Cloudy Bay. If you’re a wine-lover, that name calls up a memory of one of the finest vintages of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, a label we all wished we could afford, back in the early 1990s, when the world was discovering the allure of the green-skinned Bordeaux grape that the Kiwis grew and bottled to perfection in the Marlborough Region at the tip of the South Island. We drank our Kim Crawford and Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blancs, yes, but really wished we were sipping a glass of premium Cloudy Bay. So the only disappointment my wine-collecting husband felt in our entire NZ garden tour was at NOT stopping for a tasting at Cloudy Bay Wines on our way through Marlborough. We certainly saw our share of vineyards in the region, en route to and from our stay in the Marlborough Vintners Hotel, some draped with netting to prevent bird damage…..
…… some newly planted…..
…… and some growing in their verdant, geometric patterns up the hillsides.
But Cloudy Bay is also a place on the map, and our destination this morning following our first stop at Barewood Garden was a spectacular property on the shore of the bay that Captain James Cook first named in English in 1770 for the cloudiness of its water, a result of the constant churning of the waves over the stony soil washed into what became known as Cook Strait, between the North and South Islands. Cloudy Bay is now called by its Māori name, Te Koko-o-Kupe/Cloudy Bay, and we were about to visit award-winning Paripuma, a remarkable native plant garden on its shores.
We gathered in a courtyard behind a whitewashed house with simple lines…..
…. and listened to the owner and garden designer, Rosa Davison, talk a little about the property’s history and her own. Having grown up on a farm in the Waihopai Valley in a family that came to the region in the 1840s, she was drawn to the coast near the Marlborough Sounds where she’d spent idyllic childhood vacations. Two decades ago, she and her husband Michael bought the property less than a half-hour south of Blenheim and moved there with three teenagers. Rosa called it Paripuma (Māori for “white cliffs’) for the famous bluffs nearby, and proceeded to plan her garden on barren paddock that ran to the sea.
We walked through the house onto the pergola terrace enclosed in vines….
…..and sheltered from the sun by gauzy, white shade canopies using dowels hooked to slide-wires. I loved this idea.
There were shells that told the story of life at the seashore: spiny murex, ostrich foot shell, starfish and others.
Seen from the bottom of the stairs leading to the garden, there is a simplicity and pleasing geometric balance to the house framed by the enclosing beds of native shrubs and trees, and a lushness to the palette of green and white.
Rosa had set up “before” photos of the property, and they added to the drama of what we were about to see. This celebratory picnic in 1999 (I love the carpet) heralded the beginning of her creative journey….
…and what stretched out before us with Cook Strait in the distance was its spectacular culmination. It was as if André LeNôtre’s little bosquets at Versailles had drifted gently down onto this beachfront property under the Antipodean sun. But here at Paripuma, the formal placement of the gardens flanking the 300-metre (980-foot) central allée fulfills a rigorous ecological imperative: to grow a fairly restricted roster of native shrubs and small trees in order to encourage and sustain native wildlife. And though LeNôtre had gardeners to plant his bosques, Rosa Davison planted everything here herself.
The Google satellite view below shows how the garden’s formal central axis almost parallels the shore of Cook Strait, rather than approaching it on the perpendicular, as I’d imagined it had.
I made the decision to turn right to see some of Rosa’s small, enclosed gardens en route to the beach, so I could later approach the house via the big garden. With a view of the Pacific Ocean in the distance, I walked under tree boughs…..
….. into a formal potager overflowing with leafy vegetables, squash, onions, herbs and berries.
Turning towards the sound of the ocean, I walked through a flower garden filled with familiar perennials – all good pollinator plants in my own meadows and grown here to attract monarch butterflies, which arrived naturally in New Zealand in the 1870s and are thus considered native.
Before long, I was standing at the water’s edge, gazing towards those cliffs that inspired the garden’s name, and the crashing waves that inspired Captain Cook to call it Cloudy Bay. That’s all still South Island in the distance, with the Tasman Sea out of sight behind. So, make changes in your lifestyle levitra prescription http://downtownsault.org/news/page/3/ and lead a normal life. It also boosts up metabolism, holds back appetite and downtownsault.org buy cheap cialis burns fat in place of storing fat in the body. No wonder, it is considered a super antioxidant and if you are able to take just a bite of it your body would be able to prolong the erection and you will suffer from premature ejaculation. cheapest levitra http://downtownsault.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Rock-the-Locks-Registration-Form-.pdf For lots of people, suffering from viagra low cost this problem.
But gazing the other way, I looked straight out toward the Pacific Ocean.
Looking down at my feet, I saw the smooth, wave-tumbled rocks that give a “shingle beach” its name. Shingles can range from fairly large cobbles to small stones, and are usually a mélange of different types of rocks.
As I looked back over the shore plants towards the house, it was difficult to imagine how barren this was just two decades ago.
Rosa is also planting natives between the garden and the shore, like this young kākābeak (Clianthus puniceus). And though she welcomes all animals into the garden, including rabbits, young plants are protected with sleeves to give them a fair head start.
Then it was time to explore the main garden.
Mown paths guide visitors between the various beds and invite close inspection of the natives, like the tall harakeke or New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) and carex species.
A few New Zealand Christmas trees or pōhutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa) were still in flower.
And of course there was native hebe or koromiko (H. salicifolia), among many other plants in the various beds, including ngaio (Myoporum laetum), ake ake (Dodonaea viscosa), puka (Meryta sinclairii), coprosmas, cabbage trees or tī kōuka (Cordyline australis), Nikau palms (Rhopalostylis sapida) and wire vine (Muehlenbeckia sp.) She also grows the extremely rare, critically endangered Three Kings Kaikomako (Pennantia baylisiana), which I was able to see the next day at Otari-Wilton’s Bush Native Garden in Wellington.
I came to a small pond surrounded by plants…..
….. with a charming sign that describes its seasonal habitation by one of the many wildlife species that have made Rosa’s garden their own. With all the frogs in the pond, I can only imagine the night music at Paripuma.
Circling the pond, I came to the perfect little dock with one perfect little chair – and only wished we had more time so I could sit here for a moment to take it all in. Notice the view lines right across the central allée to the far side.
Wandering back toward the central path, I took a closer look at the big garden’s simple focal point, set in a small bed of poor knight’s lily (Xeronema callistemon) that had already flowered.
It is an antique whale pot once used at nearby Port Underwood for rendering down whale oil during New Zealand’s notorious whaling era. When the pots were in active use, mostly in the 19th century (including American and Australian whalers), the nation saw its native whales – especially southern rights, humpbacks, sperms – hunted to near decimation. In the years 1911-1964, not far from Paripuma on a headland in the Marlborough Sounds that flows into Cook Strait, 4200 whales were caught at one shore station alone, including the last whale ever killed in the country. Since 1978, whales in New Zealand’s 200-mile offshore waters have been protected under the Marine Mammals Protection Act. As a wildlife-lover and conservationist who supports the New Zealand Whale and Dolphin Trust, Rosa Davison’s whale pot is an evocative and stark reminder of those days, and of the threat that international whaling continues to pose to the country’s whales outside its protective waters.
I headed back up the stairs to the house, taking another look at a photo of Paripuma before the garden was made.
And then I gazed out over this truly amazing landscape once more. New Zealand’s Gardens Trust has named Paripuma a 5-star Garden of National Significance, but it is more than that. It is one woman’s vision fully realized: planned, designed, planted and opened for visitors to explore, and enjoy.
***********
Planning a trip to New Zealand? There could be no better way to enjoy the scenery and wines of Marlborough than to return ‘home’ each night to one of the region’s most beautiful gardens. Paripuma is available to rent as a bed-and-breakfast, with varying rates based on the accommodation chosen. If we ever get back to Cloudy Bay to taste our favourite Sauvignon Blanc, staying here would be the first order of business.
Since it is now January, I thought it would be fun to introduce you to a botanical garden I visited twice last January, three weeks apart and each time on a one-day Los Angeles stopover on our trip to and from New Zealand. (When flying in winter, we try to build in a ‘bad weather safety net’ to make sure we arrive on time at a tour launch in a distant location.) In all my visits to Los Angeles, I’d never been to the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, which is located in Arcadia, east of Pasadena, near the San Gabriel mountains. Using Uber, it was a $50 ride (about 50 minutes) from our airport hotel, but you can also reach it via the Metro Gold Line train, Arcadia stop, and bus from downtown L.A. (On my second visit, my husband elected to jump out at nearby Santa Anita Racetrack to take in some horse races). Before you go, be sure to download the map, below (click to enlarge or go to their website and download an even larger version) so you don’t miss any of the gardens on this 127-acre property and historic site; even with two visits, I didn’t get to the greenhouse and some of the more remote features.
Prior to its opening as an arboretum in 1948, the garden was part of a tract of land that had originally been the territory of the indigenous Tongva people, the Gabrieliño. In September 1771, the Spanish colonists opened the Misión de San Gabriel Arcángel here, the fourth of an eventual twenty-one California missions. In 1821, Mexico (which had gained independence from Spain) began the process of selling all mission lands to rancheros. In 1838, a 13,319-acre parcel, Rancho Santa Anita, was deeded to naturalized Scottish immigrant John Reid and his Gabrieliño wife Victoria, who had converted and become part of the mission. Over the next century, the property was divided and changed hands many times, but its most colourful owner was definitely Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin, the Ohio-born land speculator, gold mining investor and four-times-married womanizer (he survived two shootings from jilted paramours) who bought 8,500 acres of Rancho Santa Anita for $200,000 in 1875. He soon built the Queen Anne style white cottage that sits beside Lake Baldwin to this day, where the photo below of him and family members was taken. After loaning money to a failing bank that later closed its doors, he cashed in the mortgages that had defaulted and bought most of the San Gabriel Valley, including what would become the towns of Arcadia, Monrovia and Baldwin Hills. And it was the horse-lover Baldwin who built the first Santa Anita Racetrack on his land; it opened in 1907 but it closed two years later when gambling was made illegal and later burned down. The racetrack clubhouse my husband visited while I toured the arboretum was built in 1934.
Early January
My principal reason for visiting the arboretum was the winter flowering of the aloes. I’d been to the succulent garden at The Huntington in late February in previous years, and so many aloes had finished flowering that I was determined to return to California to see the early winter bloom. So I quickly found the Aloe Trail in the African Garden. The arboretum features over 180 different aloe species.
As I listened briefly to a botanist who was guiding a group around the collection, I noticed a northern mockingbird in Aloe marlothii, the large mountain aloe of South Africa. This aloe is easy to recognize because of its single stem and candelabra arrangement of several slanted- to horizontally-arranged dense racemes of tubular dark orange flowers.
There were beautiful aloes everywhere. Sadly, many were unlabelled, like the one below. But thanks to my friend Jim Bishop in San Diego, I have learned that this one is Aloe cameronii.
It wasn’t long before I saw one of the arboretum’s famous peacocks, wandering around one of the many South African cape aloes (A. ferox), which were at peak bloom. The peacocks are the descendants of several pairs that Lucky Ellis imported from India in 1879; over the next century or so, they found the arboretum (and the surrounding residential neighbourhood!) much to their liking.
For a photographer, the lovely tilt-head aloe (A. speciosa) is always a joy to capture just as the flowers are opening.
Aloe vryheidensis bore lovely yellow and orange flowers.
If you love aloes, you could spend hours in this collection alone, which features over 180 different species! The plants below were also unlabelled, but Jim Bishop tells me they are Aloe vanbalenii.
With its tall stems bearing the brown remnants of previous years’ foliage, Aloe candelabrum is a distinctive plant. It has now been recognized as a separate species from A. ferox, with which it was previously grouped.
I was lured briefly beyond the aloe garden into the Madagascar collection, and a planting of several stunning, silver Bismarckia nobilis palms, my favourite palm species.
This is bismarckia’s fruit.
But there was still so much to see and my time was limited, since we were on an evening flight to New Zealand. So I carried on along the Aloe Trail past spiky orange sticks-on-fire (Euphorbia tirucalli) and the yellow daisies of grey-leaved euryops (E. pectinatus).
Look at this amazing display!
I stood for a while and watched a male Allen’s hummingbird (Sesalaphorus sasin) in the aloes turn his head, showing off the iridescent color transformation of his gorget feathers. Then I headed on into the arboretum.
As an easterner, I’d never given much thought to “autumn colour” in California, especially in L.A. But I was pleasantly surprised by some species, given that this was January and at home our fall-coloured leaves had fallen long ago. This is the Chinese tallow tree (Triadica sebifera).
And this is a wine connoisseur’s favourite tree, the cork oak (Quercus suber).
I walked past Baldwin Lake, named for the notorious Lucky, who had deepened it and created a retaining wall. As the next photo of a posted garden sign reads, the lake was originally part of the local Raymond Fault, which branches from the major San Andreas Fault. It begins in the nearby San Gabriel Mountains and runs straight west under the town of Arcadia and the Santa Anita racetrack, later forming the hills of south Pasadena, then west to Dodger Stadium, the Hollywood Hills, the Santa Monica Mountains, Beverly Hills, Thousand Oaks, Malibu and out into the Pacific Ocean and the Channel Islands and beyond to where it stops. California’s geological history is dramatic; when I visit the state, I often forget that much of its built-up area lies over the north-south San Andreas Fault, whose last major earthquakes were the Loma Prieta in 1989 (Oakland) and the 1906 San Francisco quake and resulting fire.
The sign below asks for public support in restoring Baldwin Lake, following years of drought, mandatory water conservation measures and well-drilling from neighbouring cities. In 1991, the lake dried up completely and the fish had to be removed; the following season, the water table rose and the lake refilled.
Drought is a fact of life in California, one to which most native plants are well adapted, unlike the many water-dependent species in a botanical garden. So it was gratifying to come upon the Water Conservation Garden. I was interested in the plants chosen for this garden, especially Australian species like Grevillea and Maireana. It seems to me that this would be a great spot to focus on a large display of attractive, residential-scale landscapes using the most drought-tolerant of California plants – as an educational feature for visitors who are increasingly looking to enjoy gardens that require little water.
Given the time of year, the Grace Kallam Perennial Garden was mostly structure, with little in flower.
It would be fun to return to the perennial garden some spring (well, and the Huntington, too, of course!)
Nearby, I was enchanted by the myriad autumn colours of ‘Burgundy’ sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua). Presumably, leaf fall (abscission) is much delayed in such a mild climate, which accounts for these pretty leaves hanging on into winter.
Some outstanding specimens in the magnolia collection were already bursting into flower. This is Magnolia x soulangeana ‘Lilliputian’. There are over sixty magnolia species and cultivars in the garden.
Lavender was still in flower in The Herb Garden and it was charming to see…..
…..the formal knot garden here. The herb garden was designed and laid out in 1955 by the Southern California unit of the Herb Society of America. It was renovated in the 1990s.
I cornered this bride and groom doing their wedding photography in the herb garden, and asked if they’d pose for a photo for my blog. Aren’t they fine looking?
Double-flowered apricot was resplendent in the herb garden.
I spied Lucky Baldwin’s Queen Anne’s cottage (once known as Baldwin’s Belvedere) behind a ginkgo tree, its leaves turning bright yellow.
The Citrus Grove was full of fruit. It was planted in 1961.
I breezed quickly through the VictorianRose Garden, also installed in the late 1950s by the Herb Society, stopping to admire this yellow ‘Symphony’ shrub rose from David Austin Roses, whose renowned founder died in England just weeks ago at the age of 92. This appreciation in The Guardian by my friend Victoria Summerley captures the man and his passion for roses.
As I walked along the road around Lake Baldwin, I passed a planting of prickly-pears (Opuntia ficus-indica). Sadly, there wasn’t enough time to head up to Tallac Knoll to see the plumeria grove there.
On my right was the Bamboo Collection.
Then I was standing across the lake looking directly at the Queen Anne Cottage through the boughs of a ‘Paulensis’ pink trumpet tree (Handroanthus impetiginosus). This tree (formerly in the genus Tabebuia) was introduced to California via seed collected in the wild in ‘50s and ‘60s by hobbyist collectors like Dr. Samuel Ayyres, Jr., the local dermatologist, plant lover and later nursery owner who led the search for a site for the arboretum in the late 1940s. As it states in Dr. Ayres’s 1987 obituary, “The committee chose a 111-acre parcel in Arcadia where developer Elias J. (Lucky) Baldwin had once owned a ranch. The acreage had been purchased by Times publisher Harry Chandler, who intended to subdivide it. But Ayres persuaded Chandler to keep it off the market until he could find some financing. The state and county eventually purchased it for $320,000 and the Arboretum became a reality in 1948.”
Seedlings of the pink trumpet tree were planted in the arboretum in the 1970s; later, the cultivars ‘Pink Cloud’ and ‘Raspberry’ were developed here. The trumpet tree below sits near the entrance from the parking lot.
There were magnificent trees in this area, like this floss silk tree (Ceiba speciosa ‘Arcadia’), which seems to be a more rare yellow-flowered form of a tree that normally has pink blooms.
This Brazilian shaving brush tree (Pseudobombax grandiflorum) still had a few fluffy blossoms.
I took the path through the Cycad Collection, stopping to admire some impressive specimens.
The one below is Ceratozamia mexicana, aka “El Mirador”.
My last view from the garden was of the lovely San Gabriel Mountains.
*****
Then it was time to Uber back to LAX to check out of our hotel and catch our evening flight to Auckland launching a 3-week American Horticultural Society garden tour of the north and south islands of New Zealand. I wrote blogs about most of those gardens and natural sights in 2018. Here are a few of my favourites:
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I didn’t quite finish my blog reveries on the remaining gardens on New Zealand’s North Island, so stay tuned in 2019 for a few more!
*****
Late January
When we landed in Los Angeles at the end of our New Zealand trip on January 28th, we had almost a full day before departing L.A. for Toronto. So, being a creature of extreme horticultural habit (and having already seen the lovely Getty Centre gardens), I elected to make a return Uber trip to Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanical Garden, with my husband getting out at Santa Anita racetrack. This time, I began by visiting the Celebration Garden, which features six different theme gardens. Once again, the peacocks were holding court, this one in the California Native Plant garden atop a fence near the red fruit of toyon (Hetermoles arbutifolia). In the 1920s, this shrub had become so popular as a Christmas decoration in Los Angeles that the State of California passed a law prohibiting its picking without permission.
Honey bees foraged on the pink blossoms of lemonade berry (Rhus integrifolia), below.
Further along I watched a big, black California carpenter bee (Xylocopa californica) foraging in the flowers of Caesalpinia cacalaco ‘Smoothie’, from Mexico.
In another garden, the beautiful Himalayan Michelia doltsopa ‘Silver Cloud‘ was in flower and perfuming the area around it.
I wished I had time to keep walking to the Australia Garden, but I was curious to check on the aloes. So I headed back via the Desert Display Garden…..
….. which is full of succulent and cacti treasures. Love all the golden barrel cacti (Echinocactus grusonii)!
This is beautiful whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia). Agaves, by the way, all come from the New World and are native from South America up into desert regions of North America; they are in the family Asparagaceae. Aloes hail from the Old World – Africa, Madagascar, Middle East – and are now in the family Asphodelaceae.
As a photographer, it’s always fun to shoot a plant like resin spurge (Euphorbia resinifera).
Then I was back in the African Garden, where the long season of aloes was still impressive, with new species flowering and the ones I’d seen 3 weeks earlier now winding down. This is the attractive hybrid Aloe x principis, believed to be a natural cross between Aloe ferox and Aloe arborescens.
Dawe’s aloe (Aloe dawei), below, is native to the mountains of central and east Africa, including the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. This is the cultivar ‘Jacob’s Ladder’.
Aloe lineata is from South Africa.
The flowers of Aloe barbertoniae were just beginning to open.
The tall Pachypodium geayi raised its spined branches to the blue California sky, alongside tall Aloe vaombe and the spiny alluaudias. It’s easy to see the effects of evolutionary pressure here, when a diverse plant population on an African island evolves to feature protections – height or spines – against ancient animal herbivores, likely ancestors of native Madagascar lemurs.
The Malagasy tree aloe (A. vaombe) hosted a perching hummingbird, which I think is a female Anna’s (Calypte anna).
The alluaudias – all six species are endemic to Madagascar – are among the most unusual plants in the garden, with their columns of small leaves and various spines. This is A. humbertii.
It was fun to see lavender scallops (Bryophyllum fedtschenkoi) in bloom, a succulent plant I know from the desert house at Toronto’s Allan Gardens.
One of the world’s most beautiful palms, Madagascar’s Bismarckia nobilis has pride of place in the collection, and I spent several minutes walking through the grove.
And, of course, there was a peacock peeking through the fronds – a fitting image to carry with me as I walked back to the entrance to meet my husband (he didn’t win at the horse races… imagine that!) and call our Uber to take us to LAX and our flight back home – and to winter. What a lovely break we’d had, in the southern hemisphere and here at the delightful Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden.
I was excited when I heard that the Garden Writers Association was meeting in Chicago this past summer. I hadn’t attended for a long time because of calendar conflicts, but this symposium was one I was determined to make. Why? The lectures would be good and it would be fun to see some old friends, but mostly it was an opportunity to see the Lurie Garden downtown and the Chicago Botanic Garden in their late summer glory. A glance at the tours being offered suggested that CBG would be a small part of a northern suburbs tour, so I decided I would take an entire day and Uber myself the 25 miles up to the garden north of the suburb of Glencoe. I shared the cost of the $50 (approximate) ride with another GWA member, arriving before 10 am. If you go, it’s a good idea to take a look at the comprehensive garden map online and upload the Smartphone App. Keep in mind that CBG is 385 acres, featuring 27 interesting, far-flung gardens and 9 islands set in 60 acres of lakes comprised of the Skokie River lagoons. Even with my 7-hour stay in August, I didn’t see all the gardens. It is also a spectacular resource for students of some of the most eminent contemporary landscape architects, including Dan Kiley, John Brookes and Oehme, van Sweden.
CBG offers free admission, but charges a fee for parking. Even in the Parking Lot, you can see that CBG’s gardeners pay close attention to colour, with signs referring in several places to relationships on the artist’s colour wheel.
I walked past the Visitor Center containing the restaurant (where I would dine with a local relative later) and marvelled at this…..
…… amazing planting, below, on the edge of one of the garden’s many water courses: the big red flowers of ‘Lord Baltimore’, a hardy swamp hibiscus hybrid, with wine-red Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium sp). Isn’t it beautiful?
The Crescent near the entrance is devoted to seasonal displays of spring bulbs and annuals set in concentric, crescent-shaped, boxwood-lined beds. It was conceived by the renowned modernist landscape architect Dan Kiley in 2002, and installed posthumously.
Dan Kiley also conceived of the plan for the adjacent formal garden, The Esplanade, which is described as the garden’s “village green”. Here is the view along its sculpted walkway back beneath the alleé of Commendation™ elms towards the entrance. As CBG says, “Kiley saw the Esplanade as an opportunity to create a great sense of place and arrival, offering visitors glimpses of vivid sweeps of color against the water and sky as they pass over the bridge outside the Visitor Center.” Following his death in 2004, the designs for both the Crescent and Esplanade were completed and installed by Kiley’s colleague Peter Morrow Meyer.
And here are the Esplanade’s lovely niches. You can see here the influence that André LeNôtre’s 17th century work at Versailles had on Kiley, who visited France while working as chief designer for the U.S. Army during WWII.
As CBG notes of the modernist ethos: “The tenets of modern landscape architecture continue to resonate: Keep it simple. Make it useful. Let the spaces flow. Strive to make connections. Dan Kiley was a master of these ideas.” The Esplanade’s lake walk and water terrace offer visitors a unique opportunity to engage with the garden’s “deep ties to the water”.
Similarly, the three long water fountains and their line of splashing water plumes (very Versailles!) create music that draws visitors towards them.
The beautiful Gertrude Nielsen Heritage Garden, opened in 1982, was funded by the daughter of the man who invented the Nielsen Ratings for television.
Designed by Pittsburgh landscape architect Geoffrey Rausch, it pays tribute to the early tradition of botanic gardens with its circular, four-quadrant shape modelled after the earliest such garden, in Padua, Italy, the Orto Botanico di Padova (1545). The central bed recalls a classic ‘physic garden’ and medicinal plants from around the world.
The garden is dedicated to Carl Linnaeus, who developed our modern system of binomial nomenclature to name plants, and whose statue, by Robert Berks, adorns the border in the background.
Canna lilies are just one of many aquatic plants represented in the three water gardens arrayed around the central bed.
Visitors are educated about taxonomy as they circle the garden. For example, they learn that both snapdragons (light-yellow flowers halfway up the border) and…..
….. butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii ‘Pink Delight’) are both in the Scrophulariaceae or Figwort Family. Late summer monarchs enjoy nectaring on butterfly bush.
Tender plants from the Bromeliaceae family are brought from greenhouses into the border, like this Aechmea ‘Yellow Berries’.
Or they might discover (via a sign in the border) that chaste-tree (Vitex agnus-castus ‘Lecompte’), below, has been moved by the naming authorities from Verbenaceae to Lamiaceae. In this way, even beginning gardeners understand the complexity of the plant world.
I made a quick stop in the Buehler Enabling Garden, where various strategies are demonstrated for people with physical infirmities that prevent them from traditional gardening, or for gardeners who find it harder to follow the same methods as they age. Raised beds, below, are one way to make gardening easier.
There are lots of beautiful planting ideas in the garden, all in delicious colour combinations, and many with perfume to create a sensory garden. In the background you can see the Tool Shed, which features adaptive tools for gardeners.
I loved the violet, lilac and pale-blue tones in this combination.
Gardeners limited to tight spaces will find inspiration in the living wall vertical gardens and splashing water wall in the Buehler Garden. (To learn much more about the Enabling Garden, download the .pdf at this American Public Gardens site.)
I was determined to spend lots of time at Evening Island so I hurried there via the interesting Water Gardens edging the Great Basin. That’s white-flowered bog bean (Menyanthes trifoliata) with red-stemmed thalia (Thalia geniculata var. ruminoides) out there near the duckies.
Standing quietly, I watched a ruby-throated hummingbird nectar on canna flowers. I believe this is a cultivar called ‘Intrigue’.
Although the water gardens were located near the meandering Serpentine Bridge to Evening Island…..
……. I went down the shore to the Arch Bridge.
Unsurprisingly, this sleek bridge with its overhanging weeping willows and waterlilies was inspired by Impressionist painter Claude Monet’s bridge at Giverny.
There are some wonderful gardens along the water here, filled with aquatic and marginal plants like pink-flowered swamp hibiscus (H. moscheutos) with sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), below…..
….. and a native North American duo with which I’m very familiar from fens and swamps here in Ontario: blue-flowered pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata) and pink water willow (Decodon verticillatus).
Then it was over the bridge and onto Evening Island itself. (I made a video of my tour of the island which you’ll find below, complete with birds chirping and kids laughing.) Dedicated in 2002, the island was designed by Oehme van Sweden of Washington, D.C. whose founding principals James van Sweden and the late Wolfgang Oehme are renowned for articulating a garden style called the New American Landscape. From the OvS website, “The style is characterized by large swaths of grasses and layered masses of perennials that boldly celebrate the ephemeral through mystery, intrigue, and discovery.” After walking along a pathway from the bridge, I arrived at my favourite spot: a simple, linear garden arrayed along the Great Basin and featuring some of those bold plants. I took the steps down past yellow daylilies, blue Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and ‘Tardiva’ hydrangeas (H. paniculata).
Along the path was more Russian sage, threadleaf coreopsis, feather red grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) and ‘Gateway’ Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum ssp. maculatum) nearest the water.
Here you see the genius of James van Sweden and Wolfgang Oehme. These beautiful, low maintence plants, used in masses, are not just attractive to people and pollinators, they are designed to frame the view in the most beautiful way. Through the layers of perennials, grasses and waterlilies at the shore, visitors look across the Great Basin and see the formal gardens of the CBG, including the McGinley Pavilion where weddings and receptions are held.
From the path, I could look up at the Theodore C. Butz Memorial Carillon on a rise nearby. Its 48 bells ring out the hours throughout the day. You can hear it in the video, too. Bell concerts are also held here.
I took a quick peek into the stone-walled Nautilus terrace at a family waiting for their child to finish nature camp nearby.
Then I took the path around the island, stopping to admire the eye-popping hillside meadow of the white-flowered hardy hibiscus hybrid ‘Blue River II’, annual spider flower (Cleome hasslerana) and more Joe Pye weed.
I loved the random insertion of big sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) into this garden, Some birds were going to be very happy with all that seed!
Further along was a drift of purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) with ‘Heavy Metal’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum) under ‘Whitespire’ birches (Betula populifolia), which are more disease- and insect-resistant than paper birches.
Though many native plants are used, the flower meadows on Evening Island are stylized with colourful combinations that have the advantage of being wildlife-friendly, like this pretty vignette of purple chaste-tree (Vitex agnus castus), annual orange Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia ‘Fiesta del Sol‘) and blue bog sage (Salvia uliginosa).
Check out the bee on the sage – and there were monarchs nectaring on the tithonia.
I found myself at the beautiful Trellis Bridge connecting Evening Island to the Lavin Plant Evaluation Garden.
Look at all that gorgeous, purple New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis) mixed with ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora)!
And this is a view of the bridge looking back at Evening Island. I think this is my favourite of the three bridges.
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So it was back across the Trellis Bridge to Evening Island. As I walked over the bridge I spotted this weed harvester, used to reduce the growth of various aquatic plants in the Great Basin, North Lake and elsewhere. The garden also has a zebra mussel problem in the lakes and waterways; these mollusks filter the water for the algae they eat, increasing its clarity and paving the way for even more aquatic weeds.
Back on Evening Island, I stopped at the outlook below to gaze out through another carefully-designed Oehme van Sweden view: under the sycamore and over the feather reed grass, utilized so perfectly here as a shimmery half-curtain framing the view of the water.
Then I came upon a native shrub we don’t see in Ontario, for some reason, though it is perfectly hardy for us: shining sumac (Rhus copallinum).
And that Evening Island video I promised? Here it is…..
…. and this is the lovely cottage garden with its mix of flowers and vegetables….
….. and a sunken garden with hexagonal pool.
I hurried back to the visitor center to meet a relative for lunch in the lovely Garden View Cafe. Then it was on to the Native Plant Garden. For me this is one of the most important gardens at CBG, especially as gardeners aim for more pollinator- and bird-friendly gardens using indigenous plants adapted to the climate and soil conditions. In August this garden is filled with a profusion of Chicago area native forbs and grasses and divided broadly into three spaces, a prairie garden, a bird and butterfly garden, and a woodland garden for shade. As a prairie-lover, I focused on what was in bloom at this peak time of summer, like white flowering spurge (Euphorbia corollata), tall compass plant (Silphium laciniatum) and a yellow daisy, possibly heliopsis or Rudbeckia subtomentosa.
You rarely see bright-red royal catchfly (Silene regia) in a garden but it’s a wonderful hummingbird and swallowtail butterfly lure. Here it is with prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostachya).
Part of the prairie section of the Native Plant Garden overlooks North Lake and Smith Fountain. This is a combination of purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and showy tick trefoil (Desmodium canadense).
I loved the muscled bark of this old American hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana) in the woodland garden.
Naked ladies, aka resurrection lilies (Lycoris squamigera) popped up in several places in the garden, here with just one of a series of fruit tree espaliers in the background.
Sunflowers and corn are native North American food plants, along with squash, barely visible under the corn at rear.
Visitors can check out unusual offerings like okra, front.
What beautiful leafy crops!
Education is a principal mandate of CBG, and the Fruit and Vegetable Garden tool wall offers an excellent how-to primer.
Vegetables are planted everywhere, including in these beds terraced out over the water. Vegetable growing is part of the internship program of CBG’s Windy City Harvest Apprenticeship Program, which educates and employs 80-90 teens from low-income communities at four sites in the Chicago area. Through the program, vegetables grown here are sold to the CBG’s cafe.
Next up was the Graham Bulb Garden. As I gazed at the bees foraging on the wonderful ‘Millenium’ flowering onions (hybridized by my friend Mark McDonough), I thought how beautiful this garden must be in springtime after Chicago’s long winter, filled with tulips, daffodils and loads of tiny bulbs.
Nearby were some great color ideas, with explanations based on the artist’s color wheel. This happy melange of zinnias with dahlias and cannas represented analogous colours of red, orange and yellow.
Nearby was the Farwell Landscape Garden and I had a brief look at the Informal Herb Garden, below, but aware of the time I elected to keep going.
Though my knees were beginning to complain about all the walking I’d done, I made the decision to head out to the Dixon prairie. My walk paralleled the 22-acre Skokie River Corridor which introduced me to this little profile on Joan O’Shaughnessy, the lawyer-turned-ecologist in charge of the Skokie River Corridor and the nearby Dixon Prairie. If you’re interested in riparian and prairie ecology, you might enjoy this podcast with Joan.
The Suzanne Searle Dixon Prairie, opened in 1982, is named for a long-time Lake Forest resident who was so passionate about the Illinois prairie and its wetlands, that she made conservation and ecology a prime focus of her community activism and philanthropy (her great-grandfather founded G.D. Searle, a pharmaceutical company which invented the first birth control pill and aspartame, i.e. Nutra-Sweet.) Though the Dixon Prairie occupies a 15-acre site that was never part of the iconic Illinois tallgrass prairie, it has nevertheless been painstakingly designed to represent 6 prairie ecotypes that exist in northeastern Illinois: 1) sand prairie; 2) gravel hill prairie; 3) bur oak savannah; 4) tallgrass prairie; 5) fen prairie; and 6) wet prairie. (I got to all of them but the wet prairie.) My first look was over cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) and moisture-loving obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana) onto the lake separating the prairie from Evening Island in the background. CBG is proud of its lakes, and a sign nearby states that its 60 acres of lakes support native plants and largemouth bass, crappie, carp, bluegill as well as ducks, egrets, herons and cranes.
To be honest, without a guide it’s not easy to distinguish the different communities, but if there are bur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa), you know that’s savannah, which features occasional trees in a sea of grasses and forbs.
I could discern the gravel hill prairie easily, because it jutted up above the flat prairie and was bereft of tall species, as these relics from the last ice age tend to be. CBG achieved this rare habitat by adding a thick layer of gravel over topsoil. Around the hill’s base in more mesic soil, I saw the long, dark-purple seedheads of leadplant (Amorpha canescens), spotted Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum), blackeyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta), the spiky balls of rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium), pale-mauve obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana), the big basal leaves of prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) and the dancing flowers of gray-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata).
Visitors are introduced to the plants of a fen prairie, which features an abundance of groundwater…..
…. and supports prairie moisture-lovers like great blue lobelia (L. siphilitica) and swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), a favourite larval food of the monarch butterfly.
Bumble bees were nectaring on pollinator-friendly culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum).
The Dixon Prairie is vast and full of so many interesting plants, but much more understated than CBG’s Native Plant Garden, which seems extra-floriferous in comparison.
Here are nodding onion (Allium cernuum) and sweet blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia subtomentosa).
I loved all the educational signs, especially this one showing the complexity of the below-ground community and deep roots of prairie species.
Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) features abundantly in the August tallgrass prairie, along with the baby’s-breath-like flowers of flowering spurge (Euphorbia corollata).
Switch grass (Panicum virgatum) is another mainstay of the tallgrass prairie.
It was time to leave but I stopped for a few minutes to watch a song sparrow foraging on the fruit of biennial gaura (G. biennis), one of those plants that many gardeners would likely pull out, given its tendency to look a little weedy. But that would deprive a lot of bees of nectar and birds like this one of food. These are the valuable lessons of the Dixon Prairie.
Despite the gusting wind, I made a little video to remember some of the sounds of my hour or so here on this special prairie.
Chicago Botanic Garden deserves at least a full day’s visit, but I certainly could have used at least four more hours. As it was, I missed the Aquatic Garden, the Bonsai Collection, the Children’s Growing Garden, the Japanese Garden, the Dwarf Conifer Garden and the greenhouses. I had seen a few of those on my previous visit a decade ago, but I do need to return to see them again. As I walked back through the gardens to catch an Uber back to the city, I heard singing coming from the Krasberg Rose Garden.
The roses were looking lovely in August….. this is Love and Peace™…..
….. but my takeaway from the Rose Garden was the crowd of little children and parents listening to the singer giving a nature-oriented outdoor show, one of hundreds of annual events, programs and classes that make Chicago Botanic Garden not just a beautiful, leafy oasis in urban Illinois, but a vital part of the cultural community here too.
When the newspaper cartoonist and trailblazing conservationist Ding (Jay Norwood) Darling (1876-1962) established the National Wildlife Federation in 1936, he had conservation as his goal. “Land, water and vegetation are just that dependent on one another. Without these three primary elements in natural balance, we can have neither fish nor game, wild flowers nor trees, labor nor capital, nor sustaining habitat for humans.” Ruthie Burrus’s Austin garden meets those critera, and an NWF sign proclaims her intention for all visitors to see.
But it’s not really necessary to read the words on the sign, for you can discern Ruthie’s intent based on the masses of pollinator-friendly plants flanking the long driveway at its start near the road…..
…. and the painted lady butterfly nectaring on the mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea)…..
…. and the honey bee foraging on the blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella)…..
…. and the cottage garden-style matrix of self-seeding, mostly native wildflowers and grasses.
For structure, Ruthie has used the “it plant” that we saw in almost every Austin garden, the beautiful whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia).
Not every plant is native – brilliant, bee-friendly corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) have been incorporated, and self-seed regularly.
But the Texas natives do attract their share of pollinators, including this beautiful pipevine swallowtail butterfly nectaring on Hesperaloe parviflora, or red yucca.
There was lovely pink evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa)….
And Engelmann’s daisy (Engelmannia peristenia)…
And lemon beebalm (Monarda citriodora…
And rock rose (Pavonia lasiopetala).
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When we reached the top of the driveway, we were treated to a tamer garden surrounding the Burrus’s lovely limestone home.
Ruthie Burrus was waiting for us there, ready to tour us around.
But even here, the plant palette was chosen to attract pollinators, like the honey bee on Salvia guaranitica ‘Amistad’, below.
In the shade, surrounded by ferns, was a water trough fountain with a slow-trickling stream of water cascading to the plantings below, then recirculated.
This was Texas hill country, and the view st the back of the house over the pool to downtown Austin was spectacular.
I loved the outdoor living room, protected from Texas gullywashers by a roof, and featuring a fireplace for cool evenings.
Beautiful succulent designs filled pots and troughs outdoors.
Many homeowners are including woodburning pizza ovens in their landscapes these days, and Ruthie’s was beautifully landscaped with Phlomis and agaves.
Nearby was a sweet building that Ruthie calls her garden haus.
A large cistern — one of two on the property — gathers rainwater channelled to it via a system of drains. A pump then facilitates irrigation of the garden.
We were just leaving when I heard excited voices at the front of the house. Looking up, I saw a huge tarantula on the cool limestone wall. At the risk of anthrpomorphizing a little, it seemed to be saying, “I’m a Texas native insect too, and there’s room for all of us here!”
When I was consumed with garden fever back in the early 1980s (and finally had my “we’re staying here” house), there was a book whose pages became dog-eared from the hundreds of times I flipped back and forth gazing at glossy photos of English cottage gardens. I dreamed that someday I’d have a garden crammed with flowers in artful combinations, yet seemingly tossed together with wild abandon. That vision informed the meadows I’d eventually have, both in Toronto and at our cottage north of the city. It was only appropriate therefore, that one of my very favourite gardens during my recent Garden Bloggers’ Fling in Austin, Texas was owned by a pair of British ex-pats and featured garden rooms full of Texas natives and self-seeding flowers that managed to give a nod simultaneously to the local vernacular and romantic English cottage garden style.
Jenny and David Stocker have gardened here at the edge of hill country in southwest Austin for 17 years since they moved into their new home, which was custom-designed by the late architect Dick Clark who’s considered to be the father of Austin contemporary style. He also designed the garden walls, which have been painted soft mocha tones that match the house. I wish I’d paid more attention to the house itself, since his intent was to align the various windows and views with the outdoor rooms. Let’s start under the trees outside at the street, with its lovely emphasis on drought-tolerant succulents. In this area, landscape architect Curt Arnette of Sitio Design arranged for the placement of the large ledgestones, but everything else here and throughout the gardens – including the dry streambed, below, that becomes a very wet stream during heavy Texas rains – was done by the Stockers.
But before I go any further, I want you to see what a blank slate looks like, and imagine the work that went into creating the garden I’m about to show you – given what the starting point looked like in the Stockers’ photos below.
Alright, let’s head into the garden. I loved these generous platform steps that will take us into the first garden room, the front courtyard. They also nicely accomplish a level change, and feature just a few of Jenny’s many containers.
In the front courtyard, we see the source of the dry streambed (what Jenny calls “the wet weather creek”) that empties outside. Many kinds of agaves are used, including the beautiful whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia) below.
The millstone-like water feature at left, below, was a chance find – the abandoned base of a basketball stand – in a back alley near the Stockers’ son’s house in Dallas. It took two people to load it onto their truck, it looks stunning here.
The courtyard features a rich profusion of plants that seem to thrive in the thin soil including many succulents and self-seeding flowers. Notice the gravel mulch and liberal use of stones (many were here before the garden was made).
The Stockers love eating and relaxing outdoors, so the garden features several places where they can do that, like the niche below.
Artichoke agave (A. parryi var. truncata) is one of my favourite succulents.
The garden walls are perfect for ornaments.
Containers – always pebble-mulched – are a mixture of succulents and English favourites like foxglove.
Can you imagine how lovely it would be to spend time under that perfumed brugmansia, perfectly placed for inhaling?
All the garden rooms feature their own collections of artful accessories. “You can’t just have plantings,” Jenny said to one interviewer.
If there’s a theme in the garden, besides amazing plants, it’s rock. As Jenny has said: “I love to work with rocks, of which we have plenty, and they form the backbone of the garden. My husband, David, is my rock man and has hunted out some amazing rocks and done some great rockwork. I was on site every day during construction, saving rocks suitable for making the drystone walls.”
So let’s go see the stone wall Jenny made in the next garden room, the English Garden. There it is in the background, Jenny’s dry-stacked wall made from flat rock gathered as the house was being constructed. This garden’s motif is circular, from the concentric edgings of brick encircling the birdbath garden…
…. to the circular flagstone-and-brick dining patio…..
…. to the circular paving stones and the spheres that sit in the gravel.
As in any good English cottage garden, there are lots of self-seeding flowers here, like biennial foxglove…..
….. and Texas natives such as blackfoot daisy (Melampodium leucanthum).
I’m sure that Jenny’s garden attracts a lot of birds. That’s Virginia creeper on the wall behind the sweet birdhouse.
The ornamented wall near the next room sets up a galactic theme……
…. which is expanded on in the saying above the arch. Live by the sun, love by the moon. Indeed! Notice the change in paver materials between garden rooms – all very subtle, but designed to enhance.
Let’s go down the stairs to yet another level, past another pretty collection of potted plants and an inviting teak bench…..
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….. into the appropriately named sunken garden, aka the pool garden. This, for me, is the full embodiment of those glossy photos I loved in those books long ago. A true cottage garden filled with a mélange of romantic blossoms that will shift and alter their companions throughout the season. The iconic Texas bluebonnets are long-gone in this photo, but that’s how things start out here in April, which you can see in this photo by Jenny’s friend and our Austin Garden Bloggers Fling co-host Pam Penick’s post from April 2015.
Sometimes, in appreciating a grand design, I forget to notice the small details. Here’s the lovely native Texan golden columbine (Aquilegia chrysantha).
It was one of the cast of May characters in Jenny’s garden, along with annual love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena), blue mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea), magenta-pink sage (Salvia sp.) As Jenny notes, “I rely heavily on self-seeding plants and am more than willing to let them grow where they plant themselves, as well as passalongs from garden friends. It’s not a low-maintenance garden.”
Most of the breadseed poppies (Papaver somniferum) had already formed their seedpods….
…. but corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) were still announcing their brilliant presence. I loved the flowing urn feature here, which creates a bit of music with its splash.
What an inviting scene. Many gardens we saw in Texas were accompanied by a swimming pool, because as lovely as spring weather can be, summers are punishingly hot. And since there are no trees inside the garden walls and the rocks do reflect the sunshine, Jenny says the garden becomes very hot in midsummer. The walls here, by the way, are not just decorative, but meant to keep out varmints, including deer.
Here’s another look at the flowery poolside meadow. This area was originally laid with old granite flagstones, so the Stockers laid Arizona sandstone on top leaving 1-inch spaces for self-seeding plants.
You can see in the background against the wall one of the large, porous limestone boulders native to the property.
There are native cacti in the gardens, including the spineless prickly-pear (Opuntia cacanapa ‘Ellisiana’).
I found Jenny in the sunken garden, chatting with fellow bloggers (her own interesting blog is called Rock Rose) and looking mightily relieved that the morning’s rain had stopped in time for our visit.
I waited for my blogging pals to take their leave of this beautiful dining area near the swimming pool – one of six seating areas Jenny and David use, depending on the time of year and day – so I could make my photo. There’s a good reason for being the last one on the bus!
At the edge of the dining area was another grouping of containers, this one featuring the agave relative Manfreda undulata ‘Chocolate Chips’.
Manfreda flowers are so interesting, especially post-Texas-rain.
The herb garden is tucked into an alcove created by the house walls, and looks beautifully wild..
Nearby, behind the wall of the swimming pool garden, sits the potager: a series of raised beds containing…..
… leafy vegetables like curly kale……
….and squash vines starting out under protective wiring….
….and tomato cages.
A long raised bed nearby contains flowers for pollinators. In early May, it abounds with larkspur (Consolida ajacis) and Verbena bonariensis.
Perfumed star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) blankets one wall of a garden shed in this area. How nice it must be to harvest veggies with that scent wafting by!
A galvanized water tank is a great idea for a water garden: small, manageable maintenance, yet a nice spot for a bird to bathe or have a sip of water.
Nearby were little vignettes, like this…..
….. and this. For me in Toronto, Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) is a textural annual, but here it’s perennial and adds a grace note to the garden.
As always on a garden tour, the bus was waiting to take us to our next stop, so off we went in our rain-soaked shoes down the pathway beside the spineless prickly-pears. But for me, the garden of Jenny and David Stocker had been a chance to satisfy a long-held desire to enjoy time in a cottage garden filled with masses of flowers arrayed with artful abandon.
