Tag Archives: Toronto

Garden Arbours & Pergolas

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It’s the dead of winter in my part of Canada, the garden buried today under more than a foot of snow (which always makes me laugh, to see photos from milder climates of ‘the winter garden’ and how to design for that season). But winter is always a good time to think about plans for the garden – especially those involving ways to make it more inviting to those who want to spend time relaxing, dining or napping in it. Enter those structures — sometimes architectural, sometimes rustic, sometimes just plain whimsical — that transform the garden from a ‘place for plants’ to a sanctuary for people. I’m thinking mostly about arbours and pergolas, two words that have come to mean almost the same thing, but in fact have different roots. Pergola comes from the Latin “pergula” for “projecting roof”, meaning an open-work-roof structure attached to (or immediately adjacent to) the house. Arbor/arbour derives from the French and Old English “herbere“, originally meaning a herb garden, but later a structure for supporting heavy vines such as grapes. Below is an illustration of a 16th-century German celebration in an outdoor arbour or pavilion, taken from a 1992 book on my shelf called Decorating Eden by Elizabeth Wikinson and Marjorie Henderson.

In time, “arbour” evolved to mean a simple structure with an open-work roof within the garden, sometimes containing a seat. Today, those words are almost interchangeable and encompass myriad styles, from barebones rustic to architecturally ornate. Let’s start with one of my favourites, because it reflects the talent and style of my dear, late friend Penny Arthurs, aka The Chelsea Gardener, who designed and built this arbour in her Toronto garden. Teal stain transforms the enclosing walls and cross-beams through which Boston ivy creeps. The front posts at left support climbing roses, while the ‘floor’ is the same brickwork Penny used in the rest of her garden. The rustic bench completes the scene. I so miss Penny and wrote a blog about her in memory.

In Shirley William’s garden in North Grafton, Mass., a rustic arbour featuring rough-hewn uprights and cross pieces supported climbing vines that were just coming into leaf when I was there in May a few years ago. It was furnished with comfy chairs for taking a weeding break. I wrote a blog called “Spring at Brigham Hill Farm” after my visit to this delightful garden.

Derek Bennett’s food-forward Toronto garden included this trellised arbour for al fresco dining – featuring an overhead lamp and a rustic, dry-laid brick floor. Morning glories grew through the trellis and basil and tomatoes grew in pots nearby.

This formal poolside Toronto structure seen on a garden tour seems best described as a pergola, despite being away from the house. Architect-designed to be integrated into the raised terrace, its supports are strong enough for the massive overhead wisteria about to burst into bloom.

A well-known pergola at Wave Hill garden in the Bronx features an open wall for guests to view the Hudson River and New Jersey’s Palisades on the far shore. It is surrounded by and hung with containers of plants, many rare. Have a look at my blog on Wonderful Wave Hill.

In Wave Hill’s famous Flower Garden, rustic arbours with built-in seats face each other across the colour-themed garden. One is wreathed in climbing roses……

…. while the other hosts roses and dainty Clematis ‘Betty Corning’.

I loved the bright blue beams of this “ramada” (Spanish for open air structure covered in branches) in the herb garden of the Tucson Botanical Garden. Why don’t more people use colour like this in the garden?

A massive white wisteria rests on sturdy overhead beams in the Pond Arbor at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, PA. The beams are supported at the back in brackets attached to the stone wall of the Gravel Garden, above and behind it, and in front by sturdy, stone-faced, concrete posts. Guests can rest in Chanticleer’s iconic chairs, listening to the breeze ruffle the ‘Everillo’ sedge and fullmoon maple nearby. Chanticleer is my favourite small public garden in the world! Here’s my latest 2-part blog from Sept. 2023.

At the Idaho Botanical Garden in Boise, a series of arbors in the English Garden fitted with steel mesh on the overhead timbers support clematis, climbing roses and other vines . They contain benches so visitors can stop and enjoy the sound of the central fountain. Here’s my 2017 blog on the Idaho Botanical Garden, which highlights native plants on the Lewis & Clark Trail.

I walked through the aquamarine pergola/colonnade in the Walled Garden at Old Westbury Gardens on Long Island – home of the wealthy Phipps family – a few decades ago, so this photo could be out of date. But I was delighted to see the garden used as a location for the society opening of “the botanic garden” in HBO’s ‘The Gilded Age’ a few months ago. It features a border of ferns and wisteria overhead.

At Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., landscape architect Beatrix Farrand originally designed the Arbor Terrace in the 1920s as one of seven garden rooms on the property. In 1944, it was re-imagined by owner Mildred Bliss with designer Ruth Harvey, its lawn replaced by Tennessee stone and the oak arbor rebuilt out of cypress. You can read my blog on Dumbarton Oaks – including the grape arbor – here.

A large arbour decorated with hanging ornaments encloses an outdoor seating area in Colleen Jamison’s Austin, Texas garden: a perfect spot to relax on warm evenings. Here’s my blog “Birds, Bling and Beguiling Brown” on Colleen’s garden.

This beautiful dining arbour designed by Maureen Sedran of Mark Hartley Landscape Architects was on a Toronto garden tour ages ago. I loved that the urn fountain was near enough to create a soothing soundtrack for the lucky people enjoying dining under the suspended hurricane lamp.

Maureen Sedran of Mark Hartley Associates also designed this airy arbour and the surounding garden featuring an elegant white redbud (Cercis canadensis f. alba).

For several years when we attended the Shaw Festival in Ontario’s Niagara-on-the-Lake, we stayed with friends at Lakewinds Bed & Breakfast. It had a beautiful garden, a covered veranda with comfy seating and this pergola dripping with wisteria. Sadly the owners moved on – but of course I wrote a blog!

When we were on our South Africa garden tour years ago, the garden of Henk Scholtz was a delight. I wrote a blog about his “wonderful, whimsical garden” that included the photo below, of Henk’s grape pergola.

Architect Minky Lidchi’s ornate Johannesburg garden did not feature a traditional pergola, but used metal beams between sturdy concrete pillars blanked with vines to create an airy overhead effect. Here’s my blog on Minky’s garden.

I liked this metal chandelier hung amidst the wisteria in the dining pergola of Stellenberg Garden, in Cape Town, South Africa. Of course I wrote a blog about this Cape Dutch Class house and garden.

On a 2022 wine tour of Sicily, we had an outdoor tasting under an interesting shade pergola/awning at Principi di Butera winery. It would be easy to attach a canvas above the overhead pole array to provide more shade.

Sometimes, privacy is as important in an outdoor structure as overhead shade or vines. In artist Bev Stableforth’s garden in Creemore, Ontario, outdoor draperies can be drawn to create a sense of intimate sanctuary.

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MY GARDEN

When we did some landscaping in 1988, having a two-level deck off the back of our 1915 house helped ease the transition from the back door to the garden in a way that regular stairs would not. An architect neighbour more accustomed to designing museums did the original rough design – placing the structure on 16 cement sono-tubes – a foundation our contractor swore could support a small house. It had an inner bench, a milled-lattice privacy screen and a solid cedar wall that made the deck feel like the prow of a ship. I loved it, but wanted something a little more romantic right outside the door. So a few years later, I hired a carpenter to build a pergola and planted a wisteria in the garden to the right of the deck, the idea being it would reward me with purple flowers each spring. That did not happen, the deck being a little too shady, but the foliage was pretty. (Some of you might have read my poem ‘Wisterical’ about my flower-shy vine.)

However, late afternoon was often too sunny so I hemmed up three sections of pink candy-striped fabric and suspended them via eyelet rings between the cross-pieces. It looked very festive! And I had the chunky table built to fit the space.

In the 1990s, my husband still had his company and we hosted a few garden parties, inviting friends and clients. The bar in the pergola was a popular first stop.

The post featured my artist son’s clay mask and at the base, an assortment of containers filled with annuals and perfumed star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides), which I brought indoors in autumn to overwinter.

I strung lights in the wisteria for evening dinners.

A 1998 garden party saw us take precautions against rain with a marquee that went right up and over the deck and pergola.

It was very romantic – though the rain stopped in late afternoon.

The deck from the garden.

I sewed up some cushions for the built-in-bench and the sling chairs. But eventually the non-flowering wisteria irritated me enough to get rid of it. Though it was too big to dig up, I cut it back and put a garbage bag over the bottom of the trunk until it gave its last gasp. Then I planted a hybrid Asian clematis called C. x fargesoides that features small white summer flowers and rampant growth to more than 20 feet.

This was the view of the pergola and privacy screen from beside the deck.

But the Asian clematis was a nuisance to try to train on the sparse overhead boards, as you see here.

And by 2009, the wood on the deck – including the pergola – had sustained more than 20 years of rot (especially sitting under a 70-foot black walnut that rained nuts and leaves down each autumn) so a rebuild was in order. Those 16 cement sonotubes were still in good shape, howver!

And admitting defeat on the deck pergola idea, I opted instead for a simpler design – no benches, a traditional railing wall that would dry out better than the solid cedar wall and iron outdoor furniture. Not as romantic, but less maintenance.

And that’s the end of my winter contemplation of pergolas and arbours. If you’re interested in garden construction, you might want to read my blog on our garden path and gate, “The Gate, the Grate, the Path”, featuring the 35-year-old magazine cover below of my gate on the first issue of Canadian Gardening Magazine in Feb/March 1990.

The Gate, the Grate, the Path

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We’ve now lived in our 1916 Toronto house for more than 40 years, making us one of the old-timers on the block. When we moved in back in 1983, there was a long driveway leading to a ramshackle garage which was too small for modern cars but just right for a family of raccoons who did not take kindly to being evicted. In fact, most of the driveway was too narrow for a car so we decided to create a side garden halfway down it in place of the last 40 feet of asphalt, bisected by a winding path behind a pretty arched gate. That was 1988. At the time, the publisher of Canadian Gardening magazine lived in the house behind me and thought my gate would make a good cover for the very first issue of the magazine, launched in 1990 and published for 25 years, finally closing down in 2015. Apart from writing stories for three of its editors in that quarter-century, they also became very good friends. And as you see, back in 1988 I was growing impatiens in the shade, as were most gardeners.

A few years later, I wrote a story on the gate and garden for Fine Gardening magazine, title page below. In the article, I tallied up the costs: $960 US for the gate and fence panels (the gate incorporated a “see-through” made from an old brass heating grate we found while renovating the house); $500 for the path, including breaking up and removing the asphalt as far as the driveway’s original limestone grit and laying down concrete pavers; and a load of topsoil and plants to bring the total to about $2,000. I cannot imagine doing this today for less than $10,000, likely more. Only 9-1/2 feet separated our house from the neighbour’s fence, so the path took up 3-1/2 feet with 3 feet of garden on either side. To complicate matters, a black walnut tree (Juglans nigra) that had likely been small when our house was built during the First World War was now a hulking 70-footer, its big trunk straddling the property line, the allelopathic juglone secreted by its leaves and roots toxic to certain plants growing underneath it.

As the years passed, the walnut tree needed periodic pruning and cabling. On one occasion, an arborist working in the branches above dropped a heavy branch onto the gate and broke the arch.  But even without it, the gate added a certain flair to the house – I even gave it a big Christmas wreath for several years. I had planted the two half-whiskey-barrels flanking the gate with ‘Green Velvet’ boxwood shrubs (a Canadian introduction) around 1990, though I was warned they wouldn’t survive the first winter. Not only did they survive that winter, they lived in the barrels with no care except an occasional summer watering and shearing for more than 30 years! And in the photo below you can see the first tendrils of a bird-seeded Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) beginning to climb the fence panel at right.

In 2010, I designed and had built a screen to hide the recycling and trash containers, staining it to match the gate and house.  (You can see the long crack forming in our old driveway here.)

I had designed a driveway utilities screen for a gardening client in the 1990s, so while I had contractors at the house rebuilding our sundeck, I thought it was a good chance to utilize the design myself. Because as much as I approve of recycling, I can’t stand the look of plastic bins.

Meanwhile, the little sideyard garden grew and I learned which plants can tolerate living under a black walnut. Dry shade was a more important consideration, since the area is rarely watered except by rain and the tree sucks up much ground moisture. The shiny groundcover leaves are European ginger (Asarum europaeum); uber-invasive lily-of-the-valley, front right, makes its home there; and native Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum), front left, does very well, too.  The tall shrub at left is alternate-leaf dogwood (Cornus alternifolia), my favourite native shrub and a seedling of one I planted in the back garden in the 1990s.  The boughs of white cedar (Thuja arborvitae) come from my neighbour’s tree over the fence.

Here is the alternate-leaf dogwood in flower on May 22, 2012.

Move a little further along the path in this 2013 photo and you can see the double iron arch I installed atop 4×4 posts, over which I grew what I purchased as a native bittersweet vine but turned out to be the invasive Asian counterpart. The paver path circles around our lower deck to become a patio adjoining a lily pond in the back garden.

I planted a few bulbs of Corydalis solida in 2011 and they now carpet the sunniest part of the path garden in spring, but die away quickly as the Solomon’s seals send their green spears up.

There are native spring ephemerals in the path too, like mayapple and Hepatica acutiloba, below.

Lily-of-the-valley grows here, often in carpets – as it does in the rest of my garden. It’s always strange for me to see garden centres selling a few pips in a pot for $. I could be a millionaire, I think! Then I remember I’d have to dig them out, which is much easier said than done. But they are lovely in a little vase and they do make a very fun and fragrant garden party hat, as I’ve blogged before.

Here, looking towards the gate from the deck are the Solomon seals in a photo from May 24, 2016. Note the thick trunks of the bittersweet vine coiling up the posts.

Just a little bit on Boston ivy, shown climbing onto the gate in July 2015. Because it adheres via adhesive sticker aerial roots, I’m never keen to let this invasive climb our house and attach to the old mortar. But I thought it might add some interest to the gate, so I’ve let it grow while keeping it trimmed.

Inserting the see-through grate into the gate wasn’t an original idea; I’d seen various versions on garden tours. But knowing it had come from this house made it special – and I liked the fact that it lost its shininess and took on a rusty patina.  It framed the garden beyond like a peek into a colourful jewel box.

As the Boston ivy continued its journey across the gate on Oct. 16, 2019, I let its tendrils feel their way. In autumn it turned crimson, trailing across the view through the grate of orange sumac and azure blue monkshood and sumac at the back of the garden.

Here is the long view on that day, showing the path littered with yellow autumn leaves from the black walnut and the garden beyond.

Notice how the juvenile probing leaves of Boston ivy are shaped very differently from the leaves on the older wood in the next photos. They’re almost heart-shaped….

…. compared with the three-lobed (tricuspid) foliage emerging from the older wood in 2020.

Boston ivy is one of the best species to show the effect of summer sunshine on the pigments of the autumn leaves. Where one leaf shades another, the shaded section does not turn red in fall, but reveals the accessory yellow photosynthetic pigments.

As the alien bittersweet vine grew across the iron arches, it framed the view to the garden in an intriguing way, but it also latched on to everything nearby, including the dogwood shrub and the house’s downpipes.  I had to use a stepladder to try to thin it out and prune it away from both.

But I did love walking down the shady path in June to see my neighbour’s beauty bush (Linnea amabilis, formerly Kolkwitzia) in full flower over the fence.

Alas, all that weight on the arches and the four old posts holding them up finally took its toll. The vine collapsed onto the path in summer 2021 and everything had to be chopped up, dug up and removed.  (And this man was not too thrilled to be doing it.) But bittersweet doesn’t give up easily; every year it sends up shoots (some through the deck boards) from bits of root left behind, reminding us that it would like to return.

And that crack in the driveway? Eventually it opened, cracked more and formed more openings that turned into ankle-turning crevices. So the driveway had to be replaced in 2022.   And with the old asphalt went the 1990 half-whiskey-barrels and the 30-year-old boxwoods, since it was impossible to work around them and the barrels had started to fall apart.            

Surface roots from the black walnut had been lifting the path’s concrete pavers for years until they became unsafe and I had to warn visitors to watch their step coming into the back garden. I knew the time had come to fix the path.

Black walnut is a tap-rooted tree, so the surface roots can take some cutting back before much damage is done to the canopy…

…. but the Toronto company I hired called “Leveled Ground” said they would not cut surface roots bigger than a “toonie”, about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. This offending root got cut.

In July 2023, a team of guys arrived to lift up all the pavers….

…. stacking them carefully in the new driveway.

With all the pavers removed, they laid down a new layer of limestone grit, atop the layer put down under the old path in 1988, atop the layer from the original First World War driveway.

Now the right side of the garden under the black walnut is a few inches higher than the newly leveled path.  After all the grit was laid down, they used a mechanical compactor to compress it, then put the old pavers back, adding sand between the cracks and using the compactor to compress the entire path again before sweeping it clean.

This is what the path looked like 2 weeks after Leveled Ground departed. Sturdy, flat and safe.

I’m not sure how long the old black walnut will last. For that matter, I’m not sure how long we’ll last in the house – many of our friends have opted to move into condominiums as they’ve aged. But I cannot imagine life without a garden, watching birds drinking in the pond, bees nectaring on flowers, leaves changing colour in autumn – and that old gate leading down the curving path to the joys beyond.   

My Covid Journal

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The end of March 2023 marks 3 full years of dealing with a contagion that rocked the world in a way that no disease had since 1919 and the Spanish flu. As of today, the World Health Organization reports that 8,830,881 people died of Covid 19, a figure that almost certainly understates reality, given that many nations were not keeping statistics, or simply not reporting them to outside sources. I was reminded of this as I looked through my photo folders since March 2020, noting all the ways, big and small, that it touched us. This is my Covid journal.

March 14, 2020 – Covid has now been recognized in Canada for two weeks and the newspaper is starting to issue public service announcements.

March 17, 2020 – On St. Patrick’s Day, when I am supposed to receive my new left knee (elective surgery was cancelled by our provincial government), I listen instead to our Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland speak on behalf of the nation’s Covid Committee.

March 21, 2020 – The first day of spring and the newspapers echo our thoughts, for we are indeed “alone together” “in uncharted territory”. By now, we are watching daily t.v. reports by provincial health ministers somberly reading out Covid-19 statistics, including deaths, mostly in nursing homes at the outset.

March 24, 2020 – As people of a certain age, we are encouraged to stay home and stay safe. Instead, our 40-something son brings us groceries. And we wash everything down with rubbing alcohol! Honestly! Could Covid come in on our Raisin Bran?

March 26, 2020 – My apples have never been so clean, even though we doubt that they are spreading Covid.

March 31 2020 – People are encouraged to show the love in our front windows, so children passing by don’t feel so forsaken. I can’t help adding voices….

April 7, 2020 – It feels more real when Boris Johnson is sent to the ICU with Covid. It will be a few years before we learn that his own carelessness around Covid helps bring him down.

April 8, 2020 – Our civic government goes into overdrive protecting its citizens, and the park parking lot at the end of our street is closed. You can still walk in, mind you, but the dog-walkers have no place to leave their cars.

April 10, 2020 – People are getting decked out in masks and I can’t resist doing my own Lawrence of Arabia take on the newest disease control measure.

April 10, 2020 – A family birthday party is held outdoors. The new normal.

April 21, 2020 – Doug’s exercise club is closed, as are gyms all over the city. It will eventually declare bankruptcy. But Doug makes do in the living room, being careful with his golf club.

April 21, 2020 – A neighbour is sewing masks on her machine for visitors to local hospitals. I ask if I can buy a few and she gives them to me free, refusing my offer.

May 2, 2020 – Spring has sprung and people have been walking past my garden since the very first snowdrop. They seem desperate to have some touchstone, the normalcy of the seasons changing. From the porch, I chat with these women who have been photographing the spring bulb parade.

May 6, 2020 – Sourdough baking has taken the nation by storm, and a friend drops off a warm loaf on my doorstep.

May 7, 2020 – The front garden is bursting with color. Such a comfort.

May 8, 2020 – As friends sign up for no-contact grocery shopping services, we weigh how we should be buying our food. Just at the right time, we see an ad for a 100km local farms offer and pick up our order at a parking lot nearby.

May 9, 2020 – People are starting to have cabin fever, and friends call to ask us to take a walk with them. I love that the trilliums are in bloom in this spot overlooking a Toronto ravine.

May 10, 2020 – It’s Mother’s Day and my two youngest sons and future daughter-in-law celebrate my day with me on the front porch. Mimosas!

May 16, 2020 – I’m not sure now about the 46 ways we were going to change. Did we tick them all off? Or did we just tick off people who learned to hate poor Anthony Fauci in the U.S.?

May 18, 2020 – Everybody is growing seeds at home, it seems, since nurseries are effectively shuttered. I order soil from Amazon (!) and get into the act on the window seat of a 3rd floor bedroom, with the rare Petunia exserta and a marigold that Linnaeus and Rudbeck were said to have grown in Sweden.

May 19, 2020 – Our neighbourhood grocery store is allowed to open with a strict limit of customers inside at any one time. The handsome security guard outside (left) keeps count, ensures we’re masked and makes us clean our hands with the sanitary gel. The employee at right beyond the new social-distancing floor tape wears full-face protection.

May 31, 2020 – We watch our first-ever Zoom memorial service, for a dear friend, all the way from Santa Barbara.

Sept. 29, 2020 – I burst out laughing one day as I look at my lipsticks, and think that Revlon and l’Oreal are going to be badly affected when they can’t sell lipstick to mask-wearing women.

Oct. 31, 2020 – Halloween comes and Dracula and the jack are wearing masks.

Nov. 1, 2020 – On the 1st of November, I begin a 5-month ‘Covid project’ to distract myself through the winter. I call it #janetsdailypollinator. This is the saffron crocus (C. sativus) which I photographed in the town of Krokos in Greece. Little do I know that it won’t be the only winter that Covid visits.

Nov. 13, 2020 – Given we can’t go to restaurants anymore, we get into a rhythm of ordering each week from a local restaurant. Our favourite is halibut-and-fries from Zee Grill, a seafood fixture in our neighbourhood.

Dec. 5, 2020 – My brother, sister-in-law and nephew come to visit but we don’t go into the house – so we do a portrait in the driveway.

Dec. 24, 2020 – We are so fortunate to have our house on Lake Muskoka. It’s just three of us for Xmas eve, but we decorate our oak totem like it’s a fresh-cut balsam fir.

Jan. 14, 2021 – It’s a new year but with a spike in cases and deaths, the province institutes serious isolation rules. They even use the emergency system to drive it home.

Jan. 18, 2021 – My special order of home-sewn masks arrive and of course there’s a floral motif.

March 7, 2021 – The grandkids arrive for a March break visit and they stay outside (mostly) because who wants to give nana and poppa Covid?

March 7, 2021 – It feels weird to have a picnic on the cold front sidewalk, but we do. I feel such sympathy for my daughter and son-in-law who both work at home. Now they have 3 kids ‘attending school’ via their little tablets on the dining room table. But at least they have a back yard with trees, unlike all the kids who live in apartments and are in isolation with no schoolyard in which to play.

March 11, 2021 – Thanks to a dear friend who dropped sourdough starter in a jar on my front porch, I’ve made my first loaves – with olives! (The fad doesn’t last with me – I don’t want to be a slave to yeast. But I take up focaccia instead!)

March 31, 2021 – I wrap up my 5-month daily pollinator project and make a giant montage.

April 2, 2021 – Vaccination #1 at Sunnybrook Hospital less than a mile from home. #2 would be Moderna two months later.

April 12, 2021 – The news remains dire with the 3rd wave.

April 13, 2021 – The spring garden is in bloom and I have a crazy idea. Instead of creating a bouquet with the blossoms, I make a floral tiara. I decide it’s going to be called a ‘fairy crown’.

By the end of the fairy crown project, there will be 30 versions. In 2022, I’ll do a blog for each one, celebrating the flowers and garden chapter that made each possible.

April 16, 2021 – It’s our 44th anniversary – and we celebrate with take-out from Zee Grill.

June 12, 2021 – Barber shops and hair salons are closed so darling Lena, my daughter’s hairdresser, comes to the backyard and does open-air cuts – including one for poppa.

Nov. 16, 2021 – It’s been a while since I was on a plane but I take the opportunity of a reduction in cases and isolation measures to fly to Vancouver to visit my brother and sister. The mask is hard to get used to for 5+ hours but that’s the rule now.

Feb. 11, 2022 – Almost after the fact, a giant anti-mask and anti-vaccine policy protest convoy is organized by truckers and sympathizers from across Canada and ends up closing down our capital city Ottawa. It goes on for days and days as the protesters call for the prime minister to step down — while honking horns day and night in the 18-wheelers that block the streets around the parliament buildings. It is surreal. And people are fed up.

Feb. 18, 2022 – Things get serious when the government uses the Emergency Act to seize assets of the protestors and give the cops extra powers to end the protest.

May 27, 2022 – By now, all the Covid test kits that were handed out to companies are gathering dust on shelves. My local greengrocer throws one in with my order as a bonus.

June 12, 2022 – My niece Lily Frost is a singer and single mom who hasn’t had many gigs for 2 years so I invite her and her band to perform a concert for my neighbours and family. It is a perfect day, the band is sizzling hot and such fun.

Lily and her band Thelonius Monk give a wonderful performance for 2 hours.

Aug. 31, 2022 – On the last day of August, we fly from Toronto to Edinburgh, below, on the first leg of what will be a memorable trip. Masks are mandatory in the airport and on the plane, but when we line up at customs in Edinburgh, not one person is wearing a mask. Days later, we leave for 5 days in Florence before celebrating our son Jon’s beautiful wedding to Marta in the Tuscan hills. After that, we take part in a wine tour of Sicily that lasts until the end of September. It feels almost… almost… like things are returning to normal.

It’s been a remarkable three years. As of now, I am the only one in my family (along with the grandkids) who hasn’t had Covid. Yet. But it’s still flying around and finding people who thought they’d dodged it completely. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll have to add a postscript to this journal. In the meantime, another spring has arrived, reluctantly, with snowflakes, and I’m ready to get back into the garden!

POSTSCRIPT: On June 9th, in the middle of a much-anticipated garden tour in England, I tested positive for Covid and had to depart the tour. Fortunately, I have a son living in London and he could take in his poor mom and make her tea and soup. But I was sad to miss the last wonderful gardens.

Fairy Crown #26-Fall Finery

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For me, autumn is a time of richness as the gardening season nears its end in an explosion of pigments and seedheads.  Those pigments, in particular, have always fascinated me and I made a concerted effort to use brilliant fall foliage colours in my own garden design.  So today’s fairy crown, the 26th, features the fall leaves and fruit of shrubs and trees in my Toronto garden in early November, including Japanese maple (Acer palmatum), Washington thorn (Crataegus phaenopyrum), burning bush (Euonymus alatus ‘Compactus’), barberry (Berberis thunbergii ‘Rose Glow’) and, draped down my front, a compound leaf of my black walnut (Juglans nigra).

Every year is a little different in terms of the parade of colour. Here you see my Japanese maple showing off its regular autumn leaf change as the burning bush hedge turns colour. In the pollinator garden, the ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum seedheads are ruby-red, but the fothergilla haven’t begun to change yet. The columnar red maple (upper left) that the city chose for my boulevard (I asked for one that turns red) has taken on its disappointing dishwater-yellow. Red maples, of course, don’t always turn red in fall.

In this photo taken a different year, the fothergilla in the pollinator garden is a rosy-apricot.  That’s catmint in the front giving a nice glaucous contrast with Russian sage and echinacea seedheads adding structure.

From across the street, my neighbours see my garden through the fan-shaped yellow leaves of my second boulevard tree, a ginkgo (G. biloba).  

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you likely know that I’ve had fun turning those yellow leaves….

….. into ballet tutus of tiny dancers.

The Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) I planted in front of my living room window decades ago is a great joy to me. It’s the straight species with green leaves – in Japan it would be a common forest tree.  But in my garden, since there are no drapes on my front window, it forms a lacy curtain from spring (when bees buzz around the tiny May flowers) to fall. In very late October or the first week of November, the foliage turns a range of rich hues from yellow to apricot, scarlet and crimson.

The leaves are delicate, their branching exquisite. It’s no wonder they were the subject of the renowned Japanese woodblock artists like Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi.

As I’ve written before, my Japanese maple’s brilliant autumn colour lights up my living room in early November….

….. enhancing the glass witches’ balls I’ve suspended from the window frame.

And, of course, the leaves also provided me with an appropriate costume and landscape for my little geisha.  

If there’s a saying that “good fences, good neighbours make”, it can also apply to hedges – which was how I ended up making this hedge in my front garden more than 30 years ago. (My current neighbours are lovely!) Today, environmentalists tend to shun burning bush, given its invasive tendency in milder regions, but my hedge produces very few seedlings, unlike the Norway maples in my neighbourhood which are a scourge. And this neon display in autumn is truly amazing.

My belly dancer’s costume was made from the leaves of my burning bush hedge.

Though there’s no fothergilla in my crown, it is definitely a big part of the fall colour in my front garden.  In this photo made just before Halloween, you can see one of my shrubs has turned a rich burgundy-red beneath the Japanese maple.

The richer, more moisture-retentive soil in my pollinator island tends to produce orange and gold colours in the three fothergilla shrubs there.

Look at those colours! Who needs the spring flowers….

…. though they are lovely, if short-lived, in late May.

And, yes, I did harvest my flamenco dancer’s multi-colored skirt from my fothergillas.

Turning colour a little later in the front garden is my paperbark maple (Acer griseum) with its red trifoliate leaves.

Moving into the back garden, you see Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) cloaking the driveway gate.  I didn’t plant this vine, nor did I plant all the Virginia creeper vines that pop up throughout the garden. That’s Mother Nature’s role and she’s very enthusiastic about it (!)

I confess that I wanted the Washington thorn tree (Crataegus phaenopyrum) in my garden long ago purely for its multi-hued fall leaves.

But it turned out to be a wonderful tree for bird life – IF the birds can out-compete the squirrels for the fruit. The robin, below, managed to do that, but so have cedar waxwings and cardinals.

Here you can see the range of autumn colour in the foliage of Washington thorn.

When we bought our house in 1983, the native black walnut tree (Juglans nigra) on the property line between us and our next-door neighbour was already mature. In the 39 years since then, it has hosted raccoon families in the crook of its trunk, carpenter ants in its bark and countless cardinals practising their song in its branches.

Our bedroom sits right under the tree, but we seemed to have missed the obvious ramifications of putting a skylight in our ceiling – particularly when windy nights in September roll around and the roof is pummelled with billiard-ball-sized nuts. Though the skylight has proven strong, we’ve replaced two car windshields since the tree’s branches — and nuts — extend far over the driveway.

The walnuts are enjoyed by the neighbourhood squirrels….

….. but the natural dye in the husks creates an unbelievable mess.

The arborist has told us the tree has rot in the trunk, but my neighbour and I have had it cabled and pruned away some of the branches over our houses to reduce the nut fusillade. It is our tree, after all, it gives us shade and we feel a duty to keep it – thus its inclusion in my 26th crown. 

I don’t really notice the ‘Rose Glow’ barberry (Berberis thunbergii) in my back garden until it turns rich crimson-red in autumn – then it’s a show-stopper. It’s another one of those shrubs that environmentalists shun – especially in milder U.S. regions where it seeds around freely. I haven’t seen one seedling in my Toronto garden.

I have a fairly new addition to my back garden:  a little sassafras tree (S. albidum). which I wanted especially for its fall colour.  This autumn – admittedly one of the best for colour in many years – it has begun to display the reds, corals and yellows for which it is known.

Those colours, by the way, are on leaves that exhibit three distinct shapes:  elliptical; mitten-like and three-lobed.  This is what they look like on my light table.

Designing with and celebrating fall-colored plants and shrubs is my way of expressing my appreciation for nature’s yearly preparation for winter, as it cycles through the yellow/orange “accessory” carotene pigments in the leaves of certain species to harvest and synthesize as much sunshine as possible, once the ‘green’ pigment chlorophyll breaks down in cooler temperatures. Red colour is from anthocynanis. According to the USDA, “Anthocyanins absorb blue, blue-green, and green light. Therefore, the light reflected by leaves containing anthocyanins appears red. Unlike chlorophyll and carotene, anthocyanins are not attached to cell membranes, but are dissolved in the cell sap. The color produced by these pigments is sensitive to the pH of the cell sap. If the sap is quite acidic, the pigments impart a bright red color; if the sap is less acidic, its color is more purple. Anthocyanin pigments are responsible for the red skin of ripe apples and the purple of ripe grapes. A reaction between sugars and certain proteins in cell sap forms anthocyanins. This reaction does not occur until the sugar concentration in the sap is quite high.”   Because the reaction requires light, you often see leaves (or apples) fully exposed to sun that are red while those parts that are shaded stay green or yellow, like these Boston ivy leaves on my fence.

I love making the leaf montages that celebrate these pigment changes, like the one below from leaves in my garden.

A few years ago I even held a photography show called “Autumn Harvest” featuring a number of my leaf montages.

Finally, this week as I walked out onto my front porch and gazed into my garden, this is what I saw– a multi-hued tapestry that shows that nature is the best designer of all. It’s my reward for a gardening season that began seven months ago with the first snowdrops and will soon come to an end with the first hard frost.

******

My year of fairy crowns is soon drawing to its wintry finale. If you missed a few, here they are:

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

Fairy Crown #25-Autumn Monkshood & Snakeroot

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For gardeners who lament the end of the flowering season in colder regions, my 25th fairy crown offers a reminder that there are perennials that offer bloom for the border – as well as the bees – well into October.  But I will admit to a tiny bit of trepidation as I placed it ever so gently on my silvery locks. That’s because the indigo-purple flower is monkshood: one of the most toxic plants in gardening – and also one of my very favourite perennials. Meet Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’, aka autumn monkshood. (More on the toxicity later.) The white flowers are autumn snakeroot or bugbane, Actaea simplex (formerly Cimicifuga). The violet-purple daisy flowers are ‘Hella Lacy’ New England asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae).  And the leaves against my cheek are fall-coloured Tiger Eyes cutleaf staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’).

There’s a corner of my back garden where three of these plants grow together. I think they have done well there because it’s the lowest part of my garden – just by inches, but that means that table water goes there naturally. Also, it’s the right amount of light for them, being somewhat shaded by the cedar hedge and surrounding trees.  But I do give the monkshood supplemental water when I’m around. And I realized that other monkshood stands in my garden have suffered in the summer months when I’m at the cottage since they’re not drought-proof by any means.  They also like rich soil and (note to self) are overdue for a good feeding of compost in the spring.

I happen to be very fond of blue and white used together in the garden (and have a large photo library devoted dozens of excellent examples of the combination), so this particular autumn pairing pleases me very much.

In some light, autumn monkshood looks deep indigo-blue; in others, there’s a purplish sheen.  Years ago, when I realized how much I loved this perennial, I got busy dividing my first plants and moving the clumps around in spring. Take care to use thick gloves if you do this, especially if you have open cuts or scratches, because the tabloid stories of “murder by monkshood” are a little startling, though actual living monkshood plants are not usually to blame. In Toronto this summer, twelve people were hospitalized after eating at a Chinese restaurant because a spice was accidentally contaminated with an aconite powder from a different species used in traditional Chinese medicine. Still, if you have dogs that like to eat garden plants or young children who might be tempted, you might want to skip my favourite perennial!  (For everything you could possibly want to know about monkshood toxicity, read this article by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.)

It’s obvious how Aconitum species got their common name, for the upper sepals of the flowers do resemble the hooded cloaks of medieval monks.  I love those black stamens tipped with white pollen and often see honey bees and bumble bees foraging in them too. ‘Arendsii’ is a hybrid cultivar developed originally by German nurseryman Georg Arends (1863-1952) at his nursery near Cologne.  Around 1945, he crossed A. carmichaelii and A. carmichaelii var. wilsonii to produce the plant.  Owing to its variability, the cultivar is sometimes called the “Arendsii Group”.   

Monkshood’s colour appeals to me, obviously!

Because autumn monkshood generally blooms between Canadian Thanksgiving (second Monday in October) and Remembrance Day in November, the plants can be hit by an occasional early snow…..

…. heavy enough to take the flower-laden stems to the ground.

Autumn snakeroot (Actaea simplex), by contrast, isn’t known to commit murder but the genus does have some toxic species, so don’t eat it!  Related and similar-looking to the summer-blooming Ontario native snakeroot, Actaea racemosa, it hails from northern Russia, western China, Manchuria, Mongolia, Korea and Japan. It has a delightful fragrance that reminds me of incense.  (I’ve written previously about this one in White Flowers for Sweet Perfume.)  Oh, and that big, reddish shrub in the background is native alternate-leaved dogwood (Cornus alternifolia).

On a warm, sunny October day, the spike inflorescences are alive with all kinds of bees and flies, including bumble bees.

I do love Tiger Eyes® cutleaf staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) in all seasons, though it is not without its drawbacks. Like the regular native species, parts of it seem to die off each summer. As well, its rhizomes travel a long distance – in my garden, right under a patio to pop up perkily beside my pond. I’ve dug up and re-planted some of these seedlings, being careful to cut the rhizome first and give the new plant time to heal and form feeder roots.  But nowhere is the plant as happy as in its original corner, in rich, moisture-retentive soil.  It has bright chartreuse foliage in spring and early summer and the fuzzy red fruits feed the resident cardinals and robins throughout winter.  But it’s that brilliant apricot-orange foliage that is impressive right now. 

Another fall favourite in my back garden is Molinia arundinacea ‘Skyracer’. When it flings those flowering stems out like a bouquet, then turns bright-gold, it’s a sight to see.

Here’s my autumn kitchen view into the back garden right now, over the lower-deck pots with their tough-as-nails sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula).  There’s a mellow quality about October that is such a relief, after the jungle growth and heat of summer.

In my front garden there’s a small stand of New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae). This one is the cultivar ‘Hella Lacy’—and I wish I could say it is as spectacular as Hella’s husband, the late garden writer Allen Lacy, described it in his 1990 book The Garden in Autumn.  He found it growing in a few neighborhood gardens near his New Jersey home in 1972. “When I first clapped eyes on it in a front yard just down the block, I knew it was classy. This aster is very sturdy, requiring no staking, although it grows up to four feet high and the same distance across. It bears enormous numbers of large, single, purple flowers, each with a bright golden eye when it first opens. For the two weeks that it stays in bloom… it is the handsomest plant in town, not only for its intensity of color but also for the great number of Monarch butterflies hovering over it…”  As you can see, there are bees enjoying my Hella Lacy flowers: a green Agapostemon virescens, a honey bee and the common Eastern bumble bee. In fact, by early October most Monarchs have departed Toronto for Mexico.  Also, my Hella Lacy is unirrigated, i.e. watered in summer only when it rains, and since all New England asters thrive in rich, moist soil (you often see wild plants flanking roadside ditches), it is likely not as beautiful as those Allen saw and named for his wife.  Nevertheless, it is a highlight of my garden in mid-late October.

Native Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) is colouring in my garden now as well. Though it’s not as uniformly red as some vines I’ve seen growing in full sun, it does form fruit which the birds love.

Last autumn, I looked out my kitchen window and saw a pair of Northern flickers snacking on the fruit.  It was such fun to see the yellow on the male’s tail feathers – before it was chased away by a red squirrel.

Finally, here’s a little bouquet to mark Fairy Crown #25 and the last flowers in my garden. But it’s not the end of the crowns, not quite yet. Stay tuned…

******

Want to catch up with my blogs on the earlier fairy crowns? Here they are:

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