My 18th fairy crown for August 7th features a strange, wild creature having a seriously bad hair day. All right…. it just contains a lot of spike flowers and I ran out of horizontal room on the tiara so it looks like I’ve endured a shock. These are flowers and leaves from my Toronto garden. The lavender-blue spikes are Russian sage (formerly Perovskia atriplicifolia, now called Salvia yangii after DNA analysis proved it was in the sage family). The fuzzy dark-mauve spikes are Liatris spicata ‘Kobold’, aka blazing star or gayfeather. The stem with wine-red leaves and flower clusters is Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’. The chartreuse flowers cascading over my forehead are Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) – at least, a few stems that I didn’t tear out to try to prevent it from spreading (which it will do anyway). The dissected leaves come from my Tiger Eye sumac shrub (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) and the vine falling over my right shoulder is Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata). Those little, pale-pink bottlebrush flowers on my left cheek are ‘Pink Tanna’ burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis) at the end of its season. Finally, tucked into a corner on my forehead are a few red flowers of Petunia exserta that I forgot I’d thrown into my sundeck containers and they emerged in the midst of self-seeding oakleaf lettuce.
With its airy wands of long-lasting, light-blue flowers, the sub-shrub Russian sage is a big presence in my pollinator garden…..
…..and it offers nectar to bees for many weeks.
But it is sometimes short-lived and does not take kindly in our cold climate to being cut back in autumn. Much better to wait until spring when new growth has started.
It flowers at the same time as violet-purple dense blazing star (Liatris spicata ‘Kobold’)….
…. which is also a wonderful pollinator lure.
I adore the burnets and was able to source Sanguisorba officinalis ‘Pink Tanna’, which has interesting little “scrim” flowers. But I’m still on the lookout for the big, dark-red species which add such a zingy note to a meadow-style planting.
The Tiger Eyes sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) is a favourite…..
…… and it retains its chartreuse colour well into summer, before turning a beautiful apricot in fall.
I forgive it its suckering-wandering ways because the birds absolutely adore it throughout winter.
As for the Boston ivy, well it’s pretty much a given in my garden… on my gate, below, and on my fence, and it would climb the house if I let it, but I don’t.
The little red petunias (P. exserta) were a seed-starting project a few years back and are quite rare and not found in garden centres. I wrote about them extensively in my 2020 blog My Motley Pots. This one managed to thrive in a container of self-seeding oakleaf lettuce on my deck.
As I wrote back then, my youngest son’s girlfriend Marta Motti did a painting of this petunia being visited by the hummingbird which she gave to me as a gift. I am delighted to say that she is marrying Jon on September 10th in Tuscany – and we will be there for the ceremony!
Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’ is in my backyard deck pots where it partners with the tough native grass sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula). It’s very drought-resistant, given that these pots get watered very rarely, except by mother nature.
A few plants that are flowering now or in the next few weeks missed being in a fairy crown, so I’d like to say a few words about them now. The first is hoary or downy skullcap (Scutellaria incana), a native northeastern North America plant that I’m trialling in my front pollinator garden, where I’m hopeful it will be able to fend off the lily-of-the-valley groundcover.
Lastly, I’d like to give a nod to my favourite blazing star or gayfeather, Liatris aspera, aka rough blazing star. Though endangered, this is our regional native. Drought tolerant, it reaches 90-120 cm (3-4 feet) in height; it will start to flower in the next few weeks and is a superb, late-summer pollinator plant.
As for the Canada goldenrod….. well, it’s a useful weed but if you turn your back you’ll have a forest. So don’t turn your back!
My 13th fairy crown for July 2nd features a plant I did not choose for my garden; rather, it chose me, tawny daylily (Hemerocallis fulva). As well, there are hosta flowers, the red fruit of serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis) and crimson-red knautia flowers (K. macedonica).
When we moved to our home in the early ‘80s, a new neighbor spied the orange-flowered plants that crept into the back yard under the fence, along with ostrich ferns. As a gardener, I knew they were daylilies, originally from Asia and botanically named Hemerocallis fulva, but as a former west coaster I was unaware of their uniquely northeastern cultural history.
“They used to call these July 12th lilies,” said my neighbor. When I asked why, she said they were symbolic of Ireland’s 1690 Battle of the Boyne and used by Unionists or “Orangemen” as a floral motif to commemorate the victory of Protestant King William over the deposed Catholic King James. As one Ontario writer noted: “The planting of Orange lilies in front of one’s property, displayed a family’s Protestant/Orange Lodge status, like flags.” With Catholic ancestors in Northern Ireland but, as a former west coaster, largely ignorant of historic eastern prejudices, I looked askance at the poor, innocent, orange lilies. But it was their territorial ambition in my garden that bothered me, not their association with old sectarian feuding; they are almost impossible to eradicate. I soon learned that this Asian daylily has been called other uncomplimentary names: ditch lily and outhouse lily. Others call it tawny daylily, 4th of July lily, and plain old orange lily. It is ubiquitous throughout North America, often as an escape around farms where 19th century settlers planted it in their gardens.
Unlike the expensive daylilies I actually planted, tawny daylily overran my border, and its tuberous roots are very hard to eliminate. In one spot, it flowers near the indigo-blue spikes of monkshood (Aconitum napellus). It is a survivor, so we co-exist now, with occasional skirmishes to keep it from spreading everywhere.
Knautia macedonica, on the other hand, is one of those unassuming little perennials that seemingly disappear on their own, only to pop up in another spot a year later. Despite being short-lived, I know its seedlings will find a few square inches of soil in my pollinator garden each June, crowded as it is with pushy echinacea, sedum, rudbeckia and sage and catmint now fading.
Knautia’s crimson-pink, pincushion flowers attract bumble bees, honey bees, and small native solitary bees. I love photographing them in public gardens, their leg sacs weighed down with the most amazing magenta pollen.
Here it is in my pollinator garden with a busy little bicoloured agapostemon (A. virescens).
My fairy crown also features the sturdy blossoms of the big, lime-green hosta ‘Zounds’. If you’re a hosta collector, you treasure each and every one, the newer and rarer and more colorful the better. But in my garden, hostas can charitably be described as “useful”; they fill in spaces, are low-maintenance, and the bees love them.
That last part is very important to me, yet not fully appreciated by people who design pollinator gardens. And, strangely, many hosta collectors remove the flowers to focus attention on the leaves.
Simply put, the flowers of most hostas are nectar-rich and well-suited to the tongues of bumble bees, honey bees, and carpenter bees. Especially popular with bees are the pale purple blossoms of old-fashioned Hosta ‘Albomarginata’….
…. which forms the edging of my patio and features in my deck garden.
When North America was developing its awareness of native plants in the 1980s, the northeast fell in love with serviceberries. Suddenly, the white spring flowers, edible, dark summer fruit and vivid red-orange fall color were in every ecologically-conscious garden, the species chosen determined by region and commercial availability. For me, that meant planting a pair of shadblow serviceberries (Amelanchier canadensis) in my side yard, where their autumn leaves would complement those of the Asian paperbark maple (Acer griseum) nearby. Because their location is not in my everyday view, I sometimes forget to check in early summer to see if the fruit has ripened yet. Waiting too long is a mistake….
….. because robins and cardinals adore serviceberries, and will strip the tree when the fruit is still red, long before you can have a taste. Needless to say, if you want to attract birds to you garden, you cannot go wrong with a serviceberry!
There are many other hardy North American species of serviceberry, including smooth or Allegheny serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis), downy serviceberry (A. arborea) and saskatoon berry (A.alnifolia var. alnifolia), which has been bred as a fruit crop in mid-central and prairie regions. I photograph regularly at Montreal Botanical Garden and their Edibles Garden features a number of cultivars of Saskatoon berry, including ‘Honeywood’ and ‘Thiessen’ below.
Finally, I was born in the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, though my parents left for the west coast of Canada when I was an infant. My birth city was named after the native fruit, “misaskatwomin” – and you can read that story in my 2017 blog titled ‘Wanuskewin – Finding Peace of Mind’.
Following on part one, this is the second part of my exploration of the Piet Oudolf-designed entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden.
The plant design of the entry walk garden at Toronto Botanical Garden is much more exacting than the drifts and blocks in a conventional border. If you think of a broad meadow like this as a painting, the effect of each series of neighbouring brush strokes is known in advance. For these plants are like children to Piet Oudolf, many grown and observed for decades in his own Dutch garden, many even bred by him or fellow nurserymen in the Netherlands and Germany.
Designed Combinations
Let’s skip around Piet’s original planting design and have a look at twelve of the combinations he planned, as they manifested themselves over the past decade. It’s important to note that all these plants fulfill Piet’s mandate that plants must be: relatively adaptable to soil, i.e. neither too wet nor too dry; vigorous enough to grow without fertilizers or pesticides; strong enough to stand without staking (as with the lovely single peonies in Part One, in contrast to floppy double peonies). Plants should be resilient and long-lived. His plant combinations are not dictated by colour, but by form; however, you’ll see some lovely colour pairings in the examples below.
1.Willowleaf bluestar (Amsonia tabernaemontana var. salicifolia) and ‘Purple Smoke’ false indigo (Baptisia australis).
This is one of the most stable and effective pairings in the entry garden.
Year after year, these two North American natives (technically, the baptisia selection is called a “nativar”, i.e. native cultivar) emerge and come into flower at exactly the same time. They seem to be on the very same wavelength, and equally lovely. And the amsonia, of course, takes on golden-yellow hues in autumn.
2. ‘Roma’ masterwort (Astrantia major) and ‘Rose Clair’ geranium (G. x oxonianum).
These two late-spring perennials share a pleasing rosy hue and a soft presence.
Dark-red ‘Claret’ astrantia is another Piet Oudolf breeding selection, a seedling (like his ‘Roma’ above), of ‘Ruby Wedding’. It looks lovely here in a romantic June combination with indigo-blue ‘Mainacht’ sage. To the left is ornamental clover (Trifolium rubens), to the right is drumstick allium (A. sphaerocephalon).
I’ll talk a little more about the wonderful burnets in Special Plants below, but this is a good early-summer combination: with zingy, dark-red Alaskan burnet (Sanguisorba menzisii) at rear, violet-mauve Salvia nemorosa ‘Amethyst’ in front, and a lttle spiderwort (Trandescantia) too. If you’re a bee-lover, the meadow sages are fabulous lures.
5. ‘Concord Grape’ spiderwort (Tradescantia x andersoniana) & Knautia macedonica.
Speaking of bees, both violet-purple spiderwort and dark-red knautia are excellent bee plants, but I do love these jewel-box colours together in early summer. The light-purple cranesbill is Geranium ‘Spinners’.
Here are two of Piet’s German heritage plants growing side by side: Ernst Pagel’s lovely Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo’ and the fountain grass named for Cassian Schmidt, director of Hermannshof.
Catmints are workhorses: long-flowering, great for bees, hardy, with tidy, aromatic foliage. They do get big in time, but that just means more plants after dividing. Here it is as the switch grass (a warm season grass) is just getting going in early summer. It’s called ‘Cloud Nine’ for its impressive height, to 7 feet (2.1 metre).
When the entry walk garden first came into bloom in 2008, I was surprised to see a few daylilies in it. I suppose I thought that with Piet’s focus on the importance of good foliage, daylilies would simply not make the cut, given the tendency of their leaves to go brown and look straggly in late summer. But surprise! There are a few old-fashioned daylilies, including pale-yellow ‘Gentle Shepherd’ which makes a good companion to the fuchsia-pink flowers of spectacular ‘Purpurlanze’ astilbe and is considered a seasonal “filler” plant (see Scatter Plants and Fillers below), with other perennials emerging to carry on the late summer show.
Yes, Piet Oudolf uses hostas! (Shhh…don’t tell anyone….) Actually, the big ‘Blue Angel’ hostas here are favourites of Piet’s for their beautiful leaf texture. They act as anchors (there’s one at the other end, too) for this long border. And when they’re flowering, there are always bees buzzing around the white blooms. I like the way the tall white burnet behind echoes the hosta flowers. These hostas also undergo their own foliage transformation, turning gold in autumn. The ‘Firedance’ mountain fleece or bistort (Piet’s introduction) is more compact than ‘Firetail’, and a good, long-flowering perennial.
A honey bee works the flowers of Hosta sieboldiana ‘Blue Angel’.
This is one of my favourite combinations in the entire entry border: the yin-yang combination of the assertive, spiky rattlesnake master and the soft, hazy spires of Russian sage. Peeking through behind are more pink ‘Purpurlanze’ astilbe and ‘Gentle Shepherd’ daylilies.
11. Sea lavender (Limonium latifolium) and dense blazing star (Liatris spicata)
In writing in Hummelo: A Journey Through a Plantsman’s Life about their collaboration on the 1999 book Designing with Plants, Noel Kingsbury refers to a section of the earlier book called Moods. “We outlined the impact of the more subtle and hard-to-pin-down aspects of planting design, such as the play of light, movement, harmony, control and ‘mysticism’. I am still not 100 percent sure I know what we meant by this category, apart from a lot of mist in the pictures, but it looked good and sounded good.” For me, the vignette below touches a little on mysticism. There’s something about this combination of forms — the solid echinaceas, the constellation of spent knautia seedheads, the regimental spikes of blazing star, the soft cloud of sea lavender, the blades of grass — that seems almost dream-like. This is my childhood meadow idealized.
Once in a while, you might see a story (usually British) that refers to Piet Oudolf and the other practitioners of the so-called “Dutch Wave” of naturalistic design as focusing entirely on perennials to the exclusion of woody shrubs and trees. If you don’t know Piet’s work with trees and shrubs (including roses) at The High Line and elsewhere, you won’t see the fallacy in that line of thought. Though the entry garden at the TBG is primarily a perennial meadow, there are shrubs and vines in a few places, including lilac (Syringa), Kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa), witch hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia), chaste-tree (Vitex agnus-castus) and purple-leaved smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’). I love the vignette, below, with the burgundy-red foliage and smoky fruit of the smoke bush and the Phlomis tuberosa ‘Amazone’ with the tall alliums (likely ‘Gladiator’) and a sprinkle of white foxglove penstemon (P. digitalis), which is not on Piet’s plan but is now in the border and quite lovely in early summer.
Scatter Plants and Fillers
In the book Hummelo: A Journey Through a Plantsman’s Life, by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury (The Monacelli Press, 2015), there are pages devoted to Piet’s use of “scatter plants” and “fillers”. Scatter plants are defined as “individuals or very small groupings of plants interspersed among blocks of plant varieties or through a matrix planting, breaking up the regularity of the pattern; their distribution is generally quasi-random.” Scatter plants can act as links in a border, even unifying it, adding contrasting splashes of colour, like the orange-red Helenium autumnale ‘Rubinzwerg’, below…..
…or a pop of colour that later disappears, like the Oriental poppies in the entry garden that later go dormant.
Fillers are plants whose interest lasts less than three months; though they may have good foliage, they don’t have the structure normally associated with an Oudolf design. They’re good for “filling gaps earlier in the year.” Knautia macedonica does this and cranesbills or perennial geraniums do, too. As Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury wrote in Designing with Plants (Timber Press, 1999), “Think how quickly the neat hemispheres of a hardy geranium turn into a sprawling mass of collapsed stems once the flowers have died.” Yet, when in bloom, they give a starry effect, like the white form of mourning widow cranesbill (Geranium phaeum ‘Album’), below, twinkling among the opening blossoms of Paeonia ‘Bowl of Beauty’.
Grasses
If there’s a hallmark group of plants that defines a Piet Oudolf design, it is ornamental grasses. In fact, he and Anja believed so strongly in their value in gardens that they held an annual Grass Days at their garden in Hummelo. And the 1998 book Gardening with Grasses, co-written by Michael King and Piet Oudolf, advanced that respect. Among the grasses featured in the entry garden are:
1.‘Skyracer’ moor grass (Molinia arundinacea), shown here with ‘Gateway’ Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium maculatum). This grass is the perfect example of Piet’s use of plants that act as “screens and curtains”. In Designing with Plants, they’re described as “mostly air, and their loose growth creates another perspective as you look through them to the plants growing behind.” This rosy pairing, incidentally, also says ‘mysticism’ to me.
2.‘Cassian’ fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides), here with ‘FIretail’ red bistort (Persicaria amplexicaulis)
3. Korean feather grass (Calamagrostis brachytricha). Lovely and hardy as it is, its plumes gorgeous in late summer and autumn, this grass did exhibit a tendency to seed around in the entry garden at TBG and had to be watched carefully.
Here is Korean feather grass in winter.
4.Tufted hair grass (Deschampsia cespitosa) with sea lavender (Limonium latifolium)
5.’Shenandoah’, a selection of the tallgrass prairie native switch grass (Panicum virgatum), here showing its reddish leaves.
6.‘Strictum’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum) with its gold fall colour and seedheads of penstemon and echinacea.
7. Northern dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis), another tallgrass prairie native, its tiny, zingy flowers doing a dance with the small, pale-pink blossoms of North American native winged loosestrife (Lythrum alatum). More on this perennial in the next section.
Native North American Plants
Mention of the little-known native winged loosestrife brings me to Piet Oudolf’s use of native North American plants. By the time he was commissioned to do the planting scheme for the TBG’s entry border in 2005-6, Piet had become friends with Wisconsin plantsman Roy Diblik, author of The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden, with whom he worked on Chicago’s Lurie Garden at Millennium Park. As we learn in Hummelo: A Journey Through a Plantsman’s Life, when they visited the Schulenberg Prairie together in 2002, Roy recalls that Piet “was so taken with it. It was a very emotional moment for him.” After visiting this prairie and the Markham prairie later that year, Piet began to use many more North American plants in his designs, including some of the less well-known species in my list below.
1.Winged loosestrife (Lythrum alatum) – Mention ‘purple loosestrife’ to ecologically-aware people and alarm bells ring. Try telling them that there IS a native purple(ish) loosestrife and they don’t trust you. Or it could mutate. Or it might really be that other one, the Eurasian invader that’s drying up wetlands everywhere (Lythrum salicaria). But part of Piet Oudolf’s education with Roy Diblik was the discovery of this sweet plant. Native to moist prairies in Illinois and other parts of the northeast, it is at home in a well-irrigated garden where, rather than taking over like its cousin, it will work hard just to have its little pink flowers noticed.
Here’s winged loosestrife with ‘Ice Ballet’ swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). Both species are wetlanders, but do well in regular irrigated soil.
2. Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), shown above, is a larval plant for the monarch butterfly and a fabulous bee plant. The honey bee, shown below with two bumble bees, comes from the TBG’s five beehives and the Oudolf entry garden is a rich nectar source for them.
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3. Leadplant (Amorpha canescens) – The soft drift of leadplant in the Oudolf entry garden, below, was my first acquaintance with this lovely tallgrass prairie native,one of a few true Ontario natives in the garden. Its common name refers to the old belief that its presence indicated that there were lead deposits nearby, but that was disproven long ago. Its other folk names include downy indigobush (because it looks a little like indigofera) and buffalo bellows (because, to the native Oglala people who brewed it for a medicinal tea, it came into bloom when bison were in their bellowing-rutting season). A legume, it nitrifies the soil in which it grows (it’s usually considered a subshrub, rather than a perennial) and is one of the few natives that tolerates both dry soil and part-shade.
Bees love leadplant and its stamens provide a bright orange pollen. This is the brown-belted bumble bee (Bombus griseocollis).
4. Dense Blazing star (Liatris spicata) – One of the best tallgrass prairie natives for any sunny border, dense blazing star is no stranger to European gardens either, since it’s been available there in the cultivars ‘Kobold’ (shorter and darker purple than the species) and ‘Floristan Violet’ for decades. Like all Liatris species, it’s a great bee and butterfly plant and a good companion for echinaceas, including Piet Oudolf’s introduction below, ‘Vintage Wine’.
Mention is often made of ‘repetition’ in a Piet Oudolf design and this rhythmic syncopation of blazing stars across the vignette below illustrates how those magenta-purple spikes help carry the eye naturally from one side to the other.
5. Amsonias, Bluestars (Amsonia hubrichtii & Amsonia tabernaemontana var. salicifolia) – When I was writing my newspaper column in the mid-1990s, there was a sudden fuss about a genus of North American plants I’d never heard of. Amsonias were on the scene, and I planted Arkansas bluestar (A. hubrichtii) in my garden, which promptly turned up its toes and died. (It may have been a hardiness issue in an unusually cold winter, since this plant is native to the Ouachita mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma.) Nevertheless, it gained traction in gardening circles and in 2011 was named the Perennial Plant Association’s Perennial of the Year. This is how it looks in the Oudolf border with late spring bulbs.
Arguably the brilliant yellow of the autumn foliage, below, is even more impressive than its ice-blue late spring flowers. Perhaps with our warmer winters, this species will continue to survive and thrive.
There are many species of Amsonia in commerce now, but willowleaf bluestar (Amsonia tabernaemontana var. salicifolia) is a good performer in the TBG entry garden and exceptionally hardy.
6.Joe Pye Weeds (Eutrochium sp., syn. Eupatorium) – The big Joe Pye weeds lend a powerful presence to the entry border in August and September, especially the statuesque ‘Gateway’ (Eutrochium maculatum) below. Given sufficient moisture, they thrive, last a long time in flower……
….. and attract myriad bees and butterflies to their dusty pink flowers.
7. Wild petunia (Ruellia humilis) – Native to dry prairie glades in Wisconsin, Illinois and regions south and west, this short, sprawling perennial has lilac-purple, petunia-like blossoms that are beloved by hummingbirds. Not showy, but a good little edge-of-path stalwart with a tap root. Self-seeds, too.
8. Anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) – One of the mainstays of Piet Oudolf’s designs is this aromatic North American Midwest mint family perennial with bee-friendly, lavender-purple flower spikes in mid-late summer. It spreads slowly by rhizomes.
Agastache foeniculum ‘Blue Fortune’ is an excellent selection with good winter presence.
9. Bowman’s root (Porteranthus trifoliatus, syn. Gillenia trifoliata) – One of the most beautiful pictures in the entry border is right at the end (or beginning, depending which way you’re walking) where the path intersects with the entrance to the Floral Hall Courtyard. Here, in June, a starry cloud of Bowman’s root or Indian physic rises behind a skirt of Japanese hakone grass (Hakonechloa macra). In its midst is a hybrid witch hazel which, though small now, will in time produce filtered shade under its boughs – and Bowman’s root is just fine in that light.
Here it is with a few neighbours: Geranium psilostemon and Hosta sieboldiana ‘Blue Angel’.
Special Plants
Sanguisorbas or Burnets – Piet Oudolf, more than any other plant designer, has made abundant use of the great genus Sanguisorba, the burnets. Hardy, reliable and taking up much less space on the ground than their tall, far-flung inflorescences do in the air, they are a much underused group of perennials. This is Sanguisorba tenuifolia ‘Alba’, or the white form of Chinese burnet, flowering alongside annual Verbena bonariensis.
Like Molinia caerulea ‘Transparent’, Chinese burnet is another good ‘screen’ or ‘scrim’ plant, even as its flowers fade. Here it is in front of Helenium autumnale ‘Fuego’.
This is the purple-flowered form of Chinese burnet, Sanguisorba tenuifolia ‘Purpurea’, growing in an attractive combination with Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium sp.)
Even the skeletons look strange and wonderful in autumn.
Burnets are good wildlife plants, attracting bees to their abundant pollen…..
…. and birds to their seedheads in autumn. In my little video below, sparrows are enjoying the seeds of Sanguisorba tenuifolia ‘Alba’, while American goldfinches are feeding on the seed of an unlabelled burnet I suspect is Sanguisorba tenuifolia ‘Pink Elephant’.
Birds & Bees
Speaking of birds and bees, as a photographer of honey bees, bumble bees and various native and non-native bees, I’d be remiss if I didn’t pay tribute to just a few of the great pollinator plants in the Oudolf entry border (besides the ones above, of course).
Calamint (Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta) – Calamint is, without doubt, the ‘buzziest’ bee plant there is. The sound is really something, with honey bees and bumble bees all over the tiny flowers – and there are tons of tiny flowers on this bushy little perennial.
‘Walker’s Low’ catmint (Nepeta racemosa) – Long-flowering catmints are superb bee plants, putting out nectar beloved by bumble bees and honey bees.
Wlassov’s cranesbill (Geranium wlassovianum) – Previously unknown to me, this little Asian geranium has become one of my favourites. Not only does it flower for an incredibly long time and prefer filtered shade, its flowers are always dancing with bees and its leaves turn red in autumn.
‘Robustissima’ Japanese anemone (Anemone tomentosa) – Japanese anemones are invaluable for their late summer-early autumn flowers, especially the singles like this lovely selection. And their stamens provide rich pollen at a time of year when bees are still looking to provision their nests.
‘Autumn Bride’ alumroot (Heuchera villosa) – It’s fun to watch honey bees working the tiny white flowers of this fabulous late heuchera.
Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) – Echinacea and many of the selections are excellent bumble bee flowers, but they also provide abundant food for seed-eating birds like American goldfinch. A good reason not to cut down your perennial garden in late summer!
Seedheads
While we’re on the topic of seedheads, one of the hallmarks of Piet Oudolf’s design philosophy is the use of plants that perform beyond their flowering season, with persistent stems and seedheads that provide structure in the garden into autumn and winter. These are just a few of the entry border’s distinctive seedheads:
Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) – The familiar chambered pods of milkweeds ripen, dry and split open in late autumn to reveal a layered arrangement of teardrop-shaped seeds topped by fine hairs. Over the next week or two, the seeds will gradually lift off on their silken parachutes, aloft on the wind to land on an empty inch of damp soil on which they’ll germinate the following spring. This is the milkweed life cycle that has evolved over millennia in all its regional species throughout North America in partnership with the monarch butterfly, whose females lay their eggs on the leaves, which then feed the developing caterpillar until it forms its chrysalis to emerge as the familiar orange-and-black butterfly we admire so.
‘Purpurlanze’ astilbe (Astilbe chinensisvar. tacquetii) – I love the feathery bronze plumes of this Ernst Pagel-bred astilbe with the fountain grass (Pennisetum) behind.
Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) – Long after the American goldfinches (above) have migrated south for the winter and the first snows have fallen, the raised seedheads of echinacea flowers still show their Fibonacci architecture.
‘Fascination’ Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) – The coppery wands of spent Culver’s root look beautiful against the tawny grasses of late autumn.
Plants That Go, Plants That Come…..
Not all of the original plants in the design thrived beyond a few years. One that was quite short-lived was the beautiful ornamental clover (Trifolium rubens), with dark pink flowers, below. In an ideal world, this plant would be allowed to self-seed, ensuring progeny for successive seasons. But it has petered out gradually.
Some of the yellow and orange hybrid echinaceas, like yellow ‘Sunrise’ shown in the early years with purple liatris, below, have also largely given up the ghost. Their lack of longevity (contrasted with the reliable long life of Piet’s Echinacea ‘Vintage Wine’) seems to be part-and-parcel of their genetic makeup, a fact Noel Kingsbury acknowleges in Hummelo: A Journey Through a Plantsman’s Life. “The 2000s saw a lot of breeding of E. purpurea with other Echinacea species, mostly in the U.S…… Some exciting color breaks – oranges and apricots – resulted, but the plants were mostly short-lived. For those wanting longer-lived plants, this breeding has not been of any use. We can only hope that someone picks up Piet’s work on longevity.”
Unlike a traditional perennial bed or mixed shrub-perennial border with a modest number of plants, a broad meadow planting like the entry garden with its huge cast of flowery characters is an open invitation to opportunistic plants, good and bad. With so many gardens (including a natural woodland) surrounding the entry walk, it was inevitable that seeds would fly into the rich, irrigated soil – either on the wind, or carried by birds. One of the immigrants – from the green roof of the administration building – is lovely foxglove penstemon, P. digitalis, a plant whose red-leafed form ‘Husker Red’ is used by Piet in his designs. Easy, prolific. drought-tolerant and a great bumblebee and hummingbird plant, this penstemon’s shimmering white spikes are quite lovely in June. It’s one of my favourite perennials.
But there are also seeds that may have been in the soil for many years, just waiting to germinate. Such is the case with common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), below, which I first spotted in my photos in 2011, four years after the garden was planted. Like Canada goldenrod, this is an aggressive native that spreads not only by seed, but by rhizomes underground. Beautiful and fragrant as it is, is difficult to maintain a small population. And given that the better-behaved swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) is here already and there are ‘wild’ places on the TBG property where common milkweed could be welcomed for its relationship to monarch butterflies, I hope it is kept in check so the design intent of the Oudolf garden is not lost.
Which brings me to maintenance. Toronto Botanical Garden currently operates on a financial shoestring. Unlike other popular parks and public places in Toronto, the TBG receives a pittance from the city. Hopefully, that will change in the near future as the City of Toronto Parks Department and the TBG conduct public consultations (two so far, one in November 2016, the last in late February) towards greatly increasing the size of the garden from the current 4 acres to 30 acres, placing all the current Edwards Gardens within a civically-supported Toronto Botanical Garden. However, at the moment, the head gardener works with just a few assistants and a changing team of volunteers to maintain not just the entry garden, but the other 16 gardens on site, and one or two off-site.
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For perspective, I chatted with Toronto Landscape architect Martin Wade of Martin Wade Landscape Architects, below right, who collaborated with Piet Oudolf, left, on the design of the entry border, which was gifted to the TBG by the Garden Club of Toronto.
Martin fondly recalled their first meeting. “It was absolutely wonderful collaborating with Piet. He is extremely down-to-earth, humble and generous. I remember so clearly the very first time we met. After picking him up at the airport, we came back to our house where my partner was preparing dinner. It was shortly after we had moved in. I had not yet “done” the garden – it was a collection of plants left over from the previous owners. We were in the midst of a renovation and the place was in a bit of a shambles. IKEA curtains hung to cover exposed plumbing, bare sub-floor in some areas, and yet with all of this, it was somehow as though we had known one another for ages Piet sat down in a chair that had clearly seen better days and, over a single-malt whisky, the three of us talked about life in general and what our respective interests were. When I asked him what was important to him, he answered, without any hesitation, ‘Quality. Quality in terms of food, wine, art, relationships, architecture, landscape, virtually everything in life.’ The notion of quality as being the driving force that stimulates him has stuck with me.”
Martin & I talked about maintenance. Unlike Chicago’s 2.5 acre Piet Oudolf-designed Lurie Garden (Landscape Architects: Gustafson Guthrie Nichol), which cost $12.5 million and has a $10 million endowment for maintenance alone, the TBG’s entry garden has no separate budget for maintenance. Similarly, unlike the Oudolf-designed Marjorie G. Rosen Seasonal Walk at the New York Botanical Garden, below, a much smaller garden which has the equivalent of half-a-full-time employee dedicated to maintenance (including the hedge), there is no dedicated employee budgeted for the TBG’s Oudolf garden.
Before the entry garden was installed, Piet Oudolf, Martin Wade and the Garden Club of Toronto (GCT) had a frank discussion about long-term maintenance of the garden. By Piet’s estimate, the entry border would require a minimum of one full-time gardener dedicated to its upkeep. “As Piet explained,” recalls Martin, “His gardens, while ‘naturalistic’ and ‘meadow-like’ in appearance, are anything but low maintenance. They require regular tending to keep species that were not part of the original design out. I have noticed the invasion of common milkweed in the garden. This is a plant that has a host of great qualities and should be encouraged and let flourish in the right locations. However, it was not part of the original plan. The intent always was that the garden would be monitored yearly to ensure any of the more aggressive species in the plan were kept in check, and that the original plan be maintained, other than in the case of some species that just might not perform well, for which minor design adjustments would have to be made. This ‘monitoring’ process involves taking a copy of the plan in hand, walking throughout the garden, making note of what has crept into areas in which it was not meant to, and making adjustments accordingly.”
“Sadly,” he continues, “I don’t think the garden is achieving to the full extent the goals that were envisioned when the project began. I don’t mean this in any way as a criticism of the TBG or its staff, as I realize the extreme pressure they are under with respect to finances and resources that can be allocated to maintenance, not only of the entry garden, but all of their gardens.Maintenance is such a huge issue for all gardens, private or public, not only for the TBG gardens. It is relatively sexy these days to give a new building wing naming rights to honour the benefactor who helped make it a reality. The same applies to gardens. While a ‘sexy motive’ was not their intent, the Garden Club of Toronto was nonetheless very generous in gifting the Piet Oudolf/MWLA garden to the TBG. That is their mandate. The GCT funds public garden projects.”
Martin cites another of his projects to illustrate the level of financial commitment needed. “Our firm designed the Helen M. Kippax Garden at the Royal Botanical Garden in Hamilton. The funds for this garden were donated by the late Mary Stedman in honour of her aunt Helen Kippax, one of the founding members of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects. Ms. Stedman’s donation is suitably honoured by a plaque in the garden. She also had the foresight and financial ability to donate money to a trust fund, the interest from which is earmarked solely for the maintenance of the Kippax Garden. We need these types of visionaries, and institutions need to find a way to raise money not only for the installation of our public gardens, but for their long-term maintenance.”
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But if the entry garden could use more a little more manpower to relieve the hard-working gardeners and volunteers, it is still, without a doubt, my favourite garden at the TBG. It takes me back to that childhood meadow I’ve carried in my heart for 60 years. It nourishes bees and butterflies and birds and the spirits of the visitors who walk the long path, flanked by a profusion of beautiful blossoms and swishing grasses.
And in case you haven’t taken that walk yourself, let me leave you with a beautiful memory of a warm August afternoon in the entry garden at Toronto Botanical Garden. Thank you, Garden Club of Toronto. Thank you, gardeners. Thank you, Martin Wade. And thank you, Piet Oudolf.
If seeding goldenrod on a property already bursting with goldenrod species is bringing coals to Newcastle, colour me soot-black. Because that is what I did several years ago, on the basis of one September plant sighting in a border at the Montreal Botanical Garden. It was my first introduction to Solidago speciosa and I was charmed. The following November, I threw a few ounces of seed around our cottage property on Lake Muskoka, a few hours north of Toronto.
When scores of seedlings with bright-red stems and rather large, floppy leaves appeared the following spring, growing less than 30 cm (1 foot) high in their first season, I was a little puzzled as to their intentions. Little did I know that the showy goldenrod was growing tenacious tap roots well down into our sandy-gravelly, acidic soil until they hit the hard granite of the Precambrian Shield on which I garden here at the cottage. Then it was content and ready to grow tall the next season, though always with large, floppy basal leaves.
Speciosa means “showy” and showy goldenrod lives up to its billing. Depending on the richness of the soil and its moisture-retentiveness, it ranges in height from 120-150 cm (4 to 5 feet) and its dense inflorescence packed with tiny golden flowers is indeed very beautiful. As mentioned, the stem (not on all plants, but most) is rich red, adding to the visual appeal. But, like all its golden-flowered cousins, it is not a plant to encourage if you’re nervous about invasive tendencies for it is not only showy, but a little pushy, too. However, its single-stemmed growth habit means it isn’t quite as difficult to remove as a tangled thicket of Canada goldenrod (S. canadensis) or even the rough-leafed goldenrod (S. rugosa) shown below, whose roots found a devious hiding spot under huge boulders placed to hold the soil at the top of our hillside.
What is very distinctive about showy goldenrod is its ultra-late flowering season. Long after the bees have taken all the nectar from the Canada goldenrod, rough-leafed goldenrod, gray goldenrod (S. nemoralis) and stout goldenrod (S. squarrosa) and merging with the end of the season of stiff goldenrod (S. rigida), showy goldenrod comes along like an early autumn candy shop, ready to dispense its pollinator favours until after Canadian thanksgiving in October, barring a hard freeze. Males with 240mg/dl have moderate and severe risk to impotence because of heightened cholesterol serum. buy levitra from india http://www.devensec.com/news/Project_update_Sept_2014.pdf Thus, if you viagra without prescription have a peek here are thinking to purchase the product, you will need to consult a health care professional for appropriate diagnosis and necessary treatment. It is essential to maintain proper gap viagra sale of 24 hours or more between two doses. You have to refill them every devensec.com levitra online month for the coming 4 to 6 months which will eventually cost more than a pump.
With the many fall asters coming into bloom, it is now the sweet game in town for the bees. Bumble bees, other native bees and hoverflies are crazy about it and on a sunny day in late September or early October, the golden plumes are literally crawling with them. As night temperatures drop, I often find bumble bees sleeping on them in the morning, waiting for enough solar heat to power their wings. It will be the very last flower they see in their short lives.
And like all the other goldenrods, of course, it is a great cut flower, and charming in a late September bouquet, especially with other late season perennials like magenta-pink New York ironweed (Vernonia novaboracensis), sweet blackeyed Susan (Rudbeckia tomentosa) and sky-blue aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiensis).
And, no, goldenrods do not cause allergies – it’s the nefarious ragweed (Ambrosia artemesiifolia) blooming at the same time with its innocuous flowers that is the culprit.
Continuing our visit from Part One, on a hot June Saturday in New York, the High Line becomes a mecca for people of all ages. There were families and tons of tourists, judging from the accents I heard all around me. After all, what’s not to love about a linear park filled with singing birds and buzzing bees perched above the hustle-and-bustle and honking cabs of lower Manhattan? If you could catch a bit of shade beside the taller buildings, it was cool enough for a photo shoot.
There was even a wandering June bride, her photographer looking for the best funky opportunities.
Some people have wondered about the bits of lawn designed into this very flowery park. On a hot day, you definitely see the attraction – cartwheeling kids……
…..Or people getting off their feet for a few minutes on a patch of soft green turf.
And the benches come in handy too, if only to check on emails and Facebook while catching some early summer rays.
But the bees loved the sunshine, which warms the flower nectar and allows them to forage continuously. Here a honey bee seeks out food on Tradescantia ohiensis ‘Mrs. Loewer’. (All spiderworts are very attractive to bees.)
Red feather clover (Trifolium rubens) is a Piet Oudolf border staple, and the bumble bees love it. But the florets are too long for honey bees or small native bees.
The Siberian catmint (Nepeta siberica) was attracting the attention of big, lumbering carpenter bees.
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And the butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) was just beginning to come into bloom. A beautiful, long-flowering pollinator magnet from sandy prairies, it will hopefully attract monarch butterflies which use the plant, along with other milkweeds, as larval food.
I’ve been working on a list of design pairings showing superb placement of plants against lime-gold backgrounds, and this one made my list. Don’t you agree that Helenium autumnale ‘Rubinzwerg’ looks lovely against the foliage of Amsonia hubrichtii?
The High Line gets top marks for showing off rare magnolias – for New York City – in bloom long after the spring rush of the more common magnolias is over. Sweetbay (Magnolia virginiana) seemed very happy far from its old Virginia home.
And Ashe’s magnolia (M. macrophylla var. ashei), with its big leaves and massive blossoms, looked like something dropped in from a sultry, Alabama or Louisiana forest. Which is where they come from, but are seemingly thriving here in protected parts of the High Line between big building walls.
Finally, having walked and photographed my way along 16 elevated High Line blocks on this hot summer afternoon, I took my parched and weary self down the stairs at 30th Street in search of a long, tall drink!
P.S. To see an album of my photos of the High Line in spring 2012, check out my public Facebook album. (The album begins with a few pictures of a ceremony honouring the late Frank Cabot, founder of the Garden Conservancy).
