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BOLDLY GO: June Glory at Great Dixter

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My early June visit to Great Dixter, the renowned English garden of the late Christopher “Christo” Lloyd (1921-2006), now artfully and creatively managed by his dear friend, fellow iconoclast and head gardener Fergus Garrett, wasn’t on my original itinerary when my London-based eldest son Doug and his partner Tommy treated me to a weekend in Kent. Months earlier, I had asked them if it would be possible to visit Sissinghurst prior to my joining Portland-based Carex Tours the following week to visit gardens such as Dan Pearson’s Hillside, Malverleys, Yews Farm (you can click on the links to see my blogs on those lovely places), Oudolf Field and others.  We stayed in a lovely Airbnb in the pastoral countryside near Biddenden, enjoyed a wine-tasting of Kent’s sparkling white wines at Balfour Winery and zipped around the narrow, hedge-lined byways in our rental car. But on our Sissinghurst morning, I realized how close we’d be to Dixter (just 11 miles into neighbouring East Sussex) and asked if there might be time to squeeze in a late afternoon visit between lunch and our dinner reservation.  I had last visited Great Dixter 31 years earlier when Doug was studying at Cambridge but much had changed in that time.

So that is how on June 4th – without benefit of the highly recommended garden map, below…..

….or prior research, or even physical orientation on a frightfully sunny afternoon (the photographer’s curse, apologies in advance) – I found myself walking into the colourful profusion of the Barn Garden (the red arrow on the map above shows my entrance), with the 500-year old Great Barn directly ahead.  Restored in 2012, it is now used for ‘green’ woodworking, rural crafts, and to house the boiler that heats the manor house.  What I didn’t realize upon entering was that my view across to the Great Barn was actually over a lower central pool terrace with its own planting, called the Sunk Garden.  But up here, the effect was of a classic English cottage garden, all tumble and charm, yet very carefully managed and edited throughout the season.

As I turned right, I walked towards the White Barn (you can see the juxtaposition of the two barns on the map above) with its espaliered fig tree on the wall. Flanking the path and cascading over it were white cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris), mauve sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis), magenta Byzantine gladiolus (G. communis subsp. byzantinus), buttercups, daisies, lupines, foxgloves, alliums and poppies. 

In the garden alongside the barn, I was treated to an eye-popping display of spring-blooming yellow alexanders (Smyrnium perfoliatum) punctuated with Byzantine gladiolus.  Yellow alexanders has become popular in recent years as a brilliant foil to late tulips and early summer perennials and bulbs; a monocarpic plant, it takes two or three years to flower, then dies.  At Dixter, its black seeds are carefully harvested as the finished plants are removed to be grown on as seedlings for the garden or to the nursery shop.

Further on, the scarlet ladybird poppies (Papaver commutatum) held their own nicely against the acid-chartreuse of the yellow alexanders.

This lovely poppy with its prominent black blotches seems to have more presence than its cousin, the corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas).  I have photographed it paired beautifully with Orlaya grandiflora in the Gravel Garden at Chanticleer.

Giant fennel (Ferula communis) grows in the Barn Garden, its towering scapes a blast of Mediterranean sunshine.  Fergus Garrett gifted some of his plants to Dan Pearson, whose Somerset garden Hillside I blogged about recently.

Mixed in are late spring garden favourites like peony.

I circled the Barn Garden until I was looking across the Sunk Garden at the White Barn through Ladybird poppies and yellow Baptisia. Here you can clearly see the arrangement of the garden, as well as the espaliered ‘Brunswick’ fig (Ficus carica) on the White Barn wall.  Wrote Christopher Lloyd: “The fig trees against the far barn wall were a Lutyens touch which you meet on other properties where he worked. They are there for foliage effect and he used the many-fingered Brunswick fig as being one of the most decorative.” Sir Edwin Luytens, of course, was the renowned architect who renovated Great Dixter and designed some of the gardens for Christopher’s father and mother Nathaniel and Daisy Lloyd when they purchased the property in 1910.

The Sunk Garden was originally a lawn; during the First World War, it was turned into a vegetable garden. After the war, this octagonal pool was created…..

… in which grew a pretty combination of Siberian iris (Iris sibirica) and calla lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica).

The stone ledges in the Sunk Garden, featuring tiny Mexican daisy (Erigeron karvinskianus), were as artfully wild as the plantings above.

Leaving the Barn Garden I entered the Wall Garden.  Here, hot oranges, golds and reds played off the colour of the bricks in the wall.

One of the horticultural legacies of Christopher Lloyd’s career is the introduction of a popular spurge called Euphorbia griffithii ‘Dixter’.  I’m not sure if this is that cultivar, but it’s a good orange touch.

It’s not all blazing colour in the gardens; there are wonderful, small vignettes in shade that offer a little visual stillness, like this one featuring striped lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis ‘Albostriata’).

And some perennials stand aloof from the crowd, like Thalictrum aquilegolium.

As I left the Wall Garden, I got a little lost. The scene below with its pretty white partners – Allium stipitatum ‘Mount Everest’, Orlaya grandiflora and oxeye daisy – might have been in the Peacock Garden; then again, perhaps the Blue Garden.  With such a short time to visit, I just kept moving.

Here you see native cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) rising above all. It was in bloom wherever we drove throughout the Kent and Sussex countryside and Fergus Garrett uses it judiciously in the gardens for its airy effect, being careful to pull it before it goes to seed.

Biennial dyer’s woad (Isatis tinctoria) — a plant Fergus Garrett calls “much underestimated” — is also used for its great cloud of sulphur-yellow flowers in late spring. Here it partners with blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) and oxeye daisies.

Finally I arrived at Great Dixter’s crown jewel, the Long Border. One of the original gardens conceived by Christopher Lloyd’s mother Daisy and maintained by her staff of 9 gardeners …..

…. there is a photo of her standing beside it in 1917 with her dog, below, four years before Christo’s birth, the youngest of her six children.  

Photo courtesy of the Great Dixter Charitable Trust

Fergus Garrett has described gardening at Dixter as “high octane”, and nowhere is that term more apt than in this border, which stretches 330 feet long (100 metres) and 15 feet deep (4.5 metres).  Here are many of the plants seen elsewhere in the garden, but somehow exhibiting a more formal presence when arrayed in front of the clipped hedges. Like all the gardens here, the Long Border uses succession planting, taking advantage of the students and international ‘scholars’ who launch their careers here, to lift plants that are past their season and replace them with annuals and biennials.  Or, as Fergus has said of this process, “high input, high output”.  Self-seeding is encouraged, but monitored closely.  

“Boldly go”. I borrowed this blog’s title from Star Trek but it applies equally to the colours at Great Dixter. Christopher Lloyd loved the bold and brash and was dismissive of the “good taste club”; I like that unafraid, idiosyncratic approach to gardening.   

He wrote about the ladybird poppy, Papaver commutatum, in his book “Color for Adventurous Gardeners”, which is on my bookshelf, recommending it be planted under the white burnet Sanguisorba tenuifolia ‘Alba’. I think he would be just as thrilled to see it consorting boldly with yellow alexanders, below.

The foxgloves, below, are Digitalis purpurea ‘Sutton’s Apricot’.  Seeds of this biennial are sold in glassine packages in Great Dixter’s shop.

I found a bit of shade in the Long Border and you can see how much better the plants look without the harsh contrast of full afternoon sun.

Yellow Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa) is used extensively in the Long Border, and plants are sold in the shop.  The white allium is A. nigrum.

There were textural bits of shade in the Long Border that caught my eye, like the sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis) and euphorbia, below.

I love these green vignettes, with little pinpricks of colour.

Then there are the meadows.  There is a striking contrast between the Arts and Crafts formality of the sculpted yews in the Topiary Lawn – once used as a practice golf-putting range by Nathaniel Lloyd – and the orchid-rich meadow in which they stand.   As noted in the book Meadows at Great Dixter and Beyond by Christopher Lloyd, re-issued in 2016 with an introduction by Fergus Garrett, the Topiary lawn is one of “a dozen different meadow habitats” at Dixter, providing a high degree of biodiversity.

It was Daisy Lloyd who introduced the first meadows to Great Dixter and to her youngest son Christopher, below, the only one of her six children who shared her passion for gardening.  He was a boy when the Lloyds took him to Munstead Wood to visit Gertrude Jekyll, who wrote later to say she hoped he’d grow up to be a great gardener. He was just 12 when his father died in 1933, at which time Daisy assumed management of the estate, in time helped by Christopher.  She died in 1972 at age 91.

Photo courtesy of the Great Dixter Charitable Trust

When I was in the Topiary Lawn in early June, there were oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare); buttercups (Ranunculus repens); clover; a yellow, dandelion-like composite (possibly Hypochaeris radicata); mauve-pink common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsia); and yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor).  Earlier in spring, the meadows feature various species narcissus, snakeshead fritillary and camassia.  Meadow-cutting is done in August and September, and the seed-rich hay is made available to locals to encourage them to reduce their lawns and embrace the great biodiversity of meadow gardening.  Fergus Garrett also gives lectures to help gardeners in the meadow-making process.and his good friend, designer and writer Dan Pearson has been gifted meadow sweepings in exchange for lecturing at Dixter in the hope of introducing orchids to the meadows at Hillside, his Somerset garden.

Common spotted orchid is one of four orchid species to thrive at Great Dixter.  The others are early purple (Orchis mascula), green-winged (Anacamptis morio) and twayblade (Neottia ovata).

Annual yellow rattle, aka hay rattle, is semi-parasitic to grasses, reducing their competition and enabling the orchids and other wildflowers to gain a stronger foothold.

Much has been written about the great biodiversity at Great Dixter.  As Fergus Garrett writes in this Gardens Illustrated article, “Archaeologists, naturalists, ecologists, botanists and entomologists were commissioned to carry out the survey dividing the Great Dixter Estate into different zones such as the woodlands, pasture and meadows, formal ornamental gardens, ponds, and the Plant Fair Field. Each zone was surveyed and the findings fed to one principal ecologist who analysed and pulled the information together in a report. The results were astonishing. As expected, the wider estate with its ancient woodlands, pastures and meadows, and ponds was extremely rich. But, surprisingly the richest part of all was the ornamental garden.”

In longer grass, meadow cranesbill (Geranium pretense) and Byzantine gladiolus (G. communis subsp. byzantinus) thrive.

Christopher Lloyd was very fond of this rich-magenta gladiolus (which is sadly often sold as the paler, shorter G. italicus) and wrote in his book Garden Flowers (2000): “The gladiolus which most endears itself to me is the prolific G. communis subsp. byzantinus, long known as G. byzantinus… It tucks into many border positions where it will not get in the way after flowering, for example up against a group of border phloxes . . . . Another use of it I fancy is in a meadow community, where it holds its own well.” 

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And that brings me to Christopher Lloyd. Gardens are about people, of course, and Great Dixter, like nearby Sissinghurst, is known for its larger-than-life founding personality. Though I was never introduced to Christo, I did sit beside him in October 1989 at the Third Great Gardening Conference at the Civic Garden Centre in Toronto (now the Toronto Botanical Garden). He was due to speak at the conference, along with his dear friend Beth Chatto, but jet lag being what it is he nodded off a few times and I gazed fondly at the top of his silvery head bent beside me.  Below is the advertisement for that event.  Three years later, I visited Great Dixter but he was away on that May 1992 day.

You get a good sense of his crusty personality in this lovely memorial video by Allan Titchmarsh, produced in 2006:

It was during a 2001 lecture tour to North America marking his 80th birthday that Christopher and Fergus were hosted in Toronto by my friends, Geoffrey and Susan Dyer, both passionate gardeners. At the time, Geoffrey was on the board of the Civic Garden Centre, soon to be the Toronto Botanical Garden, and it was in their home that the seed of a possible future for Great Dixter was sown. As Geoffrey recalls: “We were having a drink in the evening and I just asked them quite casually, what’s going to happen (to Dixter)? I didn’t know the particulars of the ownership arrangement… but I knew he didn’t have a spouse and he didn’t have heirs… and the consequence of inheritance tax in the UK and that kind of thing is something people have to plan for.” When Cristopher replied that his accountant had been pressing him about future plans, Geoffrey said: “I’m not qualified in the UK but I’ve worked around that area fairly extensively in my law practice, so if there’s anything I can try to help with, I’d be happy to do it.” In fact, Geoffrey’s Toronto-based law practice specializes in estate and taxation law so he was the perfect person to pose questions to his guests about succession. That summer, the Dyers were invited to stay at Great Dixter where the first meetings to establish the Great Dixter Charitable Trust (GDCT) took place.  Twenty-two years after that drink with Christopher Lloyd and Fergus Garrett, Geoffrey Dyer remains the Chairman of the GDCT, and writes the charity’s annual Review of the Year.

I last saw Fergus Garrett at an April 2018 lecture he gave to a packed house at the Toronto Botanical Garden, below.  Says Geoffrey Dyer: “The Christopher Lloyd legacy is alive and well, but Fergus is Dixter today. His energy, his charisma, his intelligence, his vision – it’s absolutely huge.” 

It was a pleasure to visit Great Dixter, to enjoy its bold plantings, and to reacquaint myself with the story of the people that have made it the great garden it remains today.

Hillside:  Dan Pearson and Huw Morgan in Somerset

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It is somewhat daunting to write about a garden whose owners are a world-renowned designer with a lyrical, thoughtful writing style and a photographer-writer who chronicles their garden’s finest moments (and his own delicious recipes) in mouth-watering images for their beautiful online magazine Dig Delve. But to visit Hillside is to be enchanted – by its story, its scope, its exquisite melding of the garden to the land, and the land to the garden, and what came long before. So I will attempt to capture a little of the great joy of my short time there in early June.    

We start in the outdoor kitchen where our gracious and hospitable hosts, Dan Pearson, left, and Huw Morgan, right, serve us a refreshing elderflower concoction in pretty pottery cups. Here we hear a little history before wandering the 20-acre smallholding near Bath, which they purchased in 2010 from the estate of the previous owner, Raymond Lewis, an elderly farmer born on the property who had grazed his cattle to the very edges of the rolling limestone pastures and milked the cows in an old tin barn. Upon his death, friends living across the stream at the bottom of the valley below told Dan and Huw that the property was available. After walking the fields with the farmer’s brother, visiting the old orchard and inspecting the house that had last been decorated when the brothers’ mother was alive, Dan wrote later in The Guardian: “There were no ifs, buts or maybes. No doubt. It was where we wanted to be.”  It would take three trips from London eight months later, the car boot jammed with favourite plants from their long, narrow Peckham garden, to begin to put their minds to this vast empty canvas.

They went slowly, doing little for the first years. As Dan wrote in Dig Delve, “It took that long to know what to do with the place and what has felt right here.”  In autumn 2012, they installed a pair of 18th century granite troughs used originally for tanning leather, now intended to gather rainwater. Once the steep land grade was levelled on this upper spine, the troughs would connect the house with the barns and form the gateway to what would become the new kitchen garden beyond.

The horizontal line of the troughs, in the background below, also echoes the horizontal line of 52 ancient beech trees on Freezing Hill in the far distance, which occupies a Bronze Age landform between Somerset and the Cotswolds.

In gravelly rubble between the house and the troughs, Dan grows favourite clumping plants such as eryngium and calamint along with a host of self-seeders: cephalaria, corn cockle, silvery ballota, poppies, blue flax and a white California poppy (Eschscholzia californica ‘Ivory Castle’).

To understand the initial challenges posed by the steep lie of the land, it’s helpful to read Dan’s essay The Kitchen Garden tracking the 4-year progress from the trough installation to the first harvest.  As he wrote, “When we arrived here the flat ground was literally no more than a strip in front of the outbuildings. We perched a table and chairs there to make the most of not being on the angle”.  Gardening on the steep hillside was a challenge: “Sowing, thinning, weeding and harvesting on a slope were all that much harder with one leg shorter than the other and tools and buckets balanced.” In time the ground near the barns was leveled and a breeze-block wall built to hold back the sloping fields above, to reflect heat and the fragrance of perfumed plants……

…. and to give fruits such as cordon-espaliered pears, below, a warm surface on which to ripen. A fig in this area is a cutting of ‘White Marseilles’ from Dan’s project at Lambeth Palace, the parent plant “brought from Rome by the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, in 1556.”

In the early years, trees were planted: several in a new orchard; some in a ‘blossom wood’ of native species; hazels and alders down by the stream; memorial trees to honour missed friends; and a katsura grove in the valley with its exquisite autumn perfume to evoke Dan’s long project at Tokachi Forest in Hokkaido, Japan. Trial beds held David Austin roses for cutting, 56 varieties of dahlia and a rainbow of tulips. Signature plants appeared, including different species of towering giant fennel (Ferula spp.), a Mediterranean plant I saw first in the ruins of Troy many years ago, so it always makes me think of Homer to see it now. Dan has used Ferula communis subsp. glauca in his design for the Delos Garden at Sissinghurst. (More on that later.)

Rusticity and a sense of place is preserved in the tin walls of the barn, a backdrop to feverfew, bronze fennel and the unusual lilac-purple valerian, Centranthus lecoqii.  

English gardeners seem to grow more umbellifers than I’ve counted anywhere in my North American travels, and I had to ask Dan twice the name of the lovely one below. It’s Athamanta turbith, a cold-hardy native of the Balkans.

Another plant used by Dan in Delos at Sissinghurst also appears in this upper garden: tall pink Dianthus carthusianorum, shown here (in terrible sunlight, sorry) with Achillea ‘Moonlight’.

Constructed in spring 2014, the kitchen garden comprises a double row of steel-edged, rectangular beds with a broad walk in-between.

The soil where the vegetables grow is rich and productive. According to an elderly neighbour, in the 1960s the former owner’s parents grew vegetables in a market garden on the slopes, and berried boughs from holly trees still standing were harvested for Christmas wreaths for the market.

Creative trellising allows vertical growing of cucumbers and summer squash. Other crops include courgettes, French and runner beans, peppers, salad greens, carrots, turnips, beets, sweet corn and tomatoes (in a poly house).  

Berries and currants are grown in beds with frames that can be netted later against birds.

Three varieties of rhubarb are grown at Hillside, providing the ingredients for Huw’s delectable rhubarb galette.

Time is fleeting and Dan leads us down a path through the meadows towards the brook.  When I look up the hill through a bouquet of massive Gunnera manicata leaves….

….. that I literally held above my head as I passed under them a moment earlier, illustrating the deceptive scale, I see the cluster of buildings at the top. Closest is the milking barn, now the studio office where Dan and Huw carry out their design work.  To its right is the main ornamental garden, which we’ll visit in a few minutes.

On the way to the pond, Dan pauses in the meadow surrounded by oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare), buttercups (Ranunculus acris) and black knapweed (Centaurea nigra). He is in the process of overseeding the meadows with yellow rattle and native orchids, including gift seeds harvested by Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter, to improve the biodiversity here.

 The pond is just two years old, the marginal plants still finding their feet. But water has always been important to Dan in a garden – and this pond might host two-legged swimmers, as well as aquatic flora.  

I am fond of meadows, having grown one or two myself, so I take note of the red campion (Silene dioica)……

….. and blue-flowered Caucasian comfrey (Symphytum caucasicum).

Water runs in a ditch through parts of the low meadows and after planting the banks with marsh marigolds and snowdrops, Dan sought to add small bridges. Apart from a pair made of stone, he riffed on Japanese landscape design with his own timber zig-zag bridge.   

In the damp ground alongside the bridge grows Iris x robusta ‘Dark Aura’.

Despite watching my legs and hands as I navigate the paths, the stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) seem to recognize a feckless Canadian and soon I am rubbing my wrist with a dock leaf (Rumex obtusifolius) proffered by Dan. (It helps with the sting but I have impressive raised welts the next day that cause me to reflect on the traditional medicinal value of this common European plant which, I suppose, would cause you to forget about your chronic arthritis while your skin deals with the acute inflammation.)  

Back at the top, we are now let loose in Hillside’s ornamental garden, which occupies several large, irregularly-shaped beds on the upper slope. Planted in Spring 2017 and finished in Autumn 2017, it was the result of five years of waiting and planning. There is so much to see here, but not nearly enough time to study it carefully.

Burgundy Knautia macedonica is stealing the show, with yellow Euphorbia wallichii in the rear. The profusion of summer perennials and ornamental grasses is still to come, which we can glimpse thanks to Dig Delve’s back issues.

A dark opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) is the progeny of gifted seed from plants Dan saw when cycling to work in his early 20s. It is the only variety he grows, careful not to let it hybridize with the mauve and pink ones his neighbours grow.  

The ornamental garden is a keen plantsman’s lair and it is such fun for us to learn the names of new plants. This is Nepeta ‘Blue Dragon’ a large-flowered hybrid of N. yunnanensis and N. nervosa.

Greek native yellow-banded iris (Iris orientalis) partners with a caramel-colored baptisia in one place…

…. while perfumed sweet peas twine pea sticks in another.

Sulfur clover (Trifolium ocroleuchon) has many of us clicking shutters.

Though it would be lovely to stay another week, there’s just enough time to see the latest chapter at Hillside. This spring, after contemplating the site for a few years and planting it first with a green manure, then a pastel mix of Nigel Dunnett’s ‘Pictorial Meadows’ seeds, a new garden has taken shape. It’s a Mediterranean garden inspired partly by Dan’s work recreating the Delos Garden at Sissinghurst, where he’s been a consultant for almost a decade.  

The new garden features a 6-inch mulch of sharp sand, following principles established by Swedish designer Peter Korn.  It features drought-tolerant plants such as lilac Phlomis italica, below, verbascums and N. American desert perennials like Sphaeralcea ambigua.

I was fortunate to have visited Sissinghurst the previous weekend and saw the Delos Garden….

….. richly planted with asphodelines and sages, among other Mediterranean plants.

Its stone altars were brought in the 1820s from the Greek island by Vita Sackville-West’s husband Harold Nicholson’s seafaring great grandfather and acquired at auction by Harold when the family house in Ireland was sold in 1936.  I have a special fondness for the sacred island of Delos….

…. having visited myself in autumn more than a decade ago when the grasses and wildflowers had gone to seed and were blowing in the hot wind, below. It was my fervent desire to return one day in spring when the flowers are in bloom, but seeing Dan’s garden at Sissinghurst in early June might be the closest I come.

As we head back to the open kitchen, I pass a handsome shrub that Dan tells me is his friend Dan Hinkley’s introduction Hydrangea serrata ‘Plum Passion’.   

And in a sheltered spot near the house are pots of perfumed dianthus and society garlic (Tulbaghia ‘Moshoeshoe’).

As our visit is coming to an end, we are invited to sit and enjoy the lovely English garden tour custom of “tea and cake”.  Huw Morgan has worked his magic on blackcurrants, garnished lavishly with rose petals…..

….. and quite possibly the best lemon pound cake I’ve ever tasted, garnished with tiny elderflowers and lemon slices.   

And after the last crumb is finished and it’s time to head into Bath nearby, Dan and Huw insist on posing with us for a group photo – the perfect hosts with the perfect garden at the end of a perfect visit in Somerset.

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If you like naturalistic meadow gardening, you might wish to read my blog on Piet Oudolf’s entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden, published as:

Piet Oudolf – Meadow Maker Part One and Part Two.

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Dan Pearson’s website

I travelled with Carolyn Mullet’s Carex Tours .

Fairy Crown #21 – Helianthus & Hummingbirds

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My 21st fairy crown for the end of August features a few dependable meadow plants for late summer here on Lake Muskoka.  The light-yellow daisy is Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’, a popular hybrid of two species, H. pauciflorus var. subrhomboideus, stiff sunflower, and H. tuberosus, native Jerusalem artichoke.  The dark-centered daisy is sweet blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia subtomentosa). The little white daisies belong to lanceleaf aster (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum), which occurs naturally in my meadows.  I’ve also tucked in another naturally-occurring native, stiff goldenrod (Solidago rigida).  The cobalt-blue flowers belong to a tender perennial from my deck containers: anise-scented sage (Salvia guaranitica ‘Black & Bloom’), a cultivar from Ball Floral that is itself a cross between two older (unpatented) cultivars ‘Costa Rican Blue’ and ‘Black & Blue’.

Sweet blackeyed susan, aka sweet coneflower, below, is my favourite of the Rudbeckia genus for a few reasons. First, it has the most perfect flowers, below, which are much larger than other Rudbeckia species, and carried at the top of stems on plants that can reach a height of 1.5-2 metres (5-6 ft).  Second, though it is native to the American midwest north to Illinois and Michigan, it is perfectly hardy in Muskoka. Third, it flowers at the end of summer when the meadows need more colour.  Fourth, it has an interesting scent that is reflected in its third common name, fragrant coneflower.

It isn’t a huge pollinator draw, but I’ve seen the odd wasp or bee foraging on the flowers.

It is classed as a wetland species, preferring moist to mesic soil. While we certainly don’t have a wetland on our property, it is very happy in our partly shaded hillside meadow and at the bottom of our property at the rocky lakeshore where its roots are frequently bathed by the wake from passing boats.

In my west meadow, sweet blackeyed susan blooms simultaneously with Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’, below.  They seem perfectly suited to be sharing this area, along with cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum).

On the other hand, I have a large drift of ‘Lemon Queen’ under my stairs, below, and this planting is visible every time I go into the cottage. That means I get to see it flop its head (all its heads) when the weather is very dry, forcing me to drag the hose over to perk them up again – something I’d never do in the meadow.

Bumble bees are frequent visitors to Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’.

This is also the time of summer for native lance-leaf aster (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum) with its panicles of tiny white flowers. It is reportedly allelopathic (i.e. secretes a substance that hurts plants growing near it), but unless I’ve misidentified it, it doesn’t seem to have impeded the growth of its meadow-mates, below.

Bees enjoy foraging on it, including my rare meadow guest below, the yellow-banded bumble bee (Bombus terricola).

Stiff goldenrod, another member of the big goldenrod clan is in bloom now, though DNA analysis has assigned it to a different genus. These changes take a while to percolate through the literature and commerce, so many sources still list it as Solidago rigida, rather than Oligoneuron rigida.  But it is an exceptional goldenrod, gradually forming clumps….

…. with strong stems topped by rounded clusters of tiny flowers.  Like all “goldenrods”, it is a bee favourite, like this orange-belted bumble bee (Bombus ternarius).

Though my fairy crowns thus far have featured plants growing in my Toronto garden or in my meadows on Lake Muskoka, the 21st edition contains a few spikes of a tender South American perennial that I take great care to overwinter indoors under a window in my basement laundry tubs in the city so I can have it in my cottage deck containers each summer.  These are my “motley pots”, below, and the plant I’m referring to is the anise-scented sage with the blue spikes, Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Bloom’, which is difficult to find in spring in Toronto garden centres.  I made this photo in the summer of 2019, but each year has a different cast of characters in my “Hummingbird Photo Studio”.  (If you click on the preceding link, you’ll see the popularity of this year’s experimental hummingbird favourite: standing cypress, Ipomopsis rubra.)


Their all-time favourite, however, is Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Bloom’, below….

Ruby-throated hummingbird nectaring in Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blooms'

I have grown lots of hybrid salvias including ‘Amistad’, ‘Wendy’s Wish’ and ‘Amber Wish’, and they all attract hummingbirds.

Here’s a little video I made of the ruby-throated hummingbird on various plants in my containers through the years:

When I made this fairy crown, I had 2 out of 3 of my sons in attendance, as well as my husband, below, and they were all good sports in this serendipitous project.

They didn’t get the full-on fairy crown treatment like the grandkids, but I made them all wear meadow flowers, including my eldest son, right, and his partner….

…..and my middle son, below. Youngest son is off in Italy being married in less than 2 weeks! I plan to walk him down the aisle, but my fairy crowns have been instructed to keep up the show until winter!

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Meet my 20 previous fairy crowns!

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom
#10 – June Blues on Lake Muskoka
#11 – Sage & Catmint for the Bees
#12 – Penstemons & Coreopsis in Muskoka
#13 – Ditch Lilies & Serviceberries
#14 – Golden Yarrow & Orange Milkweed
#15 – Echinacea & Clematis
#16 – A Czech-German-All American Blackeyed Susan
#17- Beebalm & Yellow Daisies at the Lake
#18- Russian Sage & Blazing Stars
#19-My Fruitful Life
#20-Cup Plant, Joe Pye & Ironweed

Fairy Crown #19 – My Fruitful Life

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Somehow, when I started writing professionally about gardens and plants way back in 1988 as my youngest child headed off to first grade, I did not think I’d still be as charmed by the Goddess Flora as I continue to be today.  Especially given that my little first grader just turned 40 this spring and has a husband and three kids. Her three older brothers are in their 40s and 50s (the youngest gets married in Tuscany in exactly one month) and their mom – yes, me – is turning 75 today! When I was a young woman, I would have considered someone who’d reached my age as “elderly”. Funny thing – now I don’t! So Janet’s 19th fairy crown for August 10th is filled with fruitfulness – literally, the fruits and seeds of my meadows and wild places here at the cottage on Lake Muskoka and the fruits of a wonderful family life gathered over the past 45 years.

My family is very understanding:  most have worn fairy crowns at one time or other. Here are my two older grandchildren getting their own custom crowns for my 74th birthday (photo by my son-in-law)…..

…… and posing with their younger brother, mom and me (aka “Nana”).

But it’s a longstanding tradition, even before I started my season-long parade of fairy crowns. Here’s my daughter 11 years ago with what we could find growing wild….

….. and my granddaughter with weedy bits from the front boulevard at their home, sweet violets and dandelions….

….. and my older grandson looking positively angelic.

My youngest grandson wore a happy smile when I asked him to pose with his crown.

As for my own crown, it represents a different way of gardening here at the cottage, one I intentionally chose to pursue twenty years ago. There would be some places (mostly on our steep hillside) for the wild plants of the forest, and wildish meadows where favourite perennials, mostly native, would be free to grow, wander and seed themselves. There would be NO WEEDING. So, woven within my crown are native fruits, including Allegheny blackberry (Rubus allegheniensis).

Down by the lake are black huckleberries (Gaylussacia baccata) which are a little seedy, but fun to eat in late summer. And they don’t suffer fruit loss in droughts like the wild lowbush blueberries on our property.

Though neither of the above grow in quantities sufficient to gather enough to bake more than a pie or a dozen muffins, it is rewarding to pick a handful and understand that these have grown by this lake and sustained native people here, as well as the local fauna, for hundreds or thousands of years.

Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) is our most fruitful species, and I think its abundance is why I don’t suffer much deer damage to my “pretty” plants. White-tail deer love to browse on the branches and I see evidence of that all the way up our hillside.

Last summer, I even made a gin from my sumac blossoms. That’s it in the centre, flanked by blueberry and cranberry gins. I think in the final analysis it was my favourite flavour:  a little bit lemony with something herbal as a side note. Unusual but tasty.

There are floral fruits in my birthday fairy crown too, including the pods of lupine, below….

….. and the dark fruit of blue false indigo (Baptisia australis), below….

….. and foxglove penstemon (P. digitalis), below.  One of my very favourite plants for early summer – and a great bumble bee lure – it has very tough fruits, i.e. “capsules”, so when I harvest them after they’ve dried, I use pliers to crush them to avoid cutting my fingers.

Hiding in my crown is a little mushroom, but August is generally early for mushrooms on Lake Muskoka unless it’s a super-rainy month.   However, give it a month or so and the mushroom show in this part of Ontario is spectacular. In fact, one year when we hosted our hiking group at the cottage, I hired a mushroom specialist to tour us around the forest. I think we found 38 species that day, using his keys.

There will be a little dock party today with relatives around the lake. Pretty sure there’ll be cupcakes, too and grandkids’ homemade gifts. And of course there are lots of flowers in bloom in the meadows and beds now and I will make sure we have some on hand as I turn… 75.  I just need to get used to saying it.  It shouldn’t be that hard, right?

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There were 18 fairy crowns before this one. Here they are!

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom
#10 – June Blues on Lake Muskoka
#11 – Sage & Catmint for the Bees
#12 – Penstemons & Coreopsis in Muskoka
#13 – Ditch Lilies & Serviceberries
#14 – Golden Yarrow & Orange Milkweed
#15 – Echinacea & Clematis
#16 – A Czech-German-All American Blackeyed Susan
#17- Beebalm & Yellow Daisies at the Lake
#18- Russian Sage & Blazing Stars

Fairy Crown 14-Golden Yarrow & Orange Milkweed

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With summer finally underway on Lake Muskoka, it’s time for a few of the stalwarts of my meadows and garden beds to feature in my 14th fairy crown. ‘Gold Plate’ yarrow (Achillea filipendulina) is hardy, low-maintenance and a dependable presence each July, well into August. I’ve written extensively about orange-flowered butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) over the years, and it remains one of my top 3 perennials for pollinator attraction.  At the top of my crown and over my left ear, you can see one of the bumble bees’ favourite weeds:  yellow-flowered St. Johnswort (Hypericum perforatum).  And that pale-pink daisy flower in the centre of my forehead?  That’s lovely pale coneflower (Echinacea pallida), a native perennial I’m trying so hard to naturalize in my meadows – but it takes its own sweet time, and will not be rushed!

As the July nights grow warmer, our cottage screened porch plays host to dinners gathering family members from far away. And the meadows are now full of colorful blossoms that generously yield bouquets for the table. 

Creating informal floral arrangements is one of my favourite pastimes at the lake, using a variety of containers from old ceramic vases purchased for a few dollars at the second-hand store in the nearby town to antique medicine bottles, below, bought at a garage sale.

Early each July, monarch butterflies arrive in my meadows at Lake Muskoka, seemingly drawn by some generational homing instinct to find the orange-flowered perennials that provide not just abundant nectar, but foliage on which to lay their eggs and ultimately feed the caterpillars of the next generation.  

Here’s a little video I made:

That perennial, of course, is butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) and it is one of my top 3 plants for pollinator gardening. (The two others will come later in my fairy crowns.)  It provides abundant nectar over a long period to a wide range of bees and butterflies, below.

But there is nothing more gratifying to me than counting all the monarch caterpillars on my milkweed plants, then watching them consume the leaves before disappearing to transform into the beautiful green chrysalis that becomes the butterfly.

With a wide native range from Newfoundland to Minnesota and Colorado and south to Texas and Florida, this is one of the most common milkweed species. In nature, it occurs in prairies, open woods and roadsides; it tolerates a range of soils from clay to limestone. For me, it grows in   the rich loam that was placed selectively in a few garden beds and in the acidic, sandy, well-drained soil of my meadows, below, with purple flowered Verbena stricta.

I’ve even had great germination results from kicking seeds into gravel on the path near our cottage.

It flowers for many weeks in July-August, reaching 2-3 feet (30-60 cm), and is a beautiful cut flower. Though it has a deep tap root and is described as being drought-tolerant, in the sandiest places on our property the leaves and blossoms wilt in a prolonged dry stretch while plants in more moisture-retentive sites thrive. It self-seeds readily, its oval follicles splitting open in fall to release its closely-packed seeds to the wind on delicate parachutes. 

One of the first perennials I planted at the cottage was the old-fashioned fernleaf yarrow Achillea filipendulina ‘Gold Plate’. Tall at 3-4 feet (90-120 cm) with sturdy stems and aromatic foliage, it is low-maintenance, ultra-hardy and bothered by nothing, including deer – unless you count…

….grasshoppers, which use the flat flowerheads as perches throughout summer. I see the odd sweat bee (Halictus ligatus) working the tiny flowers, but this yarrow is not known for its pollinator appeal. I planted it originally in richer soil than most of my meadows, and it generally prefers more moisture than many of my prairie perennials. Picked at the right time, it makes a long-lasting dried flower, keeping its gold color for years.

Pale coneflower (Echinacea pallida) is an enigma in my meadows, and one I’m patiently trying to encourage for its early bloom time, elegant flowers with their narrow, pale-pink petals and attraction to pollinators. This echinacea, originally considered an Ontario native, is now believed to have ‘ridden the rails’ into Canada from tallgrass regions in Iowa and Illinois, as part of freight shipments of “prairie hay” for cattle feed. It is more drought-tolerant than its cousin, purple coneflower (E. purpurea); indeed it flops in soil with too much moisture.  So year by year, I distribute seeds of the plants I have and keep my fingers crossed that one day they’ll be a major presence in my meadows.

St. Johns wort (Hypericum perforatum) is another weed brought to North America by settlers in the 18th century and is abundant in waste places on Lake Muskoka. An aggressive self-seeder and avoided by grazing animals, it is considered an invasive and detrimental weed when it invades rangeland. But try telling that to bumble bees and other native bees that forage busily on it in early summer to gather its abundant brown pollen.  Like dandelions, St. Johns wort is considered a ‘facultative apomict’, meaning it can make seed without fertilization – always a desirable attribute for a weed!

Some days in July as I’m working in the meadow, I hear the familiar “ke-eee” call above; looking up, I see our native broad-winged hawk (Buteo platypterus) wheeling in big circles on the hunt for small rodents and birds. Occasionally, it lands on an oak bough and peers down into the grasses, looking for lunch.

The hawk is just one of many birds on Lake Muskoka, a soundtrack that includes the slightly wonky multi-note song of the song sparrow, below; the pine warbler; red-eyed vireo; eastern phoebe; blue jay; black-capped chickadee; American goldfinch; hermit thrush and many others. Oh! And by the way, if you don’t have the Merlin Bird ID app installed on your phone, what are you waiting for? Such fun to hear that that piercing call is a Great Crested Flycatcher!

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Here are my previous fairy crowns for 2022:
#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom
#10 – June Blues on Lake Muskoka       
#11 – Sage & Catmint for the Bees
#12 – Penstemons & Coreopsis on Lake Muskoka
#13 – Ditch Lilies & Serviceberries