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The Once and Future Toronto Botanical Garden

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I visited the Toronto Botanical Garden this week, my third visit this year. Given the constraints placed on the garden (and I’ll get into those later), it looked pretty good. The three gardeners and volunteers have tackled most of the weeds in the main borders. The beautiful Piet Oudolf-designed Entry Border was its usual boisterous self, the spiky, white rattlesnake master consorting with the blue Russian sage….

….. and the bees were buzzing in the blazing stars (Liatris spicata).

The Entry Border sported new rails to keep out unruly, selfie-snapping visitors….

…. with a few noticeable plant additions that might not have been strictly ‘Oudolfian’, like the brilliant orange daylilies behind the rampaging Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firedance’, below  As I wrote in my 2-part, 2017 blog on the design of the border, Piet Oudolf-Meadow Maker–Part 1 and Part 2, the border was funded by the Garden Club of Toronto and constructed in 2006. Piet Oudolf recommended a full-time gardener as part of the ongoing maintenance of the entry garden. In his work with Chicago’s Lurie Garden (read my blog on the Lurie here), there was a multi-year ongoing relationship between him and the Lurie’s gardeners; that did not happen at the TBG due to financial constraints The complexity of this garden, its self-seeding plants and the ongoing assessment of performance stretches the capacity of a severely underfunded garden (I’ll get to that later, too). 

However, when I rounded the corner from the entry border to the entrance courtyard itself, I was dismayed. Red and blue salvias in Victorian ribbon planting with canna lilies. It felt a little like being in a 1950s municipal park.  

What happened to the creativity that should be the hallmark of a botanical garden, even in the current straitened circumstances?  The little square near the entrance is prime real estate, intended to be the greeting card for all who come to the TBG. In spring, it always hosts a colourful mix of bulbs; later swishing grasses and interesting annuals and biennals. But this?

These urns used to be filled with wonderful annuals and tropicals…

…now they’re filled with dwarf hemlocks. Just plain hemlocks.

Around the corner in the garden flanking the water channel in the Westview Terrace, there were impatiens plants sprinkled throughout the perennials. Given the prevalence of devastating IDM (Impatiens Downy Mildew) over the past decade, it was a shock to see them. But it was also disappointing from a creative point of view to have your grandmother’s impatiens in what should be an inspiring border filled with high performance perennials.    

And my spirits sagged further when I walked into the Edibles Garden – or what used to be the productive, instructive, nutritious Edibles Garden – to find it filled with bedding annuals in a new Trial Garden. The “Wild for Bees” installation would not be seeing a lot of activity with the annuals chosen here.

I know Ball Flora well; I’ve been to their display gardens outside Chicago as part of a bloggers’ tour. They do good work and I’m sure they’re happy to be featured here and make it an attractive partnership, financially speaking, for the TBG. But expanses of annuals are really not showing off what should be cutting edge planting design for a garden like ours.  

Not to mention that the Edibles Garden as it was conceived was a source of hundreds of pounds of annual donations to the North York Food Bank. Here are some of my photos from previous years. This was 2014.

And 2016’s edibles.

A visitor from Victoria looked quizzical. When I asked what he thought, he said “They seem to be growing very common plants here.”  Indeed. Instead of lantanas and petunias, what about a garden of fragrance in front of this hedge, with lilies, nicotiana, dianthus, scented peonies, heliotrope, phlox, dwarf lilac, daphne, hyacinths, clethra, etc?  The TBG is light on small ‘theme gardens’ that help people design their own spaces

A bed in the Beryl Ivey Knot Garden had been planted bizarrely with Scotch thistle (Onopordum acanthium), which is as invasive a self-seeder as it is gawky. Why it would be plunked in this formal space is beyond me.

When I walked towards the perennial borders, I passed the window-box planters adjacent to the Spiral Garden. There must have been left-over red and blue salvia because these looked pedestrian, too.

In 2016, I wrote a blog on the TBG’s planter designs featuring the great creativity of the garden’s previous horticulturist Paul Zammit. The photo below shows three years of designs in these planters.

Sadly, through a lack of funding and administrative support, the TBG lost the creative minds of both the previous chief horticulturists, Paul Zammit and Paul Gellatly. My purpose here is not to retread the institutional woes, exacerbated greatly by Covid, that led to the May 22nd Globe & Mail story. It is to reflect on what made the garden brilliant as an underfunded 4-acre jewel and what looms ahead as a major 35-acre botanical garden (final concept plan below), once the merger with Edwards Gardens is complete.

On that note, I attended all three community engagement meetings with landscape architects and city planners, so I know a little of what went into the planning of the new garden, as spearheaded skilfully by former Executive Director Harry Jongerden with creative input by landscape architect W. Gary Smith, below, pointing out details on the screen. 

I care very much about the garden. As well as being a long-time member of the TBG and the Civic Garden Centre before that, I have written many blogs about it: the spring tulip extravaganza; the Blossom Party; the Woman-to-Woman luncheon; the annual Through the Garden Gate Tour, and more. Since May 2007, I tallied 152 visits to photograph the garden; these provided me with the images for the seasonal photo gallery that was on the TBG’s website for several years….

……as well as for my blogs and images the garden needed from time to time. Below is garden philanthropist Kathy Dembroski at the 2018 luncheon; she and her husband George Dembroski….

….were the lead donors for the award-winning Silver LEED building opened in their name, The George and Kathy Dembroski Centre for Horticulture.

In my 33-year career as a freelance garden writer and photographer, I’ve also visited and written about a vast number of public botanic gardens, from New York, below, to Chicago, Cape Town’s Kirstenbosch, Christchurch, Kew Gardens, Los Angeles, Malaysia, Saigon and Kyoto, as well as favourite Vancouver gardens like VanDusen and UBC Botanical, among many others. I’ve also spent a lot of time in privately-funded public gardens like Chanticleer near Philadelphia and Wave Hill in the Bronx and at the iconic High Line in New York City. So I am very familiar with a broad variety of public gardens, large and small.

My husband Doug and I have been regular TBG donors for many years. As well, I have contributed various articles and donated photos to the Trellis magazine (my cover story on cottage gardening, below).

Our daughter was married at the TBG in October 2012, and we have beautiful memories of that showery autumn day.

I especially loved seeing Meredith and her attendants standing in front of the donor panels featuring my own fern photos. Our rental of the facility nine years ago tallied $5,700 for her wedding, so I know how devastating 16 months of Covid closure has been for TBG rental revenues….

….. not to mention the loss of sales from two consecutive annual plant sales and the summer fundraiser garden tour.

*******

Why am I writing this blog? It’s not to trumpet my work in gardening, but to share a concern I have. Following the TBG’s Annual General Meeting in June – an online meeting that painted everything as rosy and was carefully scripted to exclude any critical commentary from members upset with board decisions – acting Board Chair Gordon Ashworth encouraged members to send in any issues they might have. This is my response.  In a word, it has to do with MONEY. At 35 acres, the expanded TBG will present both a great opportunity and an ongoing challenge to bring ground-breaking horticultural and environmental displays to Greater Toronto’s 6 million people, as well as providing inspired educational programs for children and adults. Ironically, the TBG’s current fiscal challenges have come at the same time as the federal and provincial governments announced a $2.2 million investment in Burlington’s Royal Botanical Gardens, below, as part of its 25-year master plan. Without taking anything away from the RBG and notwithstanding its 300 acres of gardens and 2400 acres of land stewardship, it is not positioned in the centre of the 4th largest metropolis in North America.

In 2012, I attended a city council meeting at City Hall to support the TBG’s then Executive Director, Aldona Satterthwaite as she begged for more financial support than the paltry $25,000 the city has traditionally given the garden in order to overcome a small deficit caused by the lack of potential revenue owing to the protracted parking lot renovation, a lot used mutually by Edwards Gardens and the TBG. I made the photo below in spring 2012; the work went on for months and months. Naturally, facilities rentals declined sharply. Through the efforts of Ward 15 City Councillor Jaye Robinson, bridge funding was secured to keep the garden solvent.

At that City Hall meeting, former Councillor Janet Davis (my doppelgänger) asked me during a scrum if I knew how much other gardens charged for admission. I answered that most had an admission fee except ours. In the case of privately-run, 55-acre Butchart Gardens in Victoria, which receives more than a million visitors annually, it is very steep, reflecting the cost of running a world-class garden (not a botanical garden, but useful for comparison). In 2013 when I photographed the entrance, below, it was $28; it’s now $36.  Well-run, creative gardens cost money. It’s that simple.  

I make this point because one of the major conditions in the expansion plan between the City of Toronto and the TBG is that admission to the expanded 35-acre botanical garden be free. At first glance, this is in keeping with ‘park’ policies; you don’t pay to visit High Park or any of the city’s many excellent parks, and Edwards Gardens is a large ravine park currently accessed via the renovated parking lot whose significant parking fees now thankfully accrue to the TBG. But once the TBG and the park are amalgamated, is free entry really the right financial vision for a botanical garden in the 4th largest city in North America?  Or is it a lack of vision rooted in unreality?  Or just thinking small? Here is a table I made with the admission costs and membership fees of botanical gardens I’ve visited. 

BOTANICAL GARDENAdult EntryAnnual Membership
   
Toronto Botanical GardenFree$45
Royal Botanical Garden$19.50$85
Montreal Botanical Garden$16.50/21.50*$45
VanDusen Botanical Garden$11.70/8.40*$45
UBC Botanical Garden$10$55
Butchart Gardens$36$69 (annual pass)
New York Botanical Garden$28-23$98
Chicago Botanic Garden$24-26*$99-$72*
Missouri Botanical Garden$14-6*$50
Denver Botanic Garden$15$55
San Francisco Botanical Garden$12/9*$70
   
*Variable pricing due to weekend/weekday, seasonal, or geographic parameters.  

The now defeated Rail Deck Park project proposal is a cautionary tale of planning without financing. In a May 13th editorial, the Toronto Star put the blame for the failure of the Rail Deck Park at the feet of the city and Mayor John Tory. “In 2017, the city designated the rail corridor as parkland but still didn’t move to acquire the air rights, through a negotiated purchase or expropriation if necessary. And it didn’t earmark the estimated $1.7 billion the project would cost or even explain how it intended to fund Toronto’s “next great gathering space.”  It would be disastrous if our expanded TBG suffered from the same lack of realistic financial planning. Its needs will be much greater than a municipal park.

In her opening remarks during the June AGM, Councillor Jaye Robinson said that “getting the Master Plan through city council was not for the faint of heart. Very little support, quite frankly, but I got it through by compromising and we’re very excited to see this institution grow to 35 acres.” She also said that she and Ward 25 Councillor Jennifer McKelvie moved a motion to make 2022 The Year of the Garden in Toronto. That will be great — but why so little support?

We can only hope that life will return to some semblance of normal before long, and that activities will resume that require rental facilities like the TBG, thus returning it to a level of financial security. Development personnel will start knocking on doors looking for donors for the exciting expansion. And the lead landscape design firm PMA Landscape Architects will begin rolling out detailed designs for the new garden areas. The relationship between current city park personnel and TBG staff and volunteers, like those below, will hopefully be engineered to co-exist smoothly. But my fervent wish is that the amalgamation comes with a better financial framework from the city, province and federal governments that recognizes the real importance of the botanical garden to Canada’s largest city and its diverse and growing population.

On that note, I leave you with a little musical glimpse at the other population that the Toronto Botanical Garden serves.

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Designing with Peonies

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

….. with many in coral and salmon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Allium siculum is a great pollinator plant, too!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Early Spring Blossoms at the Toronto Botanical Garden

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I popped by the Toronto Botanical Garden this morning for a quick look at what’s in bloom. It’s been such a long, cold winter and reluctant spring, an hour in the garden was just the therapy I needed. So what did I see?  Well, in all the years I’ve been photographing at the TBG, I’ve never spied the cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) in the hedge cages in flower. With the ‘marcescent’ foliage (persisting through winter) of the beeches (Fagus sylvatica), it made a unique and lovely entrance to the George and Kathy Dembroski Centre for Horticulture, the main building.

There were loads of hellebores doing their thing. Helleborus ‘Red Lady’ is a long-time performer and has multiplied beautifully beside the stone wall of the building. I loved the sober backdrop it made for flamboyant Narcissus ‘Tiritomba’.

I found a nice assortment of hellebores under the ‘Merrill’ magnolia just opening. This is Helleborus x ericsmithii HGC Merlin (‘Coseh 810’). Isn’t it lovely?

Helleborus x ballardiae HGC Cinnamon Snow (‘Coseh 700’) was spicing things up.

And Helleborus x ballardiae HGC Ice Breaker Prelude (‘Coseh 830’) was meltingly gorgeous.

In a protected corner of the Westview Terrace, Magnolia x loebneri ‘Leonard Messel’ was in full flower.

I could photograph magnolias all day.

Containers of spring bulbs brought a welcome note of colour.

Nearby was a little reticulated iris still in flower. Though it was labelled differently, I think its the McMurtrie cultivar Iris reticulata ‘Velvet Smile’.
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On the bank where donkey tail spurge (Euphorbia myrsinites) scrambles, the variegated Tulipa praestans ‘Unicum’ was in flower.

Incidentally, the tulip season at the Toronto Botanical Garden is very long and beautiful. I wrote a long blog last year about TBG’s tulip stunning combinations.

Hyacinths (Hyacinthus orientalis) just need a little warmth to emit their perfume……

….. and even graced the path to the TBG’s big compost piles, along with daffodils.

Speaking of daffodils, I thought this one in the Entrance Courtyard was pretty spectacular. Meet Narcissus ‘British Gamble’.

The small bulbs were mostly finished, but glory-of-the-snow Scillia luciliae ‘Pink Giant’ (formerly Chionodoxa) was fading but still beautiful.

As I walked along the Piet Oudolf-designed entry border toward my car, I saw a favourite tulip, T. kaufmanniana ‘Ice Stick’ looking slender and lovely beside emerging perennials that will soon fill the garden with blossoms that will charm visitors until autumn. And I thought how wonderful each and every spring seems, to the winter-weary gardener.

PS – I will very soon get back to New Zealand… and the Argentina part of our wine tour. Promise! (Unless spring keeps beguiling me……..)

 

Design With Tulips Like the (Soon-to-be-Much Bigger) Toronto Botanical Garden

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In the past week, a few tidbits of information came across my desk. One was that the National Garden Bureau declared 2018 to be “The Year of the Tulip”. Well…. yawn. I tend to be a bit jaded on “The Year of”…. anything. I suppose it’s my nature to be cynical (ha!), but sometimes these public relation campaigns seem to be more about pumping sales (see those “Buy Now” links in the NGB’s right hand column? they lead to a Pennsylvania bulb dealer) than recognizing a true standout plant – or, as they say at the National Garden Bureau, a “bulb crop”.  Anyway, it is spring, and I love tulips (that’s my front garden last spring from a previous blog, below), so okay, I’ll dial back my cynicism. YAY tulips! It’s your year! Party like it’s 1999!

The other tidbit that crossed my desk was a press release from the Toronto Botanical Garden, below.

This was BIG NEWS and more than 3 years in the making, thanks to the inspiration and impetus from Executive Director Harry Jongerden and the design and consulting skills of Forrec Ltd., W. Gary Smith and Lord Cultural Resources. From the initial meeting I attended in January 2015, when the TBG unveiled its “Integrated Conceptual Proposals”, to the three community input meetings hosted by the TBG and its consultants and landscape architects and the City of Toronto, below, to May 2018’s announcement, it represents a massive leap for our little jewel of a botanical garden.

My sincere wish is that this brave new parks/not-for-profit partnership gets all the financial resources it needs to create a magnificent, world-class garden in the fourth largest metropolitan city in North America!

So, given how prone I am to dubiously connecting one thing with another – and given that it IS spring – here  are some fabulous ideas for tulips courtesy of the Toronto Botanical Garden and my 10-year archive of photos there, since the year it renamed itself and gave us so much inspiration on its 4 acres, soon to be 35 acres!

Plant them with daffodils!

This should be obvious, but it’s amazing that more people don’t interplant and underplant tulips with daffodils. The TBG is all over this idea, and here are some of the prettiest examples, starting with tiny daffodils (I’m going to guess ‘Tête à Tête‘) under the Darwin Hybrid tulip ‘World Peace’.

What about Tulipa ‘Orange Emperor’ with Narcissus ‘Thalia’?

If you like butterfly or split corona daffodils, try Narcissus ‘Printal’ with ‘Orange Emperor’.

Speaking of the Fosteriana tulip ‘Orange Emperor’, it plays a big spring role at the TBG. Here it is at the start of the Piet Oudolf-designed Entry Border with Narcissus ‘Professor Einstein’. So sturdy!

And this charming duo is Tulipa ‘Tom Pouce’ and Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’.

Plant them with grape hyacinths & real hyacinths!

If you’ve been to Holland’s Keukenhof Gardens in springtime, you’ll be familiar with those “rivers of blue” grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum). You can do that in your own garden, you know.  When you’re planting your tulips, give them little rivers or lakes or even puddles of blue companions, like this.  The light pink tulip here is ‘Ollioules’, the purple is ‘Passionale’, and the double narcissus is ‘Cheerfulness’.

Years ago, I found this duo at the TBG: Tulipa saxatilis ‘Lilac Wonder’ and Muscari armeniacum. Nice, right?

And look at this sumptuous vignette: Tulipa ‘Fire Queen’ with blue grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum and the emerging chartreuse foliage of golden tansy (Tanacetum vulgare ‘Isla Gold’).

I wish I had a name for the early tulip planted under the ‘Crimson Queen’ Japanese maple with its deep-red emerging leaves, below. But given that it’s interplanted with early-season hyacinths, it’s bound to be a single early tulip like ‘Couleur Cardinal’.

This little species tulip T. turkestanica seems right at home with fragrant hyacinths….

….as does the species T. humilis var. violacea.

Plant them with summer snowflake!

I don’t see a lot of summer snowflake (Leucojum aestivum) – which, despite its name, blooms in mid-spring, not summer – used in gardens, but it can be very pretty as a tulip companion. Here is L. aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’ with ‘Daydream’…..

…. and in a more shaded position enhancing Tulipa sylvestris, the woodland tulip.

Pair them with emerging shrubs!

Why waste the drama of dark-leaved shrubs like Weigela ‘Wine & Roses’, when you can surround it with Tulipa ‘Queen of Night’? The peach tulip here is ‘Menton’, the white is ‘White Triumphator’.

Fothergilla gardenii is a spring-flowering native northeastern shrub that’s wonderful in combination with mid to late-season tulips. Here it is at Toronto Botanical Garden this spring.

Don’t forget that colourful coniferous shrubs can pair up nicely with tulips, like Tulipa ‘Purple Dream’ with the lime-gold foliage of dwarf golden arborvitae (Platycladus orientalis ‘Aurea Nana’).

Combine them with spring-flowering perennials!

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Then there’s Bergenia or ‘pigsqueak’ (why? I don’t know). This cultivar is ‘Eden’s Dark Margin’ and it’s been paired with Tulipa ‘Ice Stick’ and a dusky purple hellebore.

As an aside to ‘Ice Stick’, I found this little Kaufmanniana hybrid to be quite attractive to bees at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

The amsonias flower early and look great with late tulips. This is Amsonia orientalis with a white-edged tulip I believe is the triumph tulip ‘Kung Fu’ and the blowsy double early tulip ‘Monte Orange’.

And I love this serene combination of blue Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) with Tulipa ‘Spring Green’.

…. and variegated Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum x hybridum ‘Striatum’) with Tulipa ‘Exotic Emperor’.

Cushion spurge (Euphorbia polychroma) is one of the earliest perennials and combines nicely with tulips of all colours. Shown below is pink ‘Ollioules’.

Combine them with Ornamental Grasses!

I adored this soft Tulipa ‘Silverstream’ and Carex combo from 2009, and some of those, variegated, colour-variable tulips still pop up, though the carex is long gone. But that’s the funny thing with carex. The brown New Zealand species like C. buchananii and C. comans often look pretty much the same in spring even when they’ve died in winter, so they make good tulip companions.

This is Deschampsia caespitosa with the burgundy-yellow, late tulip ‘Gavota’ and dark ‘Queen of Night’.  I think this is stunning.

And you can weave tulips like a colourful river through grasses, as was done with these double-flowered tulips ‘Pink Star’ and ‘Monte Orange’ through emerging Calamagrostis brachytricha.

Fill their dance cards with pretty cousins!

Sometimes, certain tulips just seem to go well together, and the TBG has created some lovely combinations over the years. This pair is tulip royalty ‘Fire Queen’ and ‘Pretty Princess’.

In the same bed along Lawrence Avenue is a delicate pairing of purple Tulipa ‘Rem’s Favourite’ with pink ‘Playgirl‘.

Those romantic hues are used to lovely effect in Nature’s Garden, in the combination below of the triumph tulip ‘Synaeada Blue’ with two luscious parrot tulips, ‘Negrita Parrot’ and ‘Pink Vision’.

Playing a double striped against a single striped with similar colouring works with the double late tulip ‘Cartouche’ and the triumph tulip ‘Carnaval de Rio’ (aka ‘Canada 150’).

I thought this was a very clever combination of fringed tulips, with one colour reversing the other. The red is ‘Flamenco’; the yellow is ‘Davenport’.

And sometimes you have a tulip so beautiful, like luminous, yellow ‘Akebono’ (a double sport of the Darwin Hybrid ‘Jewel of Spring’), below, that anything looks good with it, including ‘Orange Emperor’ and ‘Purple Dream’.

You can riff on a cultivar name and get pretty combinations, like ‘Apricot Delight’ with ‘Apricot Impression‘ (both Darwin Hybrids).

I am very fond of pink and yellow combinations in spring, and this vignette from 2016 was one of my favourites: ‘Rosy Delight’, ‘Design Impression’, ‘Jenny’ and yellow ‘West Point’. (It should be noted that spring weather will often accelerate certain tulip types or delay others, and what combines one spring might be sequential the following spring – the luck of the draw.)

I may be a subtle meadow girl the rest of the year, but I don’t mind a boisterous spring garden party. How about this double-flowered tulip duo: yellow-orange-red ‘Sun Lover’ and ‘Double Negrita’?

Or this sunny party act: ‘Fire Wings‘and the late double ‘Sundowner’, with its changing sunset hues.

In truth, I love all tulips. After 5 months of winter, we all want a little party of colour, I think, and tulips offer an easy way to celebrate. Here’s a multicolour party, courtesy of the TBG.

Many of these tulips are in plantings donated by my friends Mary Fisher (the Mary Fisher Spring Garden near the shop) and Bob & Anne Fisher and other family members (the Ruby Fisher garden) near the fence in the Oudolf entry border.  Hurray to them!  And, on that cheerful note, I’d like to raise a glass – a tulip glass with a long stem – to Sandra Pella and Paul Zammit and the gardening staff of the Toronto Botanical Garden on its lovely tulip displays. And also a toast to Harry Jongerden and a much-expanded garden with a much-expanded vision (and hopefully, a much-expanded gardening staff)!

Finally, I would like to send out a little shout to the woman who supplies many of the Toronto Botanical Garden’s spring bulbs, my friend Caroline de Vries. If you’re Canadian and looking to buy excellent-quality bulbs at a very good price, check out Caroline’s company  https://flowerbulbsrus.com/.  It’s where I buy my bulbs!