me, except when they try to creep into my meadows. They are not only a favourite browse for white-tailed deer but a valuable autumn-winter food for birds, including black-capped chickadees, below.

This autumn, I was surprised to see a pair of northern flickers on my old fence where the native Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) grows in a tangle. Likely on their migration route, they took turns keeping watch while their mate nibbled on the fruit.  Though it won’t win any awards, I was delighted with this photo showing the male’s yellow tail feathers. 

There are other good native shrubs and trees to attract birds, including Northern spicebush (Lindera benzoin), below, nannyberry (Viburnum lentago), American mountain ash (Sorbus americana),  elderberry (Sambucus pubens, S. canadensis), hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), black cherry (Prunus serotina), winterberry (Ilex verticillata) and various other dogwoods (Cornus racemosa, C. sericea).

And though it cannot be recommended, don’t be surprised to see birds eating mulberries (Morus alba) in older neighbourhoods where these European trees were planted long ago. It’s estimated that more than 60 bird species eat the fruit of mulberry trees– much to the chagrin of those who have to clean the purple stains off their outdoor furniture!  

Flower Seeds and Weeds

Without a doubt, in my experience the best garden plant for providing nutritious seeds for birds is purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). I caught these goldfinches foraging in the Piet Oudolf-designed entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden one autumn.

When I posted the video below on Facebook back in 2015, it was eventually shared almost 2 thousand times. My message?  Don’t deadhead your echinaceas!

Here is a flock of goldfinches on my own pollinator garden echinaceas in October 2021.

Goldfinches also love coreopsis seeds, like those of C. lanceolata.

Rudbeckias also offer seed for birds. These goldfinches are on cutleaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata).

In fact, my photo of a goldfinch on that native perennial was featured on a recent cover of The American Gardener magazine.

Canada or creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense), below, may be a pesky, invasive European weed, but there’s no doubt that goldfinches enjoy it – and help to spread it far and wide!

My meadows on Lake Muskoka attract many different birds to feed on flower and grass seeds in late summer and autumn. Wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa), my most abundant perennial, attracts goldfinches, below, and chipping sparrows frequent the paths to eat fallen seeds, including those of my big prairie grasses: big bluestem, switch grass and Indian grass.

Ornamental grasses offer seeds for birds, provided they have a place to perch. The sparrow below stood on leadplant (Amorpha canescens) while eating seeds of switch grass (Panicum virgatum).

At the Montreal Botanical Garden, I enjoyed watching house sparrows foraging on the dark seeds of the ornamental millet Pennisetum glaucum ‘Purple Baron’.

Other good choices for seed include oaks for acorns and beech and hickory trees for nuts.

Needless to say, many trees also offer a variety of insects for birds, especially important for springtime feeding of nestlings. Oaks are recommended as a top genus by entomologist/ecologist Douglas Tallamy because of the huge number of insects that feed on them, up to three hundred.

Nectar for Hummingbirds

I’ve already written a blog on good plants for hummingbirds but I made this little video to add some nectar sweetness to this post. It features the ruby-throated hummingbird, which is the only native Canadian hummingbird east of the Rocky Mountains.

Water

Everything needs to drink, and birds are no exception.  So while I don’t have a bird feeder, I do offer water in the form of my old pond. When I dug it in 1987 I had dreams of aquatic plants with gorgeous flowers, and I did grow waterlilies and floating plants for a while. But marauding raccoons were a constant irritant and eventually it was too difficult to lift out heavy pots to store for winter, since the pond is just a few feet deep. So today it’s a giant birdbath and water fountain (must fix the pump!) surrounded by too many weeds and prone to algae in summer, but it is so popular with the birds I cannot imagine my garden without it.  Here it is with a pair of juvenile robins drinking and bathing.

Cardinals love the pond, too.  This is a male and female pair in spring.

And here are cardinals bathing – such fun to watch (from a distance).

I have seen some sweet birdbaths in gardens, like the one below, but a pond fulfils that objective very nicely.

Dead trees and Snags

If you enjoy watching woodpeckers, you’ll know that they often frequent trees that are diseased or damaged, like the red maple below being visited by the hairy woodpecker.

Some are even dead – like my poor ash tree (Fraxinus pensylvanica), a victim of emerald ash borer a few years ago.  But I left the base of the trunk in place, mainly because it would have cost a fortune (more) to cut it to ground level, grind the roots and repair the fence.  It has become a stop on the foraging route of the woodpecker in the video, below.

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Without foliage on the trees, winter is a good time to observe birds in the garden.  On days when the local Cooper’s hawk, below, is searching for a tasty feathered meal, I am usually alerted by the persistent warning squawks of blue jays. It was a thrill to see this raptor perched in my crabapple tree.

This week, I watched chickadees, cardinals and dark-eyed juncos, below, eating the seeds of my next-door neighbour’s beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis).  A big, beautiful, old-fashioned Asian shrub, it also attracts lots of pollinators in June.

But spring will be here before we know it, and the robins will be searching for worms among my flowering bulbs….

… and in the lawn.

And Madame Cardinalis cardinalis will find a flowery forsythia in which to dry off and groom her feathers after a spring dip in my pond, while being serenaded by Monsieur Cardinalis cardinalis  high up in my black walnut tree.  I cannot wait!

In Aldona’s Garden

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“Do you want some Rudbeckia triloba? I can dig some up for you,” said my good friend Aldona Satterthwaite last week. “Of course!” I replied, since browneyed susan is one of the few rudbeckias I haven’t grown. We made a date to meet at her house. I brought her a little plant of Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blooms’ that I’d grown from rooted cuttings of my favourite hummingbird plant, and she sat me down on her perfect, socially-distanced veranda, with furniture and colourful, weatherproof carpet from Toronto’s Moss Danforth garden boutique…..

…… and gave me a piece of freshly-baked Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Coffee Cake, recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It is easily the best coffee cake I’ve ever had, but it’s merely one little item in Aldona’s big culinary repertoire. When I make her kale-blue cheese pasta, my husband now says “Didn’t we just have this?” Yes, we did. And we’re having it again because it’s the perfect mix of righteous anti-oxidant vegetable, decadent fromage bleu and carbohydrates!  But I digress.

Aldona and I were born in the same year and share a love of green and growing things, not to mention food, music, travel and good gossip.  I met her in 2001 when she became editor-in-chief of Canadian Gardening magazine where I’d been a freelance contributor since the first issue in 1990.  Prior to that, she’d held key positions in the communication/creative departments at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. After leaving Canadian Gardening in 2009, she spent 3 years as a very engaged and well-regarded Executive Director of the Toronto Botanical Garden. In short, she’s a powerhouse… and she loves to garden.

As we ate our cake and chatted, it felt like the veranda was a leafy treehouse, thanks to the little forest in her small front garden: magnolia, chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus) and serviceberry (Amelanchier).  South-facing, it also cools the house on hot summer days.

Birds were waiting for us to finish our snack, so they could nosh on their own plump, ripe serviceberries.

After finishing my cake, I did a fast tour of Aldona’s sweet garden, heading down the stairs beside the pots of colourful begonias, which she uses in profusion.

The garden is small but jam-packed with plants in what seems at first like happy chaos, but is a very well planned orchestration of blooms. Along with a backbone of shrubs and small trees are perennials, biennials (like the R. triloba she was giving me) and self-seeding annuals like the cosmos, front, below. That pretty purple and chartreuse combination is common sage (Salvia officinalis) with ‘Worcester Gold’ bluebeard (Caryopteris x clandonensis).  

Sometimes we forget that sage is a hardy perennial – and one you can nip the odd leaf from for the kitchen. Both the sage and bluebeard attract hummingbirds and bees. (That’s browneyed susan with the 3-lobed leaves.)

Spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana) has become a little too rambunctious for Aldona, popping up here, there and everywhere.

In the main part of the front garden under the outstretched arms of the magnolia is an array of perennials with strong foliage appeal, including chartreuse Aralia cordata ‘Sun King’, upper left; variegated Solomon’s seal; ‘Gold Heart’ bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) and various hostas. Hiding in the shadows is goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus) with its feathery, ivory flowers.

Also hidden in the rear is a double-flowered ‘Snowflake’ oakleaf hydrangea (H. quercifolia).

Because much of June has been uncharacteristically cool, the bleeding heart still bore a few blossoms…..

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…. and dainty pink columbines were still in bloom.

‘Jack Frost’ Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) had shed its tiny, blue flowers but the handsome, variegated foliage is attractive all season.

The big, starry globes of Allium cristophii are always a focal point in the June garden.

In the gravel driveway flanking the house was Aldona’s “cutting garden”: a large, galvanized stock tank, i.e. water trough planter, and assorted window-boxes and pots filled with zinnias and other annuals sprouting from seed.

The back garden is bisected by a gravel pathway….

…. and has as its charming backdrop a 1930s garage in vintage condition!  It even has a bump-out for the original owner’s long sedan. Aldona has added window boxes and climbing frames for vines.

Vines blanket the fence beside a vibrant, pink sling chair and a pair of Japanese maples add a touch of elegance to the west side of the garden.

I noted a pretty Phlomis tuberosa with its lilac flowers….

…. and the first crimson blossoms of Clematis ‘Niobe’.

And at the very back of the garden, Clematis ‘Betty Corning’, that wonderful cross of C. crispa x C. viticella discovered in a garden in Albany, NY in 1932 by the plantswoman of the same name, flung her pale-purple bells here and there.

What a lovely Friday. A delightful garden, a good friend, and cake, too!

Designing with Perennial Geraniums

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Late spring… early summer… it’s flight time for the ‘cranesbills’ – all those lovely perennial geraniums that add that soft, billowy, romantic effect to perennial borders. Over the years, I’ve collected a series of combinations featuring many of these valuable perennials. Perhaps you might find some inspiration in those that follow – the bees will certainly appreciate it!

Our North American native spotted or wild geranium (Geranium maculatum) gets its name because of the spots on its leaves. Here it is with native golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea) at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Here is G. maculatum with Welsh poppy (Papaver cambricum) at VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver.

In my own garden, below, I grew Geranium maculatum under Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum). I must check to see if it’s still there, or if it’s been swamped by the aggressive Solomon’s seals.

G. maculatum looked lovely amidst hostas at Chanticleer Garden outside Philadelphia.

I just saw this combination at the Toronto Botanical Garden a few weeks ago:  Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica ‘Excelsior’) with bigroot geranium (G. macrorrhizum ‘Czakor’).

Also at the TBG, here is the variegated form of bigroot geranium (G. macrorrhizum ‘Variegatum’) with catmint (Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’).

Bloody cranesbill (Geranium sanguineum) is a popular, early-flowering cranesbill with magenta blossoms. Here it is with Phlox carolina at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

It makes an attractive, front-of-border mound, below, along with lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis).

This was an interesting monochromatic combination, of bloody cranesbill with Dianthus ‘Oakington Hybrid’.

I thought this was a pretty June border on a garden tour: bloody cranesbill with Siberian iris and bearded iris.

I believe the cranesbill below is Geranium sanguineum ‘Max Frei’, partnering with Veronica ‘Glory’ at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

There’s a pale-pink form of bloody cranesbill, G. sanguineum var. striatum (formerly G. lancastriense), that makes a very pretty partner to late forget-me-nots.

Peonies offer a vast palette of possibilities as cranesbill companions, including the spectacular Itoh Hybrid intersectional peonies (herbaceous-shrub crosses). Below is ‘Cora Louise’ with Geranium’ Brookside at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Here’s lovely ‘Brookside’ (G. clarkei x G.pratense) with Sicilian honey lily (Allium siculum)….

….. and with Campanula ‘Sarastro’…..

….. and Veronica longifolia ‘Eveline’ and Achillea tomentosa ‘Moonlight’ at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Here is ‘Brookside’ clambering around the wine-red flowers of Knautia macedonica, also at the TBG.

Geranium Rozanne® (‘Gerwat’) is a similar-looking cranesbill, but a cross between G. himalayense x G. wallachinianum ‘Buxton’s Variety’. Very popular and long-flowering, it was the Perennial Plant Association’s 2008 Plant of the Year. Here it is with the yellow Itoh peony hybrid ‘Sequestered Sunshine’….

….. and billowing atop lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis).

Rozanne adds a little lavender ‘zing’ to this green vignette of Molinia caerulea ‘Variegata’ and the striped leaves of Iris pallida ‘Variegata’.

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Flowering shrubs such as hydrangea can be enhanced by an underplanting of many varieties of cranesbill, like the unidentified one below.

The pale-pink flowers of French cranesbill (Geranium endressii) add a delicate note to Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum).

Magenta Armenian cranesbill (G. psilostemon) is rather fleeting in bloom, but looks lovely with Bowman’s root (Porteranthus trifoliatus, syn. Gillenia), below, at the TBG.

Just around the corner, it was used with tufted hair grass (Deschampsia cespitosa) in a lush design.

At wonderful Chanticleer Garden near Philadelphia (have you read my 2-part blog on this favourite garden?), I found G.psilostemon looking spectacular with chartreuse meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria ‘Aurea’).

Out at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Gardens one spring (another favourite garden I’ve blogged about), I was taken with this vignette featuring the hybrid Geranium ‘Brempat’ with Allium cristophii and dark Heuchera ‘Crimson Curls’.

Nearby at VanDusen was the dark-coloured mourning widow cranesbill Geranium phaeum ‘Samobor’ emerging in a chartreuse sea of Bowles’ golden grass (Millium effusum ‘Aureum’).

The delicate-looking but vigorous mourning widow geranium has a white form (Geranium phaeum ‘Album’) that Piet Oudolf uses in his designs, including with Baptisia ‘Purple Smoke’ in the entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden. (I’ve also written a 2-part blog about Piet’s design for this border.)

I also loved the way he interplanted Paeonia ‘Bowl of Beauty‘ just coming into flower with the white-flowered mourning widow.

This delicate, monochromatic combination, also in the Oudolf–designed entry border at the TBG features Geranium x oxonianum ‘Rose Claire’ with Astrantia ‘Roma’.

Hostas and cranesbills always look good together, as demonstrated by Geranium x cantabrigiense ‘Biokovo’, below.

Geranium clarkei ‘Kashmir Purple’ makes an interesting contrast to the tiny white flowers of flowring sea kale (Crambe cordifolia).

Geranium ‘Johnson’s Blue’ is an old-fashioned hybrid, a cross between G. himalayense and G. pratense. Doesn’t it look spectacular with the purple bellflowers (Campanula latifolia var. macrantha) and meadow sage (Salvia nemorosa) flanking the rose garden at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden below?

Purple always works with chartreuse, and G. Johnson’s Blue’ is the perfect companion to Heuchera ‘Lime Rickey’.

Toronto’s Spadina House is my favourite cottage garden in the world, with a mass of artful flowers tumbling around expansive vegetable gardens. Meadow cranesbill (Geranium pratense) is much-used in the garden, as with lanceleaf coreposis (C. lanceolata), below….

….. and foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea)….

….. and small yellow foxglove (D. lutea).

I also found it growing in the fabulous Denver garden of plantsman Panayoti Kelaidis and his partner Jan Fahs. This romantic planting of roses, gas plant (Dictamnus albus var. purpureus) and G. pratense is actually Jan’s domain! (And, of course, I wrote a blog about PK and Jan’s garden.)

When I was having dinner at the spectacular Deep Cove Chalet restaurant in Victoria, B.C. one spring, I was enchanted by this unusual and richly-coloured combination:  G. pratense with peach alstroemeria, yellow Phlomis russeliana and pink spirea.

Though most cranesbills flower from late spring into early-mid-summer, there are a few species that hit their stride in late summer and continue blooming well into fall. I saw one of them one August at the Piet Oudolf-designed Lurie Garden in Chicago (another fantastic garden from my blog). For my final homage to the versatile cranesbills, meet pink-flowered Japanese cranesbill (G. soboliferum) with lilac prairie petunia (Ruellia humilis).