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Walla Walla’s Abeja Inn and Winery

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After our big day of geology at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument and the wonderful Thomas Condon Paleontology Center in Oregon, (click on the link for my last blog), we arrived a few hours later at the Abeja Inn and Winery in Walla Walla, Washington. This was our big splurge for our British Columbia-Washington-Oregon road trip, and we were going to enjoy it.

We were two hours late for our wine-tasting (blame geology!) but the lovely receptionist told us it would be no problem to switch the appointment to the following morning…. after breakfast! She said this as she poured us a delicious glass of wine, which tasted extra special after a long day amidst fossils and volcanic ash flows!

With a friendly guide pointing out the property’s features, we walked past the entrance with its big allée of maple trees….

…. and headed towards the house. Goldenrod was in bloom and the mountain ash was loaded with fruit.

Lavender plants had bloomed earlier and had their summer shearing.

The inn occupies the original Kibler family farmhouse from the early 1900s.  But for almost 20 years, the property has been owned by Ken and Ginger Harrison, who developed the winery after searching for a property where they could grow Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.

There was a spacious veranda….

…. where rose-of-sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) in full flower.

I loved this wire plant stand – maybe a defensive accessory against plant-loving rabbits?

The view of the vineyard from the sitting area down the hall from our room was gorgeous, as was our room!

Grape vines and grain fields did look lovely in the late afternoon light. I read somewhere that local farmers are getting anxious because more grape-growers are moving into the area and transforming farm land into vineyards. Having tasted some pretty delicious (and expensive) Walla Walla reds, I could understand the appeal of the terroir but sympathized with the concern of long-time grain farmers. The same thing happened to fruit growers in Ontario’s Niagara regions – out with the peaches, in with the Cabernet Sauvignon.

There was a comfy living room for reading, but we were ready for dinner, having snacked for lunch on last night’s meagre deli supper ingredients in the car on the highway through Oregon.

Saffron Restaurant was on the main street of Walla Walla, and was every bit as lovely and delicious as we’d read.

The next morning dawned crisp and a little cool, and we headed to the breakfast patio.

But first I wanted to tour the beautiful garden….

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…….. with its central fountain…..

…. and late-season perennials and shrubs.

It was a lovely place to stop and “smell the roses”.

We decided to find a little nook out of the wind so…..

…. took a corner table where we were served the most scrumptious waffle with blackberry preserves and peach cream….

….. and then a delicious shirred egg with herbs.

After breakfast we toured a little of the property. Check out the big trumpet vine.

It was grape harvest time and the vats were being readied.

We walked past the vineyards, netted to prevent birds….

….. from eating succulent grapes like these 2018 Syrah.

Then it was time for our 10:30 am WINE TASTING!  No, I didn’t drink and Doug took small sips. (After all, when in Rome….)

We learned that Abeja means “bee” in Spanish, which translates to some interesting themed gifts in the shop.

I had already noticed bees on the butterfly bush. (And of course as part of my work I photograph all kinds of bees wherever I am in the world).

But we had a big drive ahead with a stop at a very special destination (next blog!) and we walked pack to the lovely old farmhouse inn and packed up. Thank you Abeja!

Portland’s Japanese Garden: A Haiku in Green

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When it comes to garden styles, I prefer a meadow:  buzzing with bees, fluttering with butterflies and alive with birdsong.  That is how I’ve designed my own Ontario gardens, with a view to native plant ecology and inclusion of insects, birds and wildlife. It doesn’t mean I don’t love visiting all kinds of gardens: Elizabethan knots, formal rose gardens, vegetable patches, wetlands and colourful perennial borders. But the most interesting, from an intellectual point of view, is the Japanese Garden, which represents ancient Shinto (Zen gardens) and Buddhist philosophy.

In my three decades of garden travel, I’ve visited Japanese gardens in Kyoto (Tenryū-ji, Ryōan-ji, Saihō-ji, among others); at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew; Chicago Botanic Garden; Brooklyn Botanic Garden; Denver Botanic Garden; Missouri Botanical Garden; the Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco; Montreal Botanical Garden; Vancouver’s UBC Botanical Garden; and The Butchart Gardens in Victoria. But the finest of all – and reportedly the most authentic garden outside Japan– is the Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon.  It even inspired me to write a little haiku…

Last September at this time, I was there with a group of women I’ll call “the golf widows”. Each year, our husbands (college classmates) get together somewhere and while they tee off, we see the local sights. One of the highlights of our Portland-Bend visit was this early morning tour, courtesy of garden member Gail Carr. It was my second visit, but it had been more than 15 years since I’d seen it, and a lot had changed during a $33.5 million expansion over 16 months. Foremost was the new entrance at the parking lot level in Washington Park. Designed by architect Kenzo Kuma and Garden Curator Sudafumi Uchiyama, it opened in spring 2017.  I was intrigued with the sleek, modern pool beside the ticket house, glimpsed through bamboo culms….

….. and the tiered waterfall feeding it.

From here we entered via an ornate, century-old gate…..

….. that took us up a steep hillside of old Douglas firs and bigleaf maples (Acer macrophyllum).

New native understory plantings on the hillside were created along with the pathways, and an “ephemeral” water course built to drain seasonal rainfall or snowmelt from the top to the bottom.  Said the garden of this new entrance: “It is as if visitors were setting foot on land after a voyage across the Pacific from Japan or disembarking from the Willamette or Columbia River, which were the original highways of this region.“

Horsetails and ferns combine with trilliums, columbines, salal, huckleberries and all kinds of native plants nestled among beautiful boulders.

Stone retaining walls appeared where the slope was steeper….

…. but Japanese design touches were married with the Pacific Northwest theme.

Nearing the top, we came to a handsome glass-enclosed bridge named for donor Sheila Edwards-Lienhart.

Beyond the bridge, steps led up to the new Cultural Village.

At the top, we could look back down at the impressive ascent. Visitors with mobility issues or those who don’t welcome this climb on a warm day can take a garden shuttle, which runs every 15 minutes.

We stopped in the Tateuchi Courtyard of the Cultural Village outside the Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning Center.  As the garden says: “The Cultural Village provides a place where visitors can immerse themselves in traditional Japanese arts through seasonal activities, performances, and demonstrations in the Atsuhiko and Ina Goodwin Tateuchi Foundation Courtyard.” The perfect little garden below is called Tsubo-Niwa, which means “courtyard garden”, and features the traditional Japanese elements: stone, water and plants.

The Marguerite Drake Sculpture Terrace offers a dramatic setting for beautiful works of art.

Bonsai is an essential element of Japanese design, and the Ellie M. Hill Bonsai Terrace features some fine specimens, like this 40-yearold European beech tree (Fagus sylvatica)….

…… and this 35-year old ‘Beni-Kawa’ coralbark maple (Acer palmatum).

A shimmering bamboo allée leads from the Tateuchi Courtyard to the Nezu Gate, which is the entrance to the original garden itself and its five distinct Japanese garden styles.  Begun in 1963 on the site of what had once been the Washington Park Zoo, it was designed by Professor Takuma Tono (1891-1987) of the Tokyo Agricultural University.

The Nezu Gate is a good place to show a map of the garden and its five styles: the Flat Garden, the Tea Garden, the Strolling Pond Garden, the Natural Garden and the Sand and Stone Garden . I’ve added a yellow arrow to indicate where we are. Click to enlarge.

On the inside, you can see the compartments on either side of the Nezu Gate, which were traditionally the offices of the samurai who guarded such entrances.

 

It was early in the morning, so gardeners were going about their tasks as we walked by towards The Flat Garden. As you can imagine, pruning and shearing is a non-stop task in a large Japanese garden, where symbolism is entwined even in the shape of the plants.

In Japanese design, the journey is meant to be contemplative, thus small vignettes like this water basin with its bamboo spout, which I borrowed for my introductory haiku.

The Flat Garden, hira-niwa, represents the evolution of the classic dry landscape style. We stood on the veranda of the Pavilion, observing the scene. The mossy islands in the sea of raked granitic Japanese sand represent a sake cup and a gourd.

This century-old weeping Japanese cherry (Prunus x subhirtella ‘Pendula’) would be lovely to see covered in pink blossoms in early spring.  Note the careful support of the branches.

We walked to the other side of the Pavilion.  Designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill and built in 1980 from Alaskan cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis) with a long wall of shoji screens, it is used for garden functions.

Rock selection and positioning is carefully considered in Japanese design.

As we headed back towards the other gardens, I noted another lovely stone water basin…

…. and a handsome lantern.

Japanese maples are planted everywhere, of course. They are called momiji in their native land.

But even though native Japanese plants occupy the understory here, they are sheltered by trees of the Pacific Northwest forest, like the massive Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), below.

We passed under a wisteria arbor, its concrete posts textured to appear tree-like. Many of the old cobbles in the garden originally paved Portland streets before being replaced by asphalt; they are recycled in the pathways here. In the distance, you can see the……

……. Sapporo Pagoda Lantern, set in a niche under towering red cedars (Thuja plicata) and Douglas firs.

Standing 18-feet tall and more than a century old, it was a 1989 gift from Portland’s Japanese sister city, Sapporo.  They were joined in 1959 just a few years after President Dwight Eisenhower established the Sister City Program. As they celebrate the 60th anniversary this year, the garden notes that the relationship reminds us “that the Pacific Ocean acts not as a barrier but a bridge between our two countries”.

The lantern’s five stories symbolize earth, water, fire, wind and sky.  And the stones set in moss at its base represent a stone map of the island of Hokkaido.


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We walked through the Tea Garden which contains an inner garden, a middle garden and an outer garden. The teahouse itself is managed by the Kashintei Kai Tea Society which offers workshops and ceremonies in chadō, the “way of tea”. Tea culture, of course, is a fundamental part of Japanese life.

This is a lantern in the Tea Garden.

I loved this mossy niche in the Tea Garden. Evidently some of the polished shingle stones in the garden were collected from the beach at Ecola State Park, my last blog.

This was one of my favourite vignettes: a green machiai, traditionally used as a sheltered waiting place before the tea ceremony. I loved everything about this….

…… including the handsome tied bamboo fence.

This mossy lantern added to the serenity of the Tea Garden….

….. as did this suikinkutsu stone basin and bamboo fountain.  Sound is important and the gentle splash of water adds to the tranquility of the Japanese garden experience.

Then it was time to explore the two ponds in the Strolling Pond Garden, chisen kaiyu shiki teien.  The upper pond is viewed from a moon bridge….

…. looking out over a beautifully landscaped body of water.  So many shades of green! The mound-shaped shrubs in this setting have special symbolism as well; they are meant to suggest moss-covered stones.  During the Edo period (1603-1867), feudal lords or daimyo displayed their wealth with strolling pond gardens.

The handsome bronze finials on the moon bridge begged to be caressed.

Two bronze herons or cranes stand in the shallow, forever fishing.

Then we walked along the zig-zag bridge, or yatsuhashi.  Designed to trick evil spirits that might be following you, it took us past beautiful koi…..

…… swimming along past ferns and Japanese iris in spring…..

….. towards the spectacular lower pond.

I’m sure there is symbolism here in the placement of the lantern and the stones.

I loved the way the maple-framed lantern reflected in the water.

The Heavenly Waterfall occupies the former bear den of the Washington Park zoo. In 1997 it was damaged by a winter storm and subsequently rebuilt at a greater height.

Isn’t this an enchanting scene?

We walked on towards the Natural Garden, passing a gardener sweeping the moss. This is a familiar scene in Japanese gardens, one I’ve photographed in Kyoto, too.

A deer-scarer fountain, shishi-odoshi, clacked its warning as we passed.   (Be sure to watch my video of the various water features at the bottom of this blog.)

For some visitors, the Natural Garden is a favourite place to appreciate a less controlled, contemporary way of gardening in the Japanese style, called zoki no niwa.   Although Professor Tono designed this originally as a moss garden, the terrain did not lend itself to that concept, and it was reimagined later as a place where visitors could rest and reflect on the seasons of a garden and life.

The stone paths here are works of art in themselves…..

….. taking visitors past natural water courses and onto the mossy hillside beyond.

Near the bottom, a stream runs under a lovely arched timber bridge……

….. topped with cement and edged in slender stickwork.

A little further, an angled stone path traverses water reflecting the trees and sky.

The Natural Garden features little nooks and crannies where visitors can sit, rest and reflect.

Being on a hillside there are lots of stairs in this garden, like these lovely stone-edged stairs ascending past a mossy bank.

Vine maple (Acer circinatum) is a beautiful Pacific Northwest tree that is used extensively in the Natural Garden.

Our visit was nearing an end and it was time to climb up the last set of stairs from the garden to arrive at the….

…. Sand and Stone Garden.  This classic walled dry landscape garden in the karesansui style reminded me very much of the famous Edo Period rock garden at Kyoto’s Ryōan-ji.  Using carefully placed rocks set in raked gravel according to the principle of yohaku-no-bi, meaning “the beauty of blank space”, both encourage contemplation.

The stones tell a story inspired by designer Takuma Tono’s reading of the Jataka Sutra, a 2,000 year old Indian tale about seven tiger cubs thrown into the sea as a test of courage by a tigress. The raked stones represent the waves in the seas.

The cubs are saved from starvation when Buddha, arms outstretched, offers himself to them as food; they consume him and are saved.  It is a lovely fable with a happy ending, and a fitting end to my tour of the Japanese Garden.

But before you leave, enjoy the splash of water from the garden’s many water features and fountains. Arigatō Portland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XzQbAyFiYk&t=17s

Visiting Marjorie’s Garden

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I have a free summer afternoon in Toronto and call my dear friend, garden writer and designer Marjorie Harris. Could I come to see her and bring my camera?  Of course, says she gracefully. Thus, on a hot afternoon at the very end of July, I walk up her midtown street. It’s never difficult to find Marjorie’s house. It’s the one with the luscious green floral tapestry in front. And it’s the one with the biggest ‘Sun King’ aralia (A. cordata) I’ve ever seen. It seems to extend its golden foliage over most of the frontage, on a narrow city lot that measures 20 x 137 feet (6 x 42 metres).

It’s also the garden with rare Japanese umbrella pines (Sciadopitys verticillata) hiding in the undergrowth, along with hellebores and golden hakone grass…..

….and a tiny, jewelled ‘Hana Matoi’ Japanese maple keeping company with Japanese painted fern.

But seriously…. that aralia! I can’t think of another perennial that creates such an element of privacy as this one. However, as Marjorie reminds me, her garden soil is really rich in compost (“lashes of compost” is a favourite phrase of hers) and she has an irrigation system that targets water on plants that really need it.

Marjorie and I spend a half-hour chewing the fat on the front porch. She and I have known each other for three decades. She is a straight shooter (calls a smart woman a “dame”), well organized, energetic and very involved in the cultural heartbeat of the city. And she is still head-over-heels about the garden she created behind the Annex home she has shared with her husband, novelist Jack Batten, for over 50 years. In it, they raised their children — two each from previous marriages — and enjoy visits from their three grandchldren.

She’s just as beautiful as she was in the mid-90s, when she was the editor of Toronto Life Gardens. I wrote articles and book reviews for her in those days, like the one below on landscape designer Neal Turnbull.  It’s hard to imagine this was 23 years ago! (Click for larger versions of the photos).

Later, she became editor-in-chief of Gardening Life magazine and we worked together then, too. (Interestingly, in her Summer 2005 editorial, below, she talks about Larry Davidson of Lost Horizons Nursery, from whom she acquired many of the choice trees and shrubs in her garden.)  Sadly, most of our beautiful, glossy gardening magazines have since disappeared from the publishing landscape in Canada, which is a crying shame.  But that’s a story for another day.

She’s been an ardent feminist all her life. Once, when I was looking through old magazines in my office, I found a 1973 Vancouver Sun Weekend magazine I had saved because it contained an article on the company I worked for at the time (a jade mine… long story). But as I flipped through the pages, I also found a piece titled The Invisible Women by Marjorie Harris.  The topic was “women’s liberation”. That was the beginning of her freelance career, after time spent on staff at Maclean’s and Chatelaine,

And, of course, she’s written tons of books, including the masterful Botanica North America, (to which I contributed some images). Published in 2003, this heavy tome was a rich, encyclopedic treatment of selected naive plants of the biomes of North America.

She was the Globe & Mail‘s gardening columnist for years and does features for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), among many other gigs. As well, she has her own landscape design business, and designed four gardens on her own block. And she goes to France every winter with Jack and makes us all jealous as we shovel the snow back home!

Ah bien, let’s stop chatting on the front porch and head out to see the back garden. And “seeing the garden” is a brilliant reality at Marjorie’s house, even before you actually go outside, because of the fabulous folding glass doors that span the lowered dining room. Designed as part of a 2005 renovation by Lisa Rapaport of PLANT Architect Inc., the glass expanse opened up the view to Marjorie’s exquisite woodland — a mélange of carefully chosen shrubs and trees, many evergreen, whose architecture creates four seasons of interest.

Now let’s step outside into the garden and look back at the house through the colourful tapestry of trees and shrubs. Beside the urn is a red-leaved Japanese maple (Acer palmatum ‘Dissectum Atropurpureum’).  “It was my first expensive plant,” says Marjorie. “I paid $20 for it at Ron’s Garden Centre in the 1980s. Couldn’t believe I’d spend that much money on one plant at the time. It led to madness of course“.

At first it’s not easy to discern a path forward through the abundance, with interesting plants drawing my eye from ground-level to the leafy canopy above. That’s part of Marjorie’s design strategy. As she says: “I find that too often designers miss out on the mid layers in a garden design:  I think mainly about foliage and how leaf shapes relate to one another and then I think about the height of each plant’s maximum effect and how that relates to the whole garden.”

Fittingly, I have to reach above my head and point my camera down to capture this delicious duo, a fullmoon Japanese maple (Acer shirasawanum ‘Aureum’) with colourful barberries below.

On the fence is Clematis ‘Betty Corning’, a spectacular, easy vine that Marjorie laments as being essentially unavailable in the trade.

There are few annuals allowed out here and those invited to stay must pay their rent, like purple-leaved Strobilanthes dyerianus with chartreuse ‘Margarita’ sweet potato vine.  Behind is a glaucous evergreen Marjorie bought to decorate her Christmas table at the corner jug milk store one autumn, “then out to the garden to see just how big it might get,” she recalls. “I love it“.

It’s the exquisite little touches that draw the eye, like this ‘Geisha Gone Wild’ Japanese maple and gold hosta.


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A few choice conifers lend structure and interest in Toronto’s interminable winter, like ‘Algonquin Pillar’ Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra). “My garden looks good every day of the year except for about 10 days in early spring,” says Marjorie, “when it’s flooded and looking kind of crappy, with all the stuff I haven’t cut down for the winter being brazen enough to be obvious. That I usually clean up myself just because of the shame of it.”

She spends a lot of time looking up at her trees, a remarkable collection, especially given the size of the garden.

There is a beautiful katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) with its heart-shaped leaves and burnt sugar autumn aroma…..

….. and a gorgeous Kentucky coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus), below, with its intricate compound leaves, the largest of any Canadian native tree.

It’s a favourite among her Carolinian forest natives, including tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera), sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus) and ruby-flowered Calycanthus, below.  “Oxydendron croaked on me,” she admits, “as have several others. I keep trying.”  

A pretty pink astilbe purchased from John’s Garden in Uxbridge grows in dappled shade here, too.

Walking towards the back of the garden, I reach an obelisk adorned with clematis and a nicely pruned blue falsecypress (Chamaecyparis), another one of Marjorie’s Christmas decorations.  Back in the 1980s, Marjorie’s garden featured a unique geometric checkerboard design, with half the spaces in flagstones and the other half choice plants.  In 2002, she hired Earth Inc. to design and install pergolas.  “All seemed fine,” recalls Marjorie, “until the dining room was added in 2005 and then the checkerboard just began to look too fussy.”  So a more streamlined path was substituted leading to this series of pergolas, which allowed space for a more interesting mix of woody plants.

The metal grate under the pergola covers the sump pump.  “The property is build on Seaton Pond flood plain, which rises every spring now that there are not enough trees to drain it properly,” Marjorie explains. “There is an underground stream which is an off-shoot of Taddle Creek, which comes through our garden and under the house. Hoses take the excess ground water out to the street storm sewer; and the stream is dealt with by in-house sump pumps and out through the sewage system.”

Marjorie’s pink floss tree (Albizia julibrissin), below, has now survived three winters. It’s the cultivar ‘Ernest Wilson’, purchased from Jim Lounsbery’s Vineland Nurseries and named for the famous plant explorer who found it in a Korean garden in 1918 and brought seed home to Boston’s Arnold Arboretum. He wrote about it in a 1929 bulletin.  “The origin of the plant in the Arboretum affords a good illustration of the importance of obtaining for northern gardens types which grow in the coolest regions they can withstand. The particular tree was raised from seeds collected in the garden of the Chosen Hotel at Seoul, Korea, by E. H. Wilson in 1918. It grows wild in the southern parts of the Korean peninsula but appears quite at home in the more severe climate of the central region. A few seeds only were collected and seedling plants were set out in the Arboretum when about four years old; several were killed the first winter but one came through with but slight injury and since that time has not suffered in the least. From its behavior during the last seven or eight years there seems reason to believe that this Korean type will prove a useful and valuable addition to gardens. It has a long flowering season, continuing in blossom throughout August.  Albizia is a member of a tropical tribe of the great family Leguminosae and it is astonishing that this tree should be able to withstand New England winters. Apparently it is happy in fully exposed situations, where good drainage and a sandy loam prevail.”

Shredded umbrella plant (Syneilesis aconitifolia) comes from one of Marjorie’s favourite wholesalers, Connon Nurseries, and has the most interesting flowers.

Here is a closeup of those unusual flower panicles.

At the back of her garden is a raised planter filled with an eclectic collection of plants. Says Marjorie: “If a plant looks awful in a client’s garden, I will replace it and I usually bring it home and put it in the Jardin de Refusée. If I don’t want it, one of the crew will and we baby these things along and then they become a respected part of our own gardens. I’ve never sold one of these babies back to clients even though they’ve done well in my garden.  In this garden, you have to drop dead to be removed.”

I try not to take that last sentence as a metaphor as I walk back towards the house, past a young striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum), centre, and a ‘Slender Silhouette’ sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua), right. “Getting the right plant in the right place is a whole lot harder than most people understand,” notes Marjorie. “They want copies of stuff they see in magazines and online and most of the time just won’t work in our climate, our neighbourhoods.  Finding the ideal plant is always my goal, and will it work with the ecosystem I’m trying to build up to satisfy both birds and bugs I want to draw into the garden.  I cannot express how boring those so called minimal “modern” plant designs are.  They don’t work ecologically and they require huge amounts of work to keep on looking neat.  Nature is not neat.”

But gazing back past the Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’, left) and the ‘Herman’s Pillar’ barberry (Berberis thunbergii), right, below…

….. I think that this lovely paradise in the Annex represents a leafy manifestation of Marjorie’s life and career: long, rich, full of interesting things acquired with care and intent, and a joy in every season.

Finally, here’s a little taste of a mid-summer day in the garden. The birds and cicadas are a bonus. Thanks for the visit, Marjorie!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oJtmQaZTmk&feature=youtu.be

A Garden Embroidered with Myriad Threads

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Most times when we tour gardens, we arrive en masse and then we “oooh” and “aaah” and marvel at all the beautifully-grown plants and cleverly-designed components. We might say hello to the gardener, if he or she is there. Sometimes we even delve a little into the shared passion for nature that has one person judging what the other person has taken many years to achieve. But rarely do we learn much about the gardener’s other life.  So it was with great interest that I read about Carol and Randall Shinn of Fort Collins, Colorado, whose beautiful garden I visited this month with the Garden Bloggers’ Fling. They met at the University of Colorado in Boulder, then enjoyed long careers in education, Carol in visual arts, and Randall in music composition. Their careers took them across the country, and finally to Tempe, Arizona for 28 years. When they moved to Colorado from the desert, it was because “water seemed more plentiful here than in any other city in the front range”.  This was my bus window view as we pulled up in front of their home.

Carol’s artistic career has involved observing nature, photographing scenes that move her, transferring the images to fabric, then machine-stitching them to enhance the details and intensify the colours. This embroidery is as intricate and unusual an art form as her garden, which stitches together various manifestations of her interests as they evolved since moving here in 2006. Walking up the driveway, on one side is a traditional June planting of peonies, sages and bearded irises at their peak….

…. while the other side features gritty soil and a spectacular mix of colourful Colorado native penstemons, erigerons, white Astragalus angustifolius and tall yellow prince’s plume (Stanleya pinnata).

In front of the garage is a shrub we would see a lot of in the Denver area, native Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa).

A sumptuous ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ peony flanks the walk to the front door…..

….. where a comfy wicker chair rests near the roses.

Bearded irises perform well in Carol’s garden, here with Rocky Mountain penstemon (P. strictus)…..

…. and peonies are the essence of June.  Note the compact conifers, which lend winter interest to gardens where snow can appear even in late spring, as it did this year in the front range.

A dry stream bed meanders past a lupine and presumably diverts rain water in wet weather.

The most striking feature is the crevice garden, a haven for alpine collectables and a nod to the sandstone and basalt of the hulking Rocky Mountains nearby.  I loved how it was artfully integrated into the more traditional plantings…..

…. and sections stitched together with thymes and other groundcovers.

Vertical crevice gardens are increasingly popular with alpine enthusiasts, patterned after the first iterations of this style as created by Czech rock gardeners like Zdenek Zvolánek, Ota Vlasak, Josef Halda and Vojtech Holubec, as Denver rock garden czar Panayoti Kelaidis relates in this blog. (As an aside, I have written about and photographed the massive crevice garden designed by Zvolánek for Montreal Botanical Garden’s Alpine Garden.)  Some of Carol’s crevice gardens were designed by Kenton Seth.

Carol Shinn, left, explains the process to Garden Design owner Jim Peterson and his wife Valerie.


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Look at all those tiny treasures, each in its own space, protected against incursion of other plants by mighty rock walls.

The path to the back garden leads under an arched gate…..

…. behind which is wreathed a tangle of clematis.

Roses and irises continue the June show here, along with chives…..

….. and I do love bronze bearded irises.

In a far corner is the vegetable garden and….

…. beyond that, a series of no-nonsense compost bins.

And surprise, surprise! more rock garden in the back, this time horizontal crevices with the sweetest hens-and-chicks (Sempervivum).

There is water back here, too. This bird-friendly waterfall and pond makes a lovely splash near the house….

….. and mounted on the fence is this very cool Corten and concrete wall fountain.

The iconic bluestem joint fir (Ephedra equestina) looks happy in front of a colour-coordinated wall in a well-contained niche to prevent it from colonizing….

… while a striped amaryllis lights up the dappled shade under a conifer.

What a diverse, beautiful garden – all “embroidered” together with skill and love.

Designing with Peonies

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It’s June, lovely June and gardens are filled with the romantic perennials of late spring and early summer. The weeds are still manageable (sort of) and the heat hasn’t yet arrived to fry the blossoms. And there are peonies…. the sentimental favourites of a lot of gardeners, especially beginners, who long to grow the perennials they remember from a grandmother’s garden or a farmhouse field. And who doesn’t love peonies, in all their luscious hues from white to deepest red….

….. with many in coral and salmon.

Throw in the Itoh hybrids, and you’ve got beautiful yellows too!

And who doesn’t love peonies in vases?  I made this dinner party arrangement with snowball viburnums.

For my daughter’s wedding shower, I added lupines, which tend to swoon curvaceously.

But mostly, we love them in our gardens. Peonies are beautiful in single-plant collections, of course, but they are wonderful actors in ensemble casts, too. Over the years, I’ve photographed peonies in countless gardens; these are some of my favourite combinations.  Where I have a cultivar name, I’ve added it – but mostly it’s to get a sense of the design possibilities for pairing plants with peonies. Let’s start with some compositions from the Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG). This is the yellow hybrid Baptisia ‘Solar Flare’ with pink and white peonies.

Native Baptisia australis, blue false indigo, is a classic June peony partner.

This is a nice, crisp combination in the Piet Oudolf-designed entry border: Paeonia ‘Krinkled White’ with willowleaf bluestar (Amsonia tabernaomantana var. salicifolia).

In another garden at the TBG, Paeonia ‘Krinkled White’ looks beautiful with catminit (Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’) and Allium cristophii.

This is Paeonia lactiflora ‘Edulis Superba’ with Ozark bluestar (Amsonia illustris).

I loved this combination of the Itoh Hybrid peony ‘Morning Lilac’ with catmint (Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’).

Sicilian honey lily (Allium siculum) made a nice statement with white-and-green Paeonia lactiflora ‘Green Halo’.

Allium siculum is a great pollinator plant, too!

Isn’t this the perfect June vignette? It features Salvia  x sylvestris ‘Summer Snow’ and camint (Nepeta sp.) with a pink peony.

Foxglove penstemon (Penstemon digitalis), is one of my favourite perennenials. A June-blooming native that is drought-tolerant and adaptable to so many soil situations (at my cottage, it grows in gravel), it also makes a charming companion to peonies, especially a glamour star like ‘Bowl of Beauty’, below.

A single-petaled peony (possibly ‘Sea Shell’?) pairs with the spiderwort Tradescantia ‘Concord Grape’.

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I’ve always loved this bold combination in the Oudolf entry border: Paeonia ‘Buckeye Bell’ with meadow sage, Salvia nemorosa ‘Mainacht’ (‘May Night’).

Salvia nemorosa ‘Mainacht’ also looks wonderful with the unusually-coloured Itoh Hybrid ‘Kopper Kettle’.

Along the entry driveway at the TBG, the Oudolf border features Paeonia ‘Bowl of Beauty’ with graceful llittle flowers of the white form of mourning widow cranesbill (Geranium phaeum ‘Album’), backed by the lilac-purple spires of Phlomis tuberosa ‘Amazone’.

Geranium ’Rozanne’ looks great with everything, but is especially effective with the Itoh Hybrid peony ‘Sequestered Sunshine’.

Let’s head further south in Toronto to the lovely four-square potager of Spadina House Museum. This is what you can expect on a perfect morning in June: a romantic melange of Russell Hybrid lupines, heritage bearded irises and peonies, among other June-bloomers.

Here’s a beautiful and classic combination: pink and purple Russell Hybrid lupines with peonies.

The heirloom French peony Jules Elie’ teams up boldly with old-fashioned yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia punctata) here.

And ‘Jules Elie’ also looks great nestled into variegated maiden grass (Miscanthus sinensis ‘Variegatus’).

Spadina House contrasts the shimmering white flowers of Paeonia ‘Duchess de Nemours’ against a sober backdrop of blue false indigo (Baptisia australis).

Beside the vegetable garden, mauve Allium cristophii makes an airy companion to pink and white peonies.

Later-flowering alliums, of course, are perfect companions for peonies. Out west at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Botanical Garden, Allium ‘Globemaster’ combines with a late-season single pink peony.

I’ve made notes of effective peony combinations on various garden tours through the years, too. In a beautiful country garden north of Toronto, I found fern-leaved dropwort (Filipendula vulgaris) consorting with a pink peony.

Another classic peony partner is Oriental poppy; this is Papaver orientale ‘Victoria Louse’.

To finish, I give you the prettiest street garden ever, a generous gesture from a Toronto gardener on one of the TBG’s annual tours years ago: yellow flag iris (Iris pseudacorus) with a dark purple bearded iris and luscious pink Paeonia ‘Jules Elie’.

And for all you gardeners who wouldn’t dream of planting something that pollinators don’t enjoy, rest easy. Provided you plant single or semi-double peonies with lots of pollen-rich stamens exposed, you can usually have your peonies and let bees eat ‘em too!