This is truly my favourite time of year in the meadows at our cottage on Lake Muskoka. Why? Because the flower variety is at peak and the bees are at their most plentiful and buzzy. So my 17th fairy crown for August 5th celebrates the pollinator favourites here, including the champion, pink-flowered wild beebalm or bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), as well as yellow false oxeye (Heliopsis helianthoides), biennial blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta), grey-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) with its dark cones, mauve hoary vervain (Verbena stricta), oregano (Origanum vulgare) and a few of my weedy Queen Anne’s lace flowers (Dauca carota).
I call my wild places on either side of the cottage ‘Monarda Meadows’ because wild beebalm (M. fistulosa) is the principal perennial there and in all the beds and wild places around our house, where it grows as a companion to Heliopsis helianthoides, below.
There’s a reason wild beebalm is called that; it’s a literal balm for the bees, specifically bumble bees whose tongues can easily probe the florets!
Another frequent visitor to wild beebalm flowers is the clearwing hummingbird moth (Hemaris thysbe).
False oxeye (Heliopsis helianthoides) is one of the most aggressive natives I grow. I’m happy to leave it where it lands, but it often sulks in very sandy, sunny spots when summers are hot and dry. It’s much better in the rich soil at the bottom of my west meadow, and I try to ignore all the red aphids that line the stems in certain summers.
But heliopsis also attracts its share of native bees, including tiny Augochlora pura, below.
Unlike the blackeyed susan I wrote about in my last blog, R. fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’, the ones I have at the lake are all the drought-tolerant native Rudbeckia hirta, below, with a long-horned Melissodes bee. Biennials, they have seeded themselves around generously since 2003, when I first sowed masses of seed (along with red fescue grass) on the bare soil of the meadows surrounding our new house.
Sometimes they manage to arrange themselves very fetchingly, as with the perfumed Orienpet lily ‘Conca d’Or’, below.
Other times, they hang with the other tough native in my crown, hoary vervain (Verbena stricta). Both are happy in the driest places on our property where they flower for an exceedingly long time….
…… as you can see from this impromptu bouquet handful featuring the vervain with earlier bloomers, coreopsis, butterfly milkweed and oxeye daisy.
Bumble bees love Verbena stricta.
The other yellow daisy in flower now — hiding at the top of my fairy crown — is grey-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata), also a favourite of bumble bees and small native bees in the meadows. A vigorous self-seeder, it nevertheless does not always land in soil that is moisture-retentive enough for its needs; in that case, like heliopsis above, it wilts badly. But I love its tall stems bending like willows in the breeze.
Also in my fairy crown is a familiar hardy herb that fell from a pot on my deck long ago and found a happy spot in the garden bed below: Greek oregano (Origanum vulgare var. hirtum).
Its tiny flowers are also favoured by small pollinators.
The last component of my midsummer fairy crown is the common umbellifer Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota). As much as we think of this as an unwanted invasive weed in North America, it was reassuring to see a native potter wasp, Ancistrocerus, making use of its small flowers.
As always, my fairy crown has a lovely second act as a bouquet.
Finally, I made a 2-minute musical video that celebrates these plants that form such an important ecological chapter in my summer on Lake Muskoka.
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!
Water in the garden. What garden doesn’t benefit from the sound of water, the reflective qualities of water, the ability of water to create a shimmering focus in any scene? Monet was a master at water in the garden; in fact, he was obsessed with trying to capture the light as it played on the water where he grew his famous water lilies. I watched the light play on his garden when I visited one spring.
And water, of course, brings an abundance of wildlife to drink and bathe. Even a simple birdbath adds life to the garden. (The one below was custom-made for the gardener.)
My friend Marnie Wright has a birdbath in her garden near a bench where, if she’s quiet, she can watch them bathe.
Her birdbath is a little piece of art in itself.
But Marnie also has a meandering pond where she can indulge her love of aquatic plants and moisture-loving marginals. Have a look at my blog on Marnie’s beautiful garden in Bracebridge, Ontario in the Muskoka region near my own cottage.
Visiting public gardens can be inspiring for ideas on water gardens. At Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, PA (I wrote a 2-part blog on this, my favourite North American garden), the pond garden is large, with complex plantings. Here you see one side through a scrim of alliums….
……. and here through variegated water iris, I. laevigata ‘Variegata’…..
….. and then looking right into the pond at the water lilies (Nymphaea) and the pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata) on the far side.
Chanticleer’s ponds meander through a damp area with moisture-loving primulas and carnivorous plants just beyond; but the planting in the other direction is inspiring and very floriferous.
Near Chanticleer’s entrance, the Teacup Garden features a different take on water gardening…. a simple, sophisticated, overflowing “teacup” fountain.
At New York Botanical Garden, the Native Plants Garden makes extensive use of water, and moisture-loving plants like Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium) and cardinal plant (Lobelia cardinalis). If you want to read more about this wonderful garden in the Bronx, have a look at my blog.
At Wave Hill in the Bronx, it’s always fun to see the formal pool with its elegant lotuses. I included this gorgeous water feature in my blog on Wave Hill.
At New York’s fabulous High Line, water is introduced in a subtle way in the Scrim water feature. Moisture-loving plants flank this artificial wetland, where visitors – especially children – are known to cool their feet on hot summer days.
When I visited the Missouri Botanical Garden one incredibly hot July day, I enjoyed seeing Dale Chihuly’s blown glass ‘Walla Walla onions’ floating on the pond surface beside the large, platter-like leaves of the Victoria water lilies (Victoria amazonica).
At Filoli near San Francisco, formality dictates the perfect axis of the ornamental pools that lead the eye across the next garden room to the spectacular green hills in the mist beyond.
In my visits to Portland’s serene Japanese Garden, I’ve been impressed with the variety of water features, from the very large, below, to the small water basins. These all represent specific symbolism in Japanese landscape design.
This is the yatsuhashi zig-zag bridge, meant to deter the evil spirits that might follow you.
At Vancouver’s Van Dusen Botanical Garden, a zig-zag bridge leads across an arm of the pond to the impressive Southern Hemisphere collections.
My favourite part of The Butchart Gardens just outside Victoria, B.C. in the sunken Japanese garden. Here is a wealth of water features, including a stone basin and bamboo spout fountain in a shady grotto…..
…. and a shishi-odoshi “deer-scarer” fountain that clacks regularly as the bamboo spout fills with water…..
…..and a few serene ponds, including this small one with a waterfall.
At Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Hillwood Estate in Virginia, the Japanese garden arrayed down a hillside features several water features, including these dancing water spouts.
In Austin, Texas, I was enchanted with the wonderful garden of Jenny and David Stocker. In one of their ‘garden rooms’, a galvanized stock tank is used to grow aquatic plants.
But their swimming pool almost seems to be a water feature in itself, given the flowery landscape flanking it. How wonderful it would be to swim lengths beside all those blossoms! I wrote a blog about the Stocker garden.
Fun-loving Lucinda Hutson might know more about tequila than anyone else in North America! The Austin garden of the woman who wrote the best-selling book Viva Tequila is a colourful trip into the fantastic, indoors and out! Naturally, Lucinda got her very own blog. Her little pond and its trickling fountain occupy a corner of a siren-themed patio, below.
Garden writer Pam Penick also features a stock tank in her garden (yes, I wrote a blog on Pam’s garden too) but she’s added a little faucet fountain to enjoy the trickle of water and keep the tank aerated.
Pam also has a pretty blue urn fountain, one of many blue touches in her Austin landscape. It requires a receptacle below the rocks so the water can re-circulate, but is a less labour-intensive alternative to a pond.
My Denver friend and plantsman-extraordinaire Panayoti Kelaidis has a rectangular pond abutting his plant-filled patio at the base of a rock wall filled with alpine plants. Naturally, the pond features myriad plants as well! I wrote about Panayoti’s garden in a June blog last year.
Although Tatiana Maxwell’s stunning Boulder CO garden featured a large pond, I loved this little touch of water using two overflowing bowls. This also utilizes a below-grade receptacle to circulate the water.
There were a few water features in the Fort Collins, CO garden of Carol and Randall Shinn, but I especially liked this Corten-and-concrete wall fountain because it’s such a good example of how to bring the splash of water into a restricted space. You can read my blog about the Shinn garden here.
In Rob Proctor and Dave Macke’s exquisite Denver garden, a little faucet fountain poured into a watering can, below. That was just one feature of hundreds of perfect vignettes in this well-known garden about which I blogged last year.
In the colourful, art-filled Englewood, Colorado garden of Dan Johnson (of the Denver Botanic Garden) and Tony Miles, there were a few brilliant touches of water. I adored this container water garden surrounded by a large plant collection…..
…. and look at this tiny little gesture, below. Anyone could do this, with a small pump and some ingenuity! (Okay, maybe some glass cutters and some silicone, too….)
Chicago Botanic Garden’s Evening Island is a landscape surrounded by lake, so water is always part of the view here. I made a video of my lovely August morning on Evening Island a few years ago.
Garden designer Kellie O’Brien’s lion’s head wall fountain in Hinsdale, near Chicago.
Further afield, my 2018 garden tour of the north and south islands of New Zealand offered lots of design inspiration. Naturally, the spectacular pond of Di and Ian Mackenzie’s Akaunui (my blog on their garden is here) might be a little ambitious for most of us, but it does point out the beauty of the reflective quality of a large body of water.
In the Cloudy Bay area of Marlborough, Rosa Davison’s large pond at Paripuma (see my blog here) has no reflection at all – but then she installed it as a sanctuary for grey ducks which, of course, appreciate all the duckweed on the surface!
At Upton Oaks near Blenheim, which I blogged about in 2018, Sue Monahan carefully sculpted a circular hedge to echo the contour of her formal lily pool.
The Giant’s House, Josie Martin‘s otherworldly Akaroa garden is filled with her mosaic sculpture (see my blog here) and water is used cleverly in a few places. But I loved this water feature surrounded by “mosaic swimmers”.
At Penny and Rowan Wiggins’s garden The Paddocks near Auckland, a simple sphere sculpture burbled with the splash of water. There are many such fountains available in a range of sizes and styles.
Back in Canada, this large reflecting pool at the Montreal Botanical Garden features a collection of stainless steel “island containers” planted with moisture-loving flora.
At the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington, Ontario, the reflecting pools also feature aquatic flora, but planted in containers below the surface.
At the residential level, I’ve stayed at James and Virginia Mainprize’s pretty bed-and-breakfast in Niagara-on-the-Lake where I admired their little water garden, which was nicely integrated into their border.
Garden tours are excellent sources of design inspiration and this Cabbagetown garden in Toronto inspired me with its Japanese-themed bamboo and copper spouts spilling into a small pond. However, the mechanics here might be a little beyond my skill level!
Speaking of vertical wall fountains, the Toronto Botanical Garden where I spend a lot of time photographing has one of the coolest water walls. Designed by PMA Landscape Architects , it offers the element of water without using a lot of space.
No matter what season…..
….. it adds a lovely splash to the entrance courtyard at the TBG.
On the Westview Terrace behind the front part of the Toronto Botanical Garden’s building, a lively focal point is the diagonal water channel that begins at a waterfall tucked between two raised plantings abutting the rear portion of the building. A stone slab bridge lets visitors cross the channel.
For parties at the TBG, they’ve been known to move containers into the channel.
In autumn, it’s particularly lovely when the grasses are in flower and the shrubs turn colour. That’s Indigofera kirilowii with the bright yellow leaves on the right.
Oh! I wonder how this old photo of my daughter and her groom got in here? (Didn’t they look lovely? They’ve got three kids now…)
So… that brings me to my own pond. It’s pretty old now. I dug it myself in 1987, acquiring a shoulder injury that required nerve surgery along the way! But it continues to be the main focal point in my garden as it visually anchors the dining patio.
It has been rebuilt once after the liner failed.
At that time, I added the boulder fountain, drilled through to admit the PVC tubing leading from the pump.
It looked pretty and worked for a few years, but the pump eventually failed and was replaced by another pump, which also failed. Do you sense my theme? Ponds like this are not low-maintenance.
In fact, if you’re not going to pay a pond service company to clean out all the leaves and debris that a pond like mine collects each season – as well as replacing the rocks that fall in during the freeze and thaw periods – you’ll have to do it yourself. And from personal experience (those boots are mine), it’s not a job for the faint of heart.
Even though the only book I’ve written was called Water in the Garden, on behalf of Canadian Gardening magazine (1995), I would recommend thinking small on water features.
But I will add that, despite the work involved in keeping it somewhat clean-looking, my pond pays me back in spades on that spring or summer morning when I look out and see the birds taking turns to bathe in it. Because the cardinals and robins simply don’t care how messy it is.
*****
Okay, let’s get to the title of my blog How would someone “Bring me little water”? Maybe as the waiter did in the rainforest in Costa Rica, with a sweet stick insect sticking to the side?
El Remanso Lodge; Osa Peninsula; Costa Rica
Or maybe someone would bring me a little water in song. For me, the ideal person to do that would be Moira Smiley. A singer-songwriter, composer and teacher with her own group called VOCA, I would want her to use her famed body percussion (clapping, stomping, bodybeats) to “bring me little water”, as she did with these young people at the Los Angeles Choral Workshop, teaching her own version of the 1936 song composed by Huddie Ledbetter, aka Lead Belly (1888-1949).
And here she is with her own singers doing her official version of “Silvy”.
If you want to learn how to do body percussion, Moira will teach it to you, too!
When I was 12, my mother took me to see Harry Belafonte in Vancouver. He sang ‘Sylvie’ as a plea from an incarcerated man to his lover, the lyrics lamenting that Sylvie “brought me nearly every damn thing, but she didn’t bring the jailhouse key”. Here is Harry Belafonte singing the song from his Live at Carnegie Hall album that very same year.
And here’s the very rustic inspiration by Lead Belly himself. When he wasn’t in jail or on drugs, Ledbetter sang to earn his money. He said ‘Sylvie’ was inspired by his farmer uncle calling for his wife to bring him water out to the hot fields.
BRING ME LITTLE WATER SILVy (Moira Smiley, orig.Huddie Ledbetter, Lead Belly)
Bring me little water, Silvy
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Bring me little water now Bring me little water, Silvy Every little once in a while
Bring it in a bucket, Silvy Bring it in a bucket now Bring it in a bucket, Silvy Every little once in a while
Silvie come a runnin’ Bucket in my hand I will bring a little water Fast as I can
Bring me little water, Silvy Bring me little water now Bring me little water, Silvy Every little once in a while
Can’t you see me coming? Can’t you see me now? I will bring you little water Every little once in a while
Every little once in a while Every little once in a while Every little once in a while
*********
This is the 12th blog (marathon?) in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading, have a look at the others beginning with
Last week, I performed what has become for me a ‘rite of November’: cutting down the meadows at our cottage on Lake Muskoka, a few hours north of Toronto. I have to admit, it isn’t my favourite chore of the year, though I acknowledge I don’t actually have a lot of “chores” up there, given the naturalistic way I garden. But it’s definitely the most labour-intensive – amidst the least pleasant weather conditions of autumn, as it usually turns out. This year it was blowing a gale as I assembled my wardrobe and tools: hedge shears, rake, cart, bundling cloth and ropes, rubber boots, extra layers under my waterproof jacket and fleece band to keep my ears warm. I started out with the big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), the tallest of my prairie grasses, at 7 feet with its turkey-foot flowers. Considering it’s growing in shallow soil atop the ancient rock of the Canadian Precambrian shield, rather than the deep loam of the tallgrass prairie where its roots can extend far down, I think it’s rather happy at the cottage, and I took a selfie of us together before I chopped off its head!
Since my meadows and beds likely measure only about 1600 square feet or so, it’s not a lot to hand-cut with the hedge shears. People wonder why I don’t use a string trimmer, but I find that holding the weight of a trimmer just above ground is harder on my back than bending over and chopping the stems manually. I understand you can buy a harness for the trimmer, so that might be an improvement – but there’s something hypnotically satisfying about working with the shears.
As I work, I rake and pile the stems into windrows near the cart where I’ll eventually pack them up into bundles to carry by hand up the hill behind the cottage to a place out of sight where they can break down. It’s important to leave some strong stems standing up to 12-18 inches (30-45 cm) so native ‘pith-nesting’ bees find them in order to lay their eggs.
If I don’t cut the meadows, the heavy snows of winter will soon bend down the grasses and forb stems, but the thatch that accumulates makes it less attractive for self-seeding wildflowers and daffodils emerging in spring. So if I want the scene below in mid-summer, it pays to prepare for it by cutting old growth.
And if I leave the switch grass (Panicum virgatum) standing after it turns colour in fall….
…. it will look like this in May.
So I remove all the above ground growth in November.
And if I’m travelling during this late autumn window (as we have on a few occasions), the daffodils will still come up in the meadow the following spring, but it’s a bit of a struggle.
In short, if I want this…..
…I have to do this.
And if I want this…..
….I have to do this.
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I could hold off on the cutting until late winter or very early spring, when the ground is still frozen (as I do in my city meadow), but timing doesn’t always work that well up here and a fast thaw means I’m cutting on mucky soil. And since most of the seed-eating birds have flown south and those that remain seem adept at picking up seed from the ground, I’m happy to clear out this…..
…. in order to enjoy this next summer.
Beyond the chores of this month, I love the varied browns of November. I’ve even blogged about Beguiling Brown in the Garden. And I enjoy inspecting all the seedheads as the plants complete their life cycles. Plants like showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa), its white panicled seedheads shown below alongside the charcoal autumn foliage of false indigo (Baptisia australis). (Incidentally, though these plants flower at the opposite ends of summer, they’re among the best for bumble bee foraging.)
Here is the candelabra-like seedhead of culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) with the ubiquitous button-like seedheads of wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa).
Those seedheads above, of course, are proof that the attractive summer flowers, shown below, attracted the pollination services of the appropriate wild bees.
And the late summer-autumn season has also allowed the various grasses to shine, below, including – apart from the big bluestem – Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) and switch grass (Panicum virgatum).
November is the perfect time for dormant seeding native wildflowers, so as I’m chopping the stems, I also do some fast sowing into the meadows, using my boot toe to kick little bare spots into the soil, then grinding some of the seeds just below the surface, while leaving others exposed. I do this with New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis), below.
Chopping, raking, piling, carrying. Chopping, raking, piling, carrying. After a good day-and-a-half in blustery wind and intermittent cold rain, I manage to take 8 tied bundles of stems up the back hill to a spot on top of the pile of blast rock that was cleared when we built our home here on this waterbound peninsula 16 years ago. In time, the vegetation will decompose amidst the staghorn sumac pioneers and create a more complex meadow planting here.
Finally, as I finish washing out the cart, coiling the garden hoses, cleaning my tools, bringing everything indoors and preparing to drive back to the city in the waning light of the third day, I gather up a handful of the stems I’ve put aside in my cutting. Because apart from enjoying vases filled with summer flowers in July…..
….. it feels virtuous, somehow, to accord these plants the same respect in November.
To capture a little of the atmosphere of what it’s like to perform this task in November, I’ve made a short video to enjoy here. (Please excuse the wind – it was impossible to find quiet moments.) The good news? My back and I are still on speaking terms!
Gardening in cottage country. Ah, the whispering white pines, the towering red oaks and sugar maples, the lacy hemlocks, the shimmering trilliums… and the pee-gee hydrangeas?
It is a strange paradox that when people head to their summer retreats in Muskoka, Georgian Bay or the Kawartha Lakes (or any other wilderness area), they often feel the need to recreate the type of manicured city landscape they left behind – one that fails to capture the unique sense of place inherent in the spectacular, rugged terrain of cottage country. After all, don’t we seek escape to a granite island or forested shoreline in order to appreciate nature in the wild, not to subdue it with our own sense of urban decorum?
But when that decorum includes a Kentucky bluegrass lawn sweeping down to the lake’s edge, one that needs fertilizing to stay green and mowing and edging to stay neat, it seems to me that we have not only turned our backs on the notion of wildness, but threatened it as well. We should all be aware by now that fertilizer runoff has a harmful effect on water quality, increasing the phosphorus levels, encouraging the growth of algae and adversely affecting the shoreline habitat for fish. But apart from the environmental effect of a lakeside lawn, the idea of having to replicate the humdrum chores of an urban back yard at a place where you should be snoozing in a hammock, reading the latest bestseller, and kicking off your summer sandals just seems wrong.
Of course, the ideal cottage landscape is the one that’s been altered the least, the one that retains the native low-bush blueberries, blackberry, black chokeberry, wild raspberry, bearberry, myrtleberry and sand cherry, below.
It’s the landscape that respects the bush honeysuckle, the creeping dogbane, white meadowsweet and common juniper, while rejoicing in the mayflower, wild strawberry, violet, Solomon’s seal, trout lily, trilliums and red columbine.
It appreciates the bracken and marginal shield ferns in the dry places, the cinnamon and royal ferns in the damp spots and the sensitive fern and lady fern in the shady forest. It’s the one where children and grandchildren run down paths carpeted with pine needles; where the shore is edged with white turtlehead, blue flag iris and swamp milkweed, below.
The place where wild goldenrod and an assortment of asters offer up an easy bouquet for the Thanksgiving table. And it does all this under trees that grow in familiar communities – red maple, white pine, beech, red oak, paper birch, hemlock, moose maple, staghorn sumac and trembling aspen – while giving shelter to songbirds, chattering jays, chickadees, barred owls and woodpeckers.
Gardening Between a Rock and a Hard Place
But what if leaving the cottage landscape au naturel is not an option? Construction doesn’t always leave the land in pristine condition, and sometimes a cottage property has been “tamed” by the people who owned it before you came on the scene. What then? For me, it was necessary to come up with a fast landscape plan after we built our Lake Muskoka home in 2001-02, a construction project that left the sloping bedrock exposed and barren of vegetation. But perhaps I should back up a little here.
Our south-facing property was the driest, hottest patch of land on a little peninsula jutting out into a small bay on the southeast part of Lake Muskoka. Except for a row of towering, white pines at the shore – survivors of a fire that razed parts of the peninsula ridge decades earlier – and some red oaks here and there, the vegetation was scrubby, its growth constrained by shallow, acidic, sandy soil formed from the granite and grey gneiss rock underlying much of the region. Sloping on a moderate angle to the lake, it was a challenging site for construction of a four-season house big enough to accommodate children, friends and far-flung relatives for family reunions. With no road access, all supplies arrived by barge, including the concrete truck that poured the foundation, massive steel beams, roof trusses, lumber, appliances and furniture.
When all was finished, we were delighted with the cottage (that’s the rustic euphemism we assign to homes of any size on Lake Muskoka); the views were spectacular from all sides and a screened porch extended the hours we could be outdoors dining and reading. But our ecological footprint had not been light. Much of the bedrock on either side of the site had been scraped bare of vegetation by tractors and line-trenchers. Worse, the front of the cottage dropped away sharply onto sloping granite, making exiting the doors on the lower level to reach the lake a treacherous exercise.
My objective in landscaping was not simply to re-green the site, but to re-shape the contour of the land, adding a front plateau to let us safely access the hillside. It would feature a new woodchip path to replace the path that meandered across the property long before we built there. We would also need stairs leading to the lake and dock, and I played with various concepts, below, as we worked on the house.
But beyond the structural changes, I wanted to return our land to a richer, more complex diversity than it possessed before we began to build. I knew that the pines and oaks would eventually re-colonize the property, along with blueberries, junipers and sumacs. In the meantime, there would be years of vibrant sunshine to nourish whatever I chose for my palette. And even as I transplanted tiny pine saplings, I began to dream about those wild, flower-spangled meadows I had grown up with as a child in Victoria,
It wasn’t just a desire to naturalize an already natural site that appealed to me. I was also pushing back against the way I’d been gardening in the city, rebelling against the need for constraint and order that comes with beds and borders and neatly-mown lawns. It made no sense to think that way about a cottage landscape; not only would it be out-of-step with the natural environment, it would be out-of-synch with how I had changed, physically and philosophically, as a gardener. More and more, I wanted a landscape that was not just for me and my kind, but one that would appeal to other species: the bees, katydids, butterflies, birds and chipmunks that would soon call the meadows home. I also wanted that sense of aesthetic pleasure that comes from observing a truly changing canvas with a roster of plants to provide a shifting tapestry from April to October. Most of all, I wanted my meadows to be low-maintenance.
After the last of the construction equipment was removed from the site, a barge arrived loaded with a tractor and different kinds of soil. For the most conventional garden beds – the spaces between the four doors on the lower level – rich triple-mix consisting of equal parts of loam, peat and manure was chosen. For the open meadows on either side of the cottage and the sunny hillsides in front of them, we settled for a local, low-grade, sandy soil, emulating the environment found in natural sand prairies. On the steep bank dropping from the newly-shaped path under the old white pines in front of the cottage, we elected to spread a locally-sourced forest soil called “trimmings” that contained the roots and seeds of whatever might be found naturally growing in similar conditions nearby.
My objective that first summer was to prevent the new soil from washing down the slope in rainstorms. As a fast-germinating cover crop, I seeded the meadows and hillsides with a combination of creeping red fescue grass (Festuca rubra) and black-eyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta), mixing about 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of the wildflowers into 4.5 kilos (10 pounds) of grass seed. A few weeks and many hours of hand-watering later…..
….the first blades of grass emerged, followed closely by the first tiny leaves of countless blackeyed susans.
A biennial, it makes a rosette of foliage in its first season and sends up flower stems the following summer, before setting seed and dying. I still laugh at the photos taken of me in year two standing amidst thousands of cheerful black-eyed susans.
Into the rich soil of the doorway garden beds went big golden yarrow (Achillea filipendulina ‘Gold Plate’), Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and switch grass (Panicum virgatum). This is how the path and a doorway bed looked a few years later.
At the base of the richest meadow, I planted an assortment of prairie grasses, including big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium),Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) and switch grass (Panicum virgatum), below. And over the next few years, I did an autumn sowing of seeds of a roster of tallgrass prairie perennials that would become the flowery backbone of the meadows: foxglove penstemon, heliopsis, monarda, gaillardia, sweet blackeyed susan, gray-headed coneflower, asters and showy goldenrod to add to goldenrods already on the property. That plants were native was not as important to me as their drought-tolerance, a vital attribute for a landscape that would rely on rainwater — while acknowledging that dry summers would take their toll on plants growing in shallow soil.
The Meadows Mature
Now, fifteen years later, my meadows and garden beds provide a bounty of flowers (and beautiful bouquets). There is something in bloom from the first daffodils of April…..
…. to the last goldenrod and asters of autumn. This is showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa), down by the lake in late September.
Monarch butterflies lay eggs on the butterfly milkweed….
….producing beautiful caterpillars and a new generation of the iconic butterfly…..
….which, when it prepares to fly south to Mexico in early September, sometimes stops on our dock to soak up a little salt from the feet of sunbathers.
Myriad pollinating insects and hummingbirds visit the flowers, like this ruby-throated female on my crocosmia flowers (which, amazingly, have overwintered for years)….
…while goldfinches enjoy the monarda seeds….
…..and ruffed grouse are regularly spotted in late summer wandering through my meadows.
Though there are a few deer on our peninsula, they seem to prefer the young sumac shoots to my perennials….
….. but groundhogs enjoy purple coneflower and coreopsis from time to time.
In truth, the meadows are so profuse that I am happy to share a few plants. Yes, there are exotics some might call “weeds”, e.g. oxeye daisies, buttercups. birdsfoot trefoil, musk mallow, cow vetch, hawkweed and quackgrass, but they are kept in check by the vigorous prairie plants.
The only work required is to use a trimmer twice each season to keep the path across the property clear.
In November, I need to cut down the meadow grasses to reduce the thatch that builds up and to keep things neat for the daffodils that emerge each April. And, of course, to prevent the meadow from transitioning naturally to bush, it’s necessary to keep out any blackberries and sumacs that might want to jump the path from the steep slope to the lake.
My cottage neighbours know where to find a bouquet of fragrant daffodils in springtime.
The bumble bees know where to find beebalm with sweet nectar.
And I know where to find photographic inspiration and beauty all season long, like this single day, July 7, 2013, when I collected all these flowers at the cottage.
Let’s take a little tour of the property.
A Tour of My Muskoka Garden Today
Coming down the stairs from the cottage, we see the little patch of wildness I call the “east meadow”. The soil here is shallow and the plants — tall cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) at the bottom of the stairs and beebalm (Monarda fistulosa) and false oxeye (Heliopsis helianthoides) in the meadows — tend to suffer in a dry summer. On this side of the stairs is a large stand of Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’ and other plants.
Here’s the view of the cottage through the beebalm and heliopsis in the east meadow.
Here’s the stairway to the lake, below, with a little viewing deck part-way down. The slope, composed of soil called ‘trimmings’, features plants native to Muskoka, including sumac (Rhus typhina), meadowsweet (Spiraea latifolia), common juniper (Juniperus communis) and wild blackberry (Rubus allegheniensis). Oaks and maples sprout on the slope as well; some are encouraged but it’s necessary to thin the forest a little here.
In early summer, that little section below the bench is a lovely confection of foxglove penstemon (P. digitalis) and lanceleaf coreopsis (C. lanceolata). Both of these native perennials share a love of dry, gravelly soil.
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Here’s a short video of foxglove penstemon at the lake shore.
On a grassy part of the slope to the lake, I combine butterfly milkweed with blackeyed susans.
Looking west down the path past the scented ‘Conca d’Or’ lily (one of the strongest Orienpet or Oriental x Trumpet hybrids), it’s amazing to me that this flat terrace was created from a once steep and treacherous slope.
Moving along the path, the bed (using the word ‘bed’ very loosely) at the eastern end of the cottage is filled with more fragrant Orienpet lilies. Over the years, I’ve discovered that certain perennials exhibit good drought-tolerance, like Veronica spicata ‘Darwin’s Blue’, just finishing below. This bed also contains English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), ‘Walker’s Low’ catmint (Nepeta racemosa) and ‘May Night’ meadow sage (Salvia nemorosa).
The most satisfying garden section at the cottage has been the small, sloping west meadow, aka the ‘monarda meadow’ for its predominant wild beebalm, Monarda fistulosa. This is how it looks today,as the large prairie grasses at right are just beginning to fountain.
In early August the west meadow features some good perennial partners with the monarda, including ‘Gold Plate’ yarrow (Achillea filipendulina)….
…. gray-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata)….
…. and false oxyeye (Heliopsis helianthoides)…..
In June, the monarda meadow features the odd wild lupine (Lupinus perennis), now less populous than they were a few years ago, when their blue candles glowed in the grasses.
I made a little time capsule video to remember my meadows this week, in a summer when rain was plentiful (to say the least) and the flowers all reached for the sky.
Bouquets from the Meadows
The cottage beds and meadows have yielded lovely bouquets for the table, whether in June with the lupines, false indigo (Baptisia australis), oxyeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) and large-flowered penstemon (P. grandiflorus)…
….or later in summer, with cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum), gray-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata), blue Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), purple blazing star (Liatris spicata) and the many goldenrods (Solidago sp.) that flower at the cottage.
Sometimes I add stems of Allegheny blackberry (Rubus allegeniensis) and nannyberry (Viburnum lentago) to the summer wildflowers, like the little nosegays below.
20 Great Cottage Perennials for Bees & Butterflies
Except for the fragrant lilies, which are just for me, my criterion for including plants to the cottage beds and meadows is that they must be useful to foraging insects and birds. Here are twenty of the best:
1. Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) – Ironclad, low-maintenance native perennial attracts bumble bees at a critical time in late spring when bumble bees are provisioning their nests.
2, Wild lupine (Lupinus perennis) – Bumble bees are the pollinators for this native perennial, which flowers in June.
3. Blackeyed susan – Rudbeckia hirta – Lots of small native bees and butterflies enjoy foraging on biennial blackeyed susans.
4. Blanket flower – Gaillardia x grandiflora – Provided it’s regularly deadheaded, blanket flower will bloom until autumn, attracting myriad bees.
5. Catmint – Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’ – Long-flowering and a bee magnet, catmint has aromatic foliage that discourages deer.
6. Lanceleaf coreopsis (C. lanceolata) – One of the easiest, most drought-tolerant perennials for early summer, this coreopsis attracts lots of bees and its seeds attract hungry goldfinches.
7. Foxglove penstemon (P. digitalis) – Another easy, adaptable native perennial, this penstemon flowers at the same time as coreopsis, above, and enjoys the same rugged conditions – dry, gravelly soil. Bumble bees forage on it extensively.
8. Hoary vervain (Verbena stricta) – This vervain epitomizes “hardy and drought-tolerant” and is the most foolproof perennial in my dry meadows. Guaranteed to bloom and attract bumble bees.
9. False oxeye (Heliopsis helianthoides) – In the ‘be careful what you wish for’ category, this one is easy from seed and likes to take over the meadow. A negative is its attraction to rosy-apple (red) aphids, but lots of native pollinators enjoy the flowers, including the wasp below.
10. Wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa) – Easily the most valuable perennial in my meadows, attracting bumble bees, hummingbirds and the lovely clearwing hummingbird moth, below.
Bumble bees are plentiful in my meadows during the blooming period of the wild beebalm. This is my west meadow today, August 7, 2017.
11. Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) – I have blogged at length about this plant, named the Perennial Plant Association’s 2017 Plant of the Year. It attracts many types of pollinators, including the monarch butterfly, which lays its eggs on the plant to be foraged by the developing caterpillar.
Butterfly milkweed is also very popular with bumble bees of all kinds. Here’s a video I made of a bumble bee nectaring while a red squirrel scolds and a Swainson’s thrush sings in the background.
12. Gray-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) – With its willowy stems, this perennial is the most graceful in my meadows, and attracts small native bees.
13. Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) – The tallest of my meadow perennials, this one is a colonizer, but so popular with bumble bees that it can be forgiven for laying claim to as much territory as it can.
I was surprised one year to see which animal was snacking on the 8-foot tall seedheads of my cup plant. Not a deer, but a…….
14. Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) – Hardy with aromatic leaves that repel deer, this sub-shrub is an excellent companion for big golden yarrow. Bumble bees and honey bees adore the tiny, lavender-purple flowers.
15. Blazing Star or Gayfeather (Liatris – many species, esp. L. ligulistylis, below, and L. spicata) – I adore all the blazing stars, and so do the butterflies. Rocky Mountain blazing star, below, is particularly popular with monarch butterflies and with the great spangled fritillary shown.
16. Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) – Preferring more moisture than many of the prairie natives, this tall perennial (the one below is the cultivar ‘Fascination’) is a magnet for bees and butterflies.
17. New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis) – Wherever there’s an extra bit of moisture, this tall ironweed thrives in late summer. It attracts bees and many types of butterfly, including the painted lady, below.
18. Sweet blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia subtomentosa) – A tall, easy-going perennial – and my favourite of the rudbeckia clan, this late-summer beauty attracts its share of native bees and wasps.
19. Goldenrod (Solidago sp.) – There are at least a half-dozen species of goldenrod that thrive on our property. Some are invasive enough to be nuisances, like Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis). Others are rare enough to be prized, like Solidago nemoralis. But my favourite is one I seeded myself, showy goldenrod, Solidago speciosa, below. One of the latest-blooming perennials, it is often in flower well into October, nourishing the last of the bumble bees before our long Muskoka winter.
20. New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) – At the very end of the season, around Thanksgiving time in Canada, the various asters provide a late, vital source of nectar for all the bees.
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Adapted from a story that appeared originally in Trellis, the magazine of the Toronto Botanical Garden.
