Exactly 10 years ago today, I had one of my best spring garden visits anywhere. Except it just happened to be right here in Toronto at one of our biggest ‘tourist attractions’, Casa Loma. But back on May 12, 2011, I didn’t bother staying inside the castle (which I had toured many times) and instead went right out to the garden. I passed by the Asian-themed garden with its pretty azaleas…..
….. and walked down the slope past the bright-magenta Rhododendron dauricum. For geology fans, this hillside is actually the ancient shoreline of Lake Ontario’s Ice Age predecessor, Lake Iroquois.
I slowed down completely as I came to the staircase near the bottom, where native Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) were at their very peak.
Virginia bluebells might be one of the northeast’s most splendid springtime sights! Like many of our native spring wildflowers, they’re ‘ephemeral’, meaning after they flower and set seed, they just die back completely… until next spring.
I had a destination in mind, and it was the Woodland Garden with its beautiful paper birches and a spectacular underplanting of some of the best spring natives, as well as a few delicate Asian groundcovers that added their own charms. Here we have Virginia bluebells with lots of lovely ostrich ferns (Matteucia struthiopteris).
An ascending path made from grit and flagstone slabs takes you back up the Iroquois shoreline so you can enjoy all the shade-lovers. Here we have the three principal actors: Virginia bluebell (M. virginica), yellow wood poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) and ostrich ferns. (Note how much bigger the wood poppy’s flowers are than that confusing, weedy, invasive doppelgänger with the small yellow flowers, greater celandine, Chelidonium majus.)
I love yellow-with-blue in the garden, and this is one of the finest duos!
Ontario’s provincial floral emblem, shimmering-white, showy trilliums (T. grandiflorum) add to the display.
Virginia bluebells are also lovely with yellow merrybells (Uvularia grandiflora).
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I’ve never identified the buckeye seedlings that were popping up in this planting, but given it’s mostly native, perhaps Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra)?
There were also epimediums in this garden, like the red-flowered E. x rubrum you can see at the bottom left, below,
… and here, with Virginia bluebells.
Yellow-flowered Epimedium x versicolor ‘Sulphureum’ was featured in the woodland as well……
…. and orange-flowered Epimedium x warleyense ‘Orange Queen’.
Finally, a pure-white trillium with E. x versicolor ‘Sulphureum’.
Whoever said it was terrible to garden in shade?
*****
If you want to read more about spring designs for shade, have a look at my blog on the Montreal Botanical Garden’s fabulous Jardin d’Ombre, A Shade Garden Master Class.
Winter. It’s never really over until the fat robin sings… at least 50 times.
We’re always reminded of that in April when mother nature says, “Here, have another helping!”
We had snow last night in Toronto, quite a lot for mid-April. I went out with my camera as I often do early in the morning after an ice storm or dusting of snow leaves the spring flowers shocked but photogenic. My Tulipa fosteriana ‘Orange Emperor’ bowed down – humiliating for an emperor.
Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’ seemed less martial arts this morning, more ‘shivering’.
Sweet little Iris aucheri ‘Ocean Magic’ looked like Arctic Ocean magic….
…. and Muscari latifolium wore a tiny white toque.
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Hyacinthus ‘Gipsy Queen’ looked like she wanted to move her caravan somewhere warmer.
Snakeshead fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) seemed less than impressed.
Miss ‘Beth Evans’ (Corydalis solida) swooned. I’m not sure why, her kin come from northern Europe – she should be used to this spring trickery!
In the back garden, the resident cardinals were quiet – why sing when you can stay warm in the cedar hedge?
But out on the street, the sparrows kept up their spirits, and reminded me to keep mine up, too. After all, April snow showers bring (back) spring flowers, right?
For someone growing plants in meadows and naturalistic planting beds at ground level at our cottage on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto, I spend an inordinate length of time each summer watching a few mismatched pots on the upper deck right outside my cottage living room window.
At first it was just a pair of oversized resin pots planted with conventional annuals. In 2007, that meant ‘Profusion Orange’ zinnias, nasturtiums, ivy geraniums and peach and yellow African daisies (Osteospermum ‘Symphony Series’).
In 2011, I planted both pots with an eclectic mix of succulents, agastache and spiny porcupine tomato (Solanum pyracanthos) that I bought at the Toronto Botanical Garden’s spring plant sale.
That was the first year I noticed that the ruby-thoated hummingbird seemed to be enjoying nectaring in the agastache flowers.
In 2012, my pots featured the few succulents I was able to winter over in a sunny ground floor window as well as a swath of colourful portulaca.
In 2015, with photography on my mind, I paid more attention to hummingbird favourites, shopping at a favourite nursery (Toronto’s Plant World, sadly now closed) to buy a selection of salvias and agastaches (aka hummingbird mints) I called my “hummingbird groceries”.
One pot featured deep-pink calibrachoa, orange portulaca and ‘Zahara Double Orange’ zinnias with Agastache ‘Kudos Series’.
The hummingbirds loved Agastache ‘Kudos Coral’.
I added a third pot that summer, planting it with Bidens ferulifolia ‘Campfire Fireburst’ (an over-rated plant)….
….. and some special salvias or sages, including Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips’.
The hummingbird supped a little in an ordinary nasturtium too.
In 2016, I couldn’t find all the plants I wanted so I filled in with assorted fancy petunias. I also found holy basil or tulsi (Ocimum tenuiflorum) which is one of the most amazing bee plants. Since I do a lot of native bee photography, I never had to go far to find a huge assortment of bees to photograph…..
…… including the tiny green sweat bee (Augochlora pura).
But that was the year I discovered that hummingbirds love the Wish series of salvias, including Salvia ‘Ember’s Wish’ below.
The next year, 2017 (notice I added two additional very motley pots from the back of the cottage), I had a pleasant surprise. The striped and ‘Wave’ series petunias I’d grown the previous year self-seeded in the soil over winter and…
….. produced a beautiful mix of healthy hybrids in all kinds of jewel colours. I liked them much better than the originals, and some had that old-fashioned fragrance.
I also grew heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens) for its sweet perfume and was pleased to welcome back self-seeded ‘Apricot Sprite’ agastache (A. aurantiacum)……
….. which is always a hummingbird menu choice.
That year I also grew blackeyed susan vine (Thunbergia alata ‘Susie Yellow‘) on a tripod in one of the pots and caught the hummingbird checking it out on occasion.
In 2018, I worked on my close-up photography. It’s not that easy to get photos of the male ruby-throated (it’s the male that sports the rosy neck feathers or gorget), since males migrate south much earlier than females, usually by the end of July. But here is monsieur on Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blooms’.
It was fun to try Lantana montevidensis that year, and someone approved!
As always, the self-seeded ‘Apricot Sprite’ (Agastache aurantiacum) was popular not just with hummingbirds, but with the odd bumble bee too.
For 2019, my motley pots featured the usual suspects in the sage department, and I added a little birdbath which was never visited (though pretty)…..
Which brings me to 2020. Actually, let’s go back to November 2019. When I knew my Toronto source for plants of Argentine sage (Salvia guaranitica) was going out of business, I decided to dig up my tender ‘Black and Blooms’ plants and bring them down from Lake Muskoka to the city. I left the pots on the deck in early autumn for my husband to keep watered when I travelled to Greece to take a botanical tour with my pal Liberto Dario. Alas, my husband also travelled to New York on the coldest night of November and my poor sages sat outside in Toronto as the thermometer plunged to -9C. When I came home, they seemed to have died. But I put them in our basement laundry tubs, gave them a watering, and just watched. Sure enough, little leaves emerged eventually and by March they announced themselves ready to greet hummingbirds for another season.
For some reason, perhaps Covid-19!!, I decided that this would be the year I would return to seed-sowing at home. Alas, I had long ago discarded my old basement grow-lights, but I did have a few LED lights for the gooseneck lamps which I sometimes use for small-scale studio photography. And I also had an empty 3rd floor guest bedroom window-seat. Voilà, I had seedlings in April!
I had long wanted to try sowing Petunia exserta, a rare, threatened endemic from limestone outcrops in the Serras de Sudeste in Brazil. It was first described in 1987; thirty years later, only fourteen plants were found during an expedition. It is reputed to be a good hummingbird plant, so of course I wanted to try it. A friend in Victoria gifted me seeds and it turned out to be amazingly eager to germinate and grow!
I also thought it would be fun to grow an old French marigold from seed, a tall single form that was supposed to have been grown by Linnaeus himself in his garden in Upssala, Sweden. So I ordered seed for Tagetes patula ‘Burning Embers’. You should know that although this species is called “French” marigold, it’s actually native to Mexico and Guatemala. It got its common name because it was brought back to Europe in the 17th century by Portuguese explorers. The seeds germinated quickly, but they were a little wonky as they twisted vigorously toward the light.
By June, the annuals were planted in Muskoka and the petunias looked stunning.
I wasn’t sure if any hummingbirds had found them, but I was convinced later when I saw the watercolour that my son’s girlfriend, Italian artist Marta Motti, made for me as a birthday surprise. That’s the male with his ruby throat, by the way.
Hummingbird on Petunia exserta by Marta Motti
Late June and early July saw an unrelenting heat wave and drought. On July 4th, I put a thermometer on a chair on my sundeck near my pots and it read 104F-40C. It was a huge challenge to keep the pots watered sufficiently, and I realized these two annuals were meant for rich, moisture-retentive meadows, not crowded pots. And the petunias grow upwards in the fashion of indeterminate tomatoes, making flowers only on the end of the shoot and dropping the withered flowers by the dozens. If you want to revive gangly plants, it’s recommended to shear them back in midsummer to the first branching shoots and new growth will form.
Finally, on July 16th the rains came. It poured. My meadows rejoiced and the motley pots were saturated. I did notice that the bright red of the Petunia exserta faded to a pale rose in the heavy rain, but that seemed to be temporary. Notice that I had added a few rustic willow arbours to host the red morning glory (Ipomoea coccinea) that I seeded in the pots and has yet to flower.
Fast forward a few weeks to mid-August and the pots look wild, overgrown and the most motley they’ve ever been. Fortunately, I’ve never wanted to win a beauty contest with these containers; it’s all about hummingbirds and bees.
This gold-edged red flower is the classic seed catalogue look of Tagetes patula ‘Burning Embers’,but the seeds I sowed produced a sunset mix of colours, some striped or streaked.
Bumble bees arrived in droves to forage for pollen on them.
They look very festive with the ‘Black and Blooms’ sage.
Though they’re usually listed as growing to 18-24 inches (45-60 cm), mine have reached 41 inches (104 cm) and may well grow taller. I was curious about the connection to Linnaeus, and asked my Facebook friend, Swedish ecologist Roger Holt, who was at one time a gardener at the Linnaeus garden. He said: “I asked botanist Jesper Kårehed, responsible for the Linnaeus heritage parts and got the answer that both Linnaeus and his precursor, the universal genius Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702) who built the first Swedish Botanical Garden (that later become the Linnaeus garden), had Tagetes patula (and erecta) and from paintings you can see that Rudbeck had the high elongated forms. In the 1920’s seeds from a form, said to have been picked in the garden of Hammarby, Linnaeus’s private home, started to be around in the trade. The Linnaeus garden was recreated in the 1930’s, and the tagetes have been there all from the start but probably not the same line of seeds.”
It’s a bit like having Linnaeus’s meadow right outside my window.
The petunias have hosted the odd wasp, and a handsome slaty skimmer dragonfly made it his sunny hunting perch for a few days.
But it has been fun to watch the hummingbird make its way around the flowers, taking a sip out of each.
Here’s a little video I made starring Petunia exserta.
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However, the champion this summer, as every year, is Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blooms’.
Let me leave you with a musical nod to my motley pots and their faithful feathered visitors.
Last June, I was privileged to visit several gardens in the Denver area owned by horticultural professionals with connections to the city’s wonderful Denver Botanic Gardens. Home gardeners in the area know former Director of Horticulture Rob Proctor from his longstanding appearances on television, but he and partner David Macke have a stunning garden filled with colour, billowing borders and myriad beautiful seating areas. I wrote about their garden here. Plant collectors and alpine enthusiasts around the globe know Panayoti Kelaidis, Senior Curator and Director of Outreach for the DBG. I blogged here about the fabulous hillside garden he shares with his partner Jan Fas. Today I’m going to introduce you to the charming, plant-rich garden of DBG Curator of Native Plants and Associate Director of Horticulture Dan Johnson and his partner Tony Miles in Englewood. Let’s get off the bus and check out the heavenly “hell strip”, that bit of civic real estate formerly known as “the boulevard”. You don’t even have to go into the garden to understand that the homeowners here have some serious horticultural chops. I see penstemons, alliums, foxtail lily, columbines and so much more.
Looking the other way, there are California poppies and bearded irises… even a little pink rose!
A magenta pool of delosperma meanders through the sedum and alliums. In the background are white prickly poppies (Argemone sp).
I love a garden that bestows a gift on the street, and Dan and Tony’s garden has a spirit of ebullient generosity that makes their neighbourhood a joyous place. Verbascums, irises, alliums and opium poppies….
…..occupy a niche garden against a pretty stucco wall along the city sidewalk.
Here’s the adobe-flavoured front porch! It’s as if every cool garden accessory shop in the southwest decided to open a pop-up store here at this house in suburban Denver.
Let’s amble past the tall, blue ceramic pot with its palm, standing in its own boxwood-hedged corner….
…. and climb the steps so we can get a better look at the slumbering Medusa with her euphorbia dreadlocks and try to count all the pots on the ground and hanging from hooks….
….. containing specimens of cacti…. Hmmm, I’ve lost count. So let’s just enjoy the view and the sound of the wind-chimes and all the splashes of colour…..
…. and fine workmanship that turns a few plant hangers into a work of art.
When I visit a complex garden like this, I often wonder how much time the owners actually take to sit down and enjoy a meal or glass of wine, but this is a lovely spot…..
….. with the splash of the fountain in the container water garden nearby.
Let’s explore the front garden a little, with its mix of perennials in the shade of a big conifer…..
……and its birdhouse-toting elephants.
Our time here is so limited and we need to see the back of the garden, which is just beyond this cool arch and gate.
The back of the house is more about getting right into the garden….
…. past the corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas)….
…. and the potted agave…..
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…. with the yuccas nearby.
What an interesting journey awaits, and we can go in a few directions. Let’s head towards the purple shed way in the back left corner.
I love this combination of foxtail lily (Eremurus) and perfectly coordinated horned poppy (probably Glaucium corniculatum, though these Denver gardeners grow some interesting glauciums).
There are several water features, big and small, in the garden. This ever-pouring bottle emptying into a shell full of marbles is so simple and lovely.
There are little points of interest on the way, like this lovely bearded iris with spiral wire sculpures….
…. that perfectly echo the airy star-of-Persia alliums (Allium cristophii).
I like this carved panel, tucked into the fence and adorned with honeysuckle.
A little further along the path, we pass a drift of orange California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) and penstemons. Note the urn water feature at the left, spilling into the small pond, which in turn spills into the larger pond below.
We come finally to the larger koi pond and its iron sculpture.
The shed walls feature artfully-screened mirrors that reflect light and the leafy garden (and some tired bloggers relaxing and enjoying the view).
There are also some very cool tentacled pots filled with succulents adorning the wall.
On the other side of the garden from the pond are beds filled with June irises, poppies and alliums and more interesting sculptures….
…. including a glass globe artfully displayed on a cool sculptural column.
One of the sad realities of a garden tour is that the day is very tightly scheduled with lots of wonderful stops along the way. If I’d had the time, I would have made my way back to Dan and Tony’s garden in better light (and with fewer of my fellow bloggers in the garden), as I did with Rob Proctor and David Macke’s garden. I feel as if I only absorbed half of what these artists have done in this colourful paradise in Englewood. But it’s time to head back to the bus, past this little shady corner filled with textural foliage plants and another sculpture.
As I walk under a conifer, I catch a flash of movement above. Looking up, I see a little wren having its lunch on the boughs.
It seems that humans aren’t the only visitors that appreciate what this lovely Colorado garden has to offer.
After five long months of wintry weather in Toronto, there is nothing more uplifting than the first flowers of the small spring bulbs. Over many years, small bulbs and corms in my front garden have multiplied, their clumps becoming gradually bigger, or seeds have scattered about until there are pools of colour. My camera finger is always itchy after being out of service since the last of the fall colour dies down, so I head outdoors as often as I can. In this spring of self-isolation, that might be several times a day and I’m often greeted by neighbours stopping to see what’s in bloom. The cold March and April temperatures have made the flowering parade move as slowly as sap up a maple trunk, but every year starts the same – with the snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis). Because they can easily be moved in flower, I have been dividing this old snowdrop clump and digging sections into my front garden.
I’ve also made a habit through the years of cutting these tiny flowers and giving them the high-fashion studio treatment, like the snowdrops below in an antique shot glass.
Next to emerge is usually a tie between species crocuses and little Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’. I adore her. She was bred in 1955 in England by E. Bertram Anderson Her mother is pale yellow Iris winogradowii hailing from the Caucasus mountains. That gives her extreme cold hardiness and her tendency to shrug off snow.
Her father is pale purplish blue I. histrioides from Turkey, lending her the pretty pale blue hue. Her existence is the result of only 2 seeds produced in open pollination breeding work by Anderson, a founding member of the RHS Joint Rock Garden Plant Committee and president of the Alpine Garden Society from 1948-53. She flowered in 1960 and was named for the wife of Anderson’s friend Eliot Hodgkin
This year, my crocuses were wonderful, both the species “tommies” (Crocus tommasinanus) and the bigger, slightly later-flowering Dutch hybrids.
On the one warm day we experienced so far this April, I found honey bees foraging for pollen on the crocuses. I’ve always wondered who in my neighbourhood has beehives, since the property size requirements for beekeeping are fairly stringent in Toronto. Having done a little research, I think they likely originated in the hives on the roof of Sporting Life department store about a half-mile from my garden.
I often combine these early bloomers in a tiny bouquet. Even though they last only a few days, the joy they bring is in inverse proportion to their size.
Crocuses, of course, have their own chalice-like charm – even if they decline to stay open long once removed from sunshine.
My front garden in early spring is anything but neat, given that I mulch it with leaves in autumn and leave many cut perennial stems to biodegrade where they fall. I do lighten the leaf mulch in late winter a little, raking some off so the small bulbs don’t get lost in the duff. This is a side-by-side view of my front garden this spring on March 23rd and April 13th. Once the crocuses fade, the Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) starts to turn my entire garden azure-blue. Most springs, the native cellophane bee and bumble bees make great use of the scilla carpet, but this year’s temperatures have kept most bees in their nests.
My garden’s “blue period” also includes the amazing, rich-pink Corydalis solida ‘George Baker’.
I always love the combination below, ‘George Baker’ with glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii, formerly Chionodoxa). A few weeks ago, I divided some of my corydalis clumps while in flower and spotted them throughout the garden. That deep cherry-pink is too good not to spread around!
And, of course, I’ve given George his own studio cameos in the past as well……
The glory-of-the-snow has been ready for its closeup….
…. as has the cultivar ‘Violet Beauty’.
Striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides) are ultra-hardy little bulbs featuring pale-blue flowers with a darker blue stripe.
Here’s a closer look of that sweet striped face.
Between the Siberian squill, the glory-of-the-snow and the striped squill, the colour theme of these chilly weeks of early spring is most definitely blue. And with most everyone in Toronto now into their second month of self-isolation, the neighbours have been telling me how much they’re enjoying watching my front garden change every week.
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White Siberian squill (Scilla siberica ‘Alba’) come out a little later than the blue ones.
Photographing them in a tiny bouquet lets me appreciate details of their flowers that often go unnoticed when they flower en masse.
Among my favourite of the small spring flowers are Greek windflowers or wood anemones (Anemone blanda). These are tubers, rather than bulbs, and they need to be soaked for 24 hours prior to being planted in autumn. Their daisy-like flowers always cheer me up – though they only open wide when the sun is shining. This cultivar is ‘Blue Shades’.
Putting just one windflower in the tiniest vase reveals the beautiful contrast of the bright yellow stamens with the silky petals and fern-like leaves.
‘Pink Charmer’ is lovely, but tends to be mauve….
….. and finally there’s ‘White Splendor’.
My broad-leaved grape hyacinths (Muscari latifolium) have just emerged and are still tight. The light flowers at the top are sterile, while the deep-purple ones at the base are fertile.
Here they are, below, in a little salt shaker vase. Common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) emerge just a little bit later.
Along my sideyard path under a big black walnut tree is a colony of Corydalis solida that comes into bloom a little later than the pink ‘George Baker’ in my front garden. This species is very vigorous and will make its way around the garden and even pop up in the lawn. In fact some gardeners consider it a weed – but I adore it. And after it finishes flowering, its leaves turn yellow quickly in the thicket of Solomon’s seal just emerging, then it disappears until next year. You might also see it hybridizing with some of the colourful cultivars, if you can find them to order.
Like all these little spring treasures, it is such fun to snip a handful to bring indoors so they can be appreciated for their beauty up close.
Soon the forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) will be in flower. I have loads of these biennials throughout the garden and their season is very long. By the time my crabapple tree is in bloom along with later tulips and daffodils, they will be pale blue clouds underneath.
But for now, I enjoy adding the very first forget-me-not blossoms to the little bulb bouquets that now include common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum)……
….. and the native Confederate violets (Viola sororia var. priceana).
All this early beauty of the little bulbs, this re-affirmation that spring brings colourful renewal – especially this year, when we need it so desperately – is one of the most beloved aspects of my own garden. I simply would not be without my snowdrops, crocuses, corydalis, puschkinia, scilla or grape hyacinths. And then, as if by magic, all these wondrous little chorines of the first act will quietly wither and disappear under the later weeks of tulips, daffodils, camassias and the emerging foliage of summer perennials, lying dormant below the soil surface so they can perform the same miracle early next spring. Needless to say, the foliage of all spring bulbs must be allowed to turn yellow and ripen in order for continued photosynthesis to nurture the bulbs as long as possible.
Meanwhile, my garden moves on through myriad subsequent scenes, not in the least hindered by all these tiny bulbs that helped me bid farewell to winter. Here is my front garden over the space of twelve months. This year I’m filled with anticipation – and nothing but time to enjoy it.
**************
I buy almost all of my spring bulbs from my friend Caroline deVries’ online retail store flowerbulbsrus. They are available at reduced prices until August 31st and are excellent quality. A good selection of the small bulbs is also available at www.botanus.com in British Columbia; they ship throughout Canada. (I purchased my own cultivars of Corydalis solida in Canada from gardenimport, which sadly is no longer in business). In the U.S., small spring bulbs can be purchased from my friends Brent and Becky Heath at https://www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com/. They have discounts for ordering before July 1st.
