Last June, I was privileged to visit several gardens in the Denver area owned by horticultural professionals with connections to the city’s wonderful Denver Botanic Gardens. Home gardeners in the area know former Director of Horticulture Rob Proctor from his longstanding appearances on television, but he and partner David Macke have a stunning garden filled with colour, billowing borders and myriad beautiful seating areas. I wrote about their garden here. Plant collectors and alpine enthusiasts around the globe know Panayoti Kelaidis, Senior Curator and Director of Outreach for the DBG. I blogged here about the fabulous hillside garden he shares with his partner Jan Fas. Today I’m going to introduce you to the charming, plant-rich garden of DBG Curator of Native Plants and Associate Director of Horticulture Dan Johnson and his partner Tony Miles in Englewood. Let’s get off the bus and check out the heavenly “hell strip”, that bit of civic real estate formerly known as “the boulevard”. You don’t even have to go into the garden to understand that the homeowners here have some serious horticultural chops. I see penstemons, alliums, foxtail lily, columbines and so much more.
Looking the other way, there are California poppies and bearded irises… even a little pink rose!
A magenta pool of delosperma meanders through the sedum and alliums. In the background are white prickly poppies (Argemone sp).
I love a garden that bestows a gift on the street, and Dan and Tony’s garden has a spirit of ebullient generosity that makes their neighbourhood a joyous place. Verbascums, irises, alliums and opium poppies….
…..occupy a niche garden against a pretty stucco wall along the city sidewalk.
Here’s the adobe-flavoured front porch! It’s as if every cool garden accessory shop in the southwest decided to open a pop-up store here at this house in suburban Denver.
Let’s amble past the tall, blue ceramic pot with its palm, standing in its own boxwood-hedged corner….
…. and climb the steps so we can get a better look at the slumbering Medusa with her euphorbia dreadlocks and try to count all the pots on the ground and hanging from hooks….
….. containing specimens of cacti…. Hmmm, I’ve lost count. So let’s just enjoy the view and the sound of the wind-chimes and all the splashes of colour…..
…. and fine workmanship that turns a few plant hangers into a work of art.
When I visit a complex garden like this, I often wonder how much time the owners actually take to sit down and enjoy a meal or glass of wine, but this is a lovely spot…..
….. with the splash of the fountain in the container water garden nearby.
Let’s explore the front garden a little, with its mix of perennials in the shade of a big conifer…..
……and its birdhouse-toting elephants.
Our time here is so limited and we need to see the back of the garden, which is just beyond this cool arch and gate.
The back of the house is more about getting right into the garden….
…. past the corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas)….
…. and the potted agave…..
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…. with the yuccas nearby.
What an interesting journey awaits, and we can go in a few directions. Let’s head towards the purple shed way in the back left corner.
I love this combination of foxtail lily (Eremurus) and perfectly coordinated horned poppy (probably Glaucium corniculatum, though these Denver gardeners grow some interesting glauciums).
There are several water features, big and small, in the garden. This ever-pouring bottle emptying into a shell full of marbles is so simple and lovely.
There are little points of interest on the way, like this lovely bearded iris with spiral wire sculpures….
…. that perfectly echo the airy star-of-Persia alliums (Allium cristophii).
I like this carved panel, tucked into the fence and adorned with honeysuckle.
A little further along the path, we pass a drift of orange California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) and penstemons. Note the urn water feature at the left, spilling into the small pond, which in turn spills into the larger pond below.
We come finally to the larger koi pond and its iron sculpture.
The shed walls feature artfully-screened mirrors that reflect light and the leafy garden (and some tired bloggers relaxing and enjoying the view).
There are also some very cool tentacled pots filled with succulents adorning the wall.
On the other side of the garden from the pond are beds filled with June irises, poppies and alliums and more interesting sculptures….
…. including a glass globe artfully displayed on a cool sculptural column.
One of the sad realities of a garden tour is that the day is very tightly scheduled with lots of wonderful stops along the way. If I’d had the time, I would have made my way back to Dan and Tony’s garden in better light (and with fewer of my fellow bloggers in the garden), as I did with Rob Proctor and David Macke’s garden. I feel as if I only absorbed half of what these artists have done in this colourful paradise in Englewood. But it’s time to head back to the bus, past this little shady corner filled with textural foliage plants and another sculpture.
As I walk under a conifer, I catch a flash of movement above. Looking up, I see a little wren having its lunch on the boughs.
It seems that humans aren’t the only visitors that appreciate what this lovely Colorado garden has to offer.
I spent a few lovely weeks this autumn touring Greece with a group of rock gardening enthusiasts from the North American Rock Garden Society. I will admit up front that I’m not really a rock gardener. I do love trees but up until this trip, I didn’t particularly identify with plants that huddle near the earth’s surface nestled up against limestone shelves or serpentine outcrops or hanging on for dear life in an alpine scree. It might be a physical thing on my part (knees, back): when others kneel or crouch or prostrate themselves completely (like my North Carolina friend and true rock gardener Cyndy Cromwell, below, with whom I bonded on a 2018 garden tour of New Zealand)….
…I just…. stand there… looking down.
But rock garden plants aside, I am a photographer of all types of plants with my own stock image library, including lots of bulb photos. So searching for the “fall-blooming bulbs of Greece” to add to my inventory sounded like good fun.
And best of all, the tour was to be led by someone who had been a Facebook friend for six years, a young Athens native whom we plant geeks had nicknamed the ‘King of Lamiaceae’ for his special affection for the mint family, the salvias, teucriums, catmints, thymes, etc. that grow in the Mediterranean and similar climates the world over. But apart from the mints his knowledge of the entire plant world was prodigious, he had a good sense of humour, and having done his Masters degrees in California and England he was fluent in English. Though his real name is Eleftherios Dariotis, Lefteris for short, I know him by his Facebook handle, Liberto Dario. Either way, “freedom” is the theme.
If you’re not “on Facebook”, you might not know that there are thousands of interest groups that cater to your special passion, whether it’s mushrooms or madrigals or the Monkees. Needless to say, my groups revolve around the plant world. Sometime in 2013 I decided to inject a little fun into the “Plant Idents” group for which I am an administrator by using my photo library to create plant puzzles, mixing up plant photos, placing them in a numbered montage, having people guess their identities via the Latin genus name, then unscrambling the correct genus initials to solve an anagram. So instead of “Words with Friends”, we played “Plant Words with Friends”. I called them Botanagrams. A little complicated, admittedly, but they were heady fun that required everyone to make rapid-fire guesses and exchange geeky, comic asides. And woe to those with slow internet service! A few years ago I wrote a blog celebrating the puzzles, so I could remember what fun they were. Of all the nerdy ‘puzzle people’ I met and continue to call friends – Amir, Jo, Rebecca, Amy, David, Amrita, Kathy, Alys, Rosemary, Margaret, Deb and so many more – Liberto Dario usually got the really hard ones. (P.S. the anagram solution to the one below was “the vital sexy bits” for plant reproductive parts.)
Sometimes I changed up the puzzle. The one below didn’t have an anagram to solve, but was all-Lamiaceae with honey bees aboard.
So… on a night late this October, we all met at an outdoor cafe in Athens for the introductory tour dinner — and the virtual Facebook friendship became actual. Thanks to Cyndy for the photo of jet-lagged me (I hadn’t slept in more than 30 hours) and our tour guide, Liberto. As it happens, I’ve turned quite a few Facebook friendships into actual friendships: a lovely dinner in Sebastapol CA; a personalized garden tour in Santa Barbara; a fun 7-person nursery meet-up in Portland OR; and a delightful 5-person garden picnic in Seattle WA.
THE TRIP JOURNAL
Bright and early the next morning (and for 11 mornings after), it was on the road to search for the autumn-blooming flora of Greece. We stopped along the busy highway northwest of Athens beside a woodland of scrubby kermes oak (Quercus coccifera), under which we found our first Cyclamen graecum, below, with oak behind it. This little drought-tolerant oak gets its common name from a Sanskrit word krim-dja, which is also the root of the words crimson and carmine. Why? Because it is the source of an ancient red dye; indeed it is a word for red in the Persian language. However it’s not the oak itself that yields the dye, but an insect that feeds on the oak, specifically the kermes insect or κόκκος. In her book “Color – A Natural History of the Palette’, Victoria Finlay writes: “Dioscorides described how kermes was harvested with the fingernails – scraped carefully from the scarlet oak it lives on. But curiously he described it as ‘coccus’, meaning ‘berry’, and did not explain that it was an insect at all.” The kermes trade routes would weave their way through the ancient world: Spain paid its taxes to Rome in sacks of kermes from the oak they called “chaparro” and the Turks used it in carpet-dying.
In little meadows in forests of Greek fir (Abies cephalonica) at the base of Mount Parnassus, we found Colchicum parnassicum.
Later, in a coppice (charcoal) forest of Hungarian oak (Quercus frainetto) near Mount Kallidromo, we thrilled at masses of Cyclamen hederifolium emerging from fallen leaves. I loved this ecological partnership.
The next day, our hotel near Kalambaka was our base as we visited the otherworldly monasteries at the UNESCO site Meteora. It’s not easy to describe these sedimentary rock formations topped with buildings erected in the 15th-17th centuries, so I’ll just show you.
It’s easy to see why so many tourists make the trip to this part of Greece.
Later that day we travelled to a rock face in the foothills of the Koziakas mountain area of the central Pindos range near a busy, one-lane bridge over the Portaikos River. Did I mention that rock gardeners like to live dangerously?
But there were tiny roadside treasures…. common in Greece, but new to us.
Returning towards Kalambaka, we stopped at the base of Mount Olympus which was shrouded in clouds. The home of the gods in mythology – and a national park – it actually spans 52 peaks including the highest, Mytikas (2917 metres-9570 feet) and Stefani or “Zeus’s Throne” (2909 metres-9544 feet). As others searched the area for bulbs, I kicked around pieces of marble, which were plentiful, as I thought about all the marble monuments and temples we would see in Greece. And I inhaled the sweet, minty fragrance of calamint (Clinopodium nepeta), which we found at many locations, usually being foraged by a big bumble bee.
The first day of November arrived and we were in Smokovo looking “for bulb treasures on the serpentine rocks”. Nobody said anything about looking for bulb treasures in the pouring rain.
The little crocus below was our goal…. Crocus cancellatus subsp. mazziaricus, but it cancelled its showing amidst the serpentine rocks for obvious reasons. And despite having received the memo about waterproof shoes from our host, I failed to act on it. Fortunately, our lunch venue had a roaring fireplace which helped dry a lot of socks and shoes.
Returning to Athens, we stopped to pay tribute at Thermopylae where Leonidas and the Spartans fought the Persians under Xerces in 480 BC. “ The Persian army, alleged by the ancient sources to have numbered over one million, but today considered to have been much smaller (various figures are given by scholars, ranging between about 100,000 and 150,000) arrived at the pass in late August or early September. The vastly outnumbered Greeks held off the Persians for seven days (including three of battle) before the rear-guard was annihilated in one of history’s most famous last stands. During two full days of battle, the small force led by Leonidas blocked the only road by which the massive Persian army could pass. After the second day, a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by revealing a small path used by shepherds. It led the Persians behind the Greek lines. Leonidas, aware that his force was being outflanked, dismissed the bulk of the Greek army and remained to guard their retreat with 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians, fighting to the death.” (Wiki)
Saturday was all about Athens, specifically the suburb of Paiania. We began with a tour of Liberto’s two gardens, the first (unirrigated) at the lovely, peach-pink stucco summer home owned by his Chicago Uncle Sam Sianis, aka the ‘goat garden’. By the time summer rolls around, they can park their car on top of Liberto’s clever spring-bulbs-and-annuals meadow, left, which by then has finished flowering.
And why is it called the goat garden? Well, in what might be the most powerful goat-related story in major league sports, it was a Sianis family billy goat that evidently put a curse on Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs for 71 years, from October 6, 1945 (game 4 of the World Series that year) to November 2, 2016, when the curse was finally broken and the Cubs won the title. Turns out if you don’t ‘let the goat in’ all kinds of bad baseball karma is going to come raining down on you. It would take me the rest of my blog to tell you the story of the billy goat curse, so rather than explain it as Liberto is doing to folks on the trip, below….
Anybody who has run out of space in which to grow plants knows how wonderful it would be to be able to adopt an empty garden. Since his relatives are only in residence for their vacation each summer, Liberto has been free to create gardens around the house to grow his favourite plants for his mail order seed business. But I’m pretty sure the family feels lucky to be surrounded by such beauty each summer.
I especially loved these silver beauties, moon carrot, Seseli gummiferum, top and partridge feather, Tanacetum densum, below.
We were all able to sniff an aromatic leaf of sideritis, used to make traditional Greek mountain tea.
Spring would be truly lovely in this garden, but I was able to find a few flowers in bloom in November, below. Top row, from left: Eriocephalus africanus, Crocus speciosus, Salvia africana-lutea, Teucrium fruticans ‘Ouarzazate’, Bottom row, from left: Iris unguicularis, Scabiosa (Lomelosia) crenata subsp. dalaportea, Cyclamen hederifolium, Epilobium canum.
Then we headed a short distance away to Liberto’s family home and the large garden he’s made behind it: the salvia garden. Here we wandered amongst lush grasses, shrubs, small trees, citrus and many perennials from around the world, all adapted to the Mediterranean climate….
…. but especially the stars of his garden: so many different kinds of sages (Salvia species). I counted 87 taxa on his salvia seed list.
There are other plants, of course. Here are a few that caught my eye, including blue-flowered Pycnostachus urticifolia, bright red Erythrina x bidwillii, golden Tecoma stans, and some delicious-looking grapefruit.
Succulents and xeric bromeliads were displayed on a table….
…. and a small pond hosted aquatic plants.
Guests listened to Liberto explaining about his mail order business of seeds and bulbs. Those stairs lead to the production side of the garden. Let’s go up.
A series of glass cold frames holds tender bulbs from around the world. Everywhere are little pots filled with grit-rich soil and all manner of exquisite flora. It is a living library of the plant collector’s passion. To read more about what inspires him in the plant world, read this 2016 interview on Plinth. If the sun hadn’t been shining so brightly at a difficult time of day (photographers say this all the time) and if the garden hadn’t been full of wandering people, and if we didn’t have a full schedule of visits later, I would have enjoyed chronicling Liberto’s garden more closely, as I did his good friend Panayoti Kelaidis’s garden in Denver earlier in the year. But such is life.
The genus Oxalis is a special favourite; he grows more than 150 species.
Plants, plants, plants….. maybe for seeds? Plant sales? He was too busy to ask.
From this well-organized room, seeds of his favourite plants will find their way throughout the world.
Our next stop in Paiania was the Vorres Museum where Liberto has been working to transform the gardens to a more sustainable model. He joined his friend Nektarios Vorres, grandson of the founder of the museum and president of the foundation that now runs it. I wrote a blog about this lovely place with its Canadian connection.
Then it was a walk up Mount Hymettus with its view of Attica through wild olive branches heavy with fruit.
And the hillside bore seedhead reminders of the wild Greek mountain thyme (Thymbra capitata) that brings bees to nectar in order to yield the famous Hymettus honey. Fortunately, I did come home with a gift of some sweet thyme honey.
Sunday brought us to various environments in Attica: a rocky scramble overlooking the blue Aegean; a stroll along the seashore where asters were growing; then a walk through a parched, trash-strewn meadow where we found tiny bulbs growing in the dry grasses. From left, Crocus cartwrightianus (progenitor of the saffron crocus); Spiranthes spiralis, Greece’s only autumn-flowering orchid; tiny autumn squill, Prospero autumnale; and diminutive Colchicum cupanii.
Then we drove south to Cape Sounion. Before visiting the nearby temple, we enjoyed a lunch of fresh fish – calamari, sardines and bream – overlooking the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean. OCD Patients May Seek Help From Dermatologists. purchase viagra online Regular exercises levitra cialis have proved to be the shortcut to come out of the disease. It is advisable that discount viagra pharmacy should be taken at-least 30 minutes before the sexual intercourse to take place. Are you an extremely busy person and spend almost 24 hours at your office? If such is the case generic tadalafil india then you should implement the application of this medicament but only after consulting the physician.
Then it was a walk up to the beautiful Temple of Poseidon (440 BC), where I was photographed capturing a tiny specimen of yellow Sternbergia lutea in the foundation rocks.
By the time we drove back downtown, the hour was late but we were fortunate to pay a short visit to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, starting with the spectacular building….
…… then a walk down to ground level through the sprawling, night-lit gardens. Definitely a spot that merits a return.
On November 4th we drove from Athens to the Peloponnese with our first stop overlooking the Corinth Canal. It was completed in 1893 and joins the Gulf of Corinth to the north with the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea to the south, thus turning the Peloponnese Peninsula into an island. I am an armchair geology geek and to see this slab of cut limestone was a treat. It is 6.3 kilometres (4 miles) long and 70 metres (21.3 feet) wide at its base with a depth of 8 metres. The 63-metre deep (206 feet) deep limestone and earthen walls are actually the canal’s weak point, since they are affected by water from tides and boat wash and the occasional earthquake, leading to frequent landslides and long closures (4 years in the 1920s) to clean out rock and earth. Without the canal, the 11,000 ships (the largest width is 58 feet) that make the trip through it annually would need to travel an additional 300 nautical miles to reach their destination.
A long day of travel with rain and darkness at its end held a bright spot, and one of my favourite places on the tour. For who wouldn’t love a hillside overlooking olive fields dotted with wild heather (Erica manipuliflora), its botanical name commemorating its home on the Mani Peninsula. And there were bees and beehives, too; a few days later, a little lost in Athens while walking home by myself from the Acropolis, I bought a jar of heather honey to help me remember this place.
The next morning, from the beach in front of our pretty little stone hotel in Gytheion on the eastern shore of the Mani Peninsula, I looked out over the Lakonian Gulf, somewhat reluctantly climbing into the van to head to the western side of the peninsula. Our hotels were so pretty, and the days all started early.
During a brief stop to scour a steep cliff on the road out of Gytheion, Liberto met a group of French botanists and exchanged the latest in plant spotting. Only in Greece.
Less than an hour later, we were pulled over on a farm road between olive groves, where the harvest was taking place…..
…. and we happily photographed, from left, Allium callimischon ssp.callimischon, Colchicum psaridis and Crocus boryi.
But I especially cherish the memory here of the goat bells or kypria, a little musical interlude I followed down the road until the shepherd’s dogs let me know I’d come far enough. Listen….
High on a ridge overlooking the gulf, we found a little field of the beautiful, purple Crocus goulimyi. But I was also fascinated by the valonia oaks (Quercus ithaburensis ssp. macrolepis) that line the road, and with their big, frilly acorns, which are used traditionally in tanning. From then on, I would remember the crocuses as “the ones that grew with the oaks”. Crocus goulimyi is named for Constantine Goulimis (1886-1963), a lawyer and amateur botanist who wrote Wild Flowers of Greece.
Then we drove to our lovely hotel in Areopoli in the Deep Mani Peninsula, Ktima Karageorgou, set under a massive peak of the Sagias Mountains, part of the Taygetos range.
While the others investigated the mountain I played hooky and took a very chilly swim. Before dinner, we enjoyed a slide presentation of Greek bulbs and flora by Liberto.
The next morning, November 6th, we drove south on the peninsula and within the hour came to an enchanting meadow filled with Crocus niveus in a mix of white and pale purple forms. And there was lovely Cyclamen graecum here, too, near the silvery leaves of Astragalus lusitanicus.
Driving further south, we visited a ‘ghost village’ called Vathia, a collection of stone towers from the 18th and 19th centuries, each built by a Maniot family to act not merely as a home but as a defensive fortress against their neighbours. During the early 19th century when the population numbered roughly 300, poverty forced many of the inhabitants to abandon their rural life and move to the cities.
Today, a few of the towers seem to be inhabited – I saw a satellite dish and curtains on one. But most are still in ruin and likely not economic to renovate in this location. An evocative stop.
We were nearing the bottom of the peninsula when we made another stop along the road to botanize. The slopes of the mountains are etched with hundreds of stone-walled terraces. That was the way of agriculture here, a very hard life, now mostly abandoned. In the field we saw lots of painted lady butterflies nectaring on yellow fleabane (Dittrichia viscosa) and Liberto gave me a handful of fragrant Greek sage (Salvia fruticosa), another herb used to make traditional tea
We reached our destination at the bottom of the Deep Mani: Cape Tainaro (Tainaron, Matapan), the southernmost point of mainland Greece and a beautiful place to spend the next few hours. Here were the strange remains of the Sanctuary and Death Oracle of Poseidon Tainarios, top below, presumably at one time a place to present offerings to forestall death by misadventure on the ocean.
I found a few tiny fall bulbs (Prospero autumnale and Colchicum parlatoris) and fennel in the grasses here, along with abundant verbascum seedheads and Crithmum maritimum by the sea.
While others took the long hike to the lighthouse at the point, I decided to stay behind and dip my toes into the ocean at exactly the point where the Aegean Sea meets the Ionian Sea. If you want to see what I saw there, wading in the sea near the fishboats at Cape Tainaro, you might want to watch my musical video of the beautiful rivers and seashores I saw in Greece. It’s not long, and there’s a nice little splash from time to time.
This was also the afternoon when I lost my cellphone. After fruitless searches of the van and my room, I felt a little despondent as I’d used it for so much photography. But a late night email from my husband in Canada to Liberto revealed that a tech-savvy woman in the village had found it sitting on the stone wall we had last visited to look for crocuses and found my contact information. We would visit her business the next morning on our way out of town to pick it up. When I tried to give her more than a gift of honey, she refused. “Hospitality!” she exclaimed. Indeed, hospitality.
That night in Areopoli the group had a post-dinner Greek dance lesson. It was a great success. There might have been some ouzo involved….. I might have bought the bottle…. I might have been pouring shots for the group….
On November 7th, we made our way from the dry Lakonian part of the Mani Peninsula to the Messinian Mani. Our bulb wish list for this area included Crocus boryi with its white stigmas, and we were not disappointed.
We also found the very first poppy anemone (Anemone coronaria) of the season. Not the fields of red and purple poppies we’d seen in Liberto’s early spring photos, but still……
Fifteen minutes later we were walking atop limestone on the beach at St. Nicholas. On it grew yellow-flowered rock samphire (Crithmum maritimum), which Liberto said is preserved in Greece as a pickle called “kritamo”.
A walk to a little vacant lot brought us some good specimens of the tiny autumn daffodil Narcissus obsoletus (syn. N. serotinus), left. And we saw the beginning growth of the spectacular bulb Drimia numidica (Urginia maritima) whose seedhead I’d photographed with a snail aboard in Areopoli.
Our hotel was in Kardamyli, with balconies open to the sound of waves crashing on the beach below. The Kalamitsi Hotel might have been the place where most of us would have chosen to stay for a week of sheer relaxation and reading (no botanizing). My little video gives you a flavour of this part of the Peloponnese with its rugged mountains.
Our final day of botanizing took us over the Taygetos Mountain range. I’m not sure I’ve rhapsodized enough about the mountain scenery in Greece. But this view of the northern gorges en route to Kalamata gives you a sense of the majesty of these peaks.
And, of course, there was flora. Our goal here was the autumn-flowering snowdrop (Galanthus reginae-olgae), and we were not disappointed – finding it clinging to small shelves of vegetation on damp cliff faces alongside the road, below. There were also tall plane trees (Platanus orientalis) growing up from the valley floor and goats climbing the rocky mountainsides. And the most cool purple striations in parts of the rock.
Soon we were sitting at lunch in Kalamata saying our final thank-yous to Liberto. He would be taking a group of Californians to Chile a few days later followed by botanizing in the Argentine Andes and a visit to Rio de Janiero. So the botanical part of our time in Greece was coming to an end.
But we had one more beautiful stop as the sun set near Athens – a rocky hillside spangled with golden Sternbergia lutea.
Most of us chose to add four days to the trip in order to visit some of Greece’s most famous antiquity sites with Archaeology Professor Stavros Oikonomidis of Arcadia University. And, of course, there was always something notable from the world of flora… like the iconic bay laurel (Laurus nobilis) at the Greek agora in Athens…..
…. and the storied olive tree near the Eractheion atop the Acropolis.
These beautiful cypresses (Cupressus sempervirens) were growing at the monastery at Kaisariani on Mount Hymettus.
The view from Mycenae over the 3500-year-old ruins down onto the olive groves (and the fragrance as the olives were being harvested) was unforgettable. Ephedra distachya was bearing its red fruit, and I adored the tiny, perfect rock garden I found there with Cyclamen graecum emerging from a crevice in the outcrop.
And finally, Delphi. This is the place every visitor to Greece should see: a living. breathing link to a past culture devoted to the gods of mythology – Apollo and Athena – and home to the sanctuary of the Oracle of Delphi and the high priestess Pythia (a series of priestesses through the centuries). You can read more about Delphi online, but as we walked up the sacred way past the temples and monuments and limestone walls inscribed with the names of the rich and powerful who visited more than two millennia ago, I caught a little glimpse of purple. These days, you can call on an oracle quite quickly (provided you pay your roaming fees) without any need for a pythia getting involved. The answer came back before I’d walked back down the path: “!! Campanula topaliana subsp. delphica. They flower in spring. ” Somehow, on my very last day touring Greece, to find an endemic blooming out of season and so specific to this place of mythology…
…. especially since I have an entire dining room of botanical prints solely of campanulas from Flora Danica to Sowerby’s to Mrs. Loudon, etc…… it just seemed the perfect finale.
Thus ended our tour of Greece and its autumn flora and antiquities. We had checked off a good percentage of the plant list we were given at the start of the trip. But we saw and experienced so much more. Efharisto, Liberto. (That would make a great puzzle word…) Many thanks for showing us your beautiful country.
*******
And finally, a little epilogue. Man does not live by flora alone, of course. There is also music – a word that, after all, originates with the Greek word “mousikē” for “art of the muses”. Before I left for Greece, Liberto invited me to come out with him and his friends Maria and Natalia in Athens to see a favourite band from Crete. It was such a fun evening and the band was still playing when I headed back to the hotel at 3 am, mindful of my 6 am alarm(!) I was very moved by the music of Giorgis and Nikos Stratakis — Γιώργος & Νίκος Στρατάκης — and their band (music which seemed to share some Celtic rhythms with my own ancestry, especially the tsampouna or bagpipes). But I simply cannot imagine any North American band playing their own version of several verses of a 17th century romantic poem (Erotokritos from Cretefrom 1 to 6:28 min) and everyone in the audience knowing the chorus and singing it with great passion. That is most definitely the Greek spirit… or, perhaps, that elusive Greek quality ‘filotimo‘. Here is a little taste, courtesy of my video, of An Autumn Night in Athens.
Happiest of holidays to all my friends out there. Kαλές διακοπές! I’ll be back in the new year with more gardens.
As part of a botanical tour of Greece this autumn, led by Eleftherios Dariotis for the North American Rock Garden Society, I had the most magical visit to the saffron fields of the west Macedonia province in the small town of Krokos. If you photograph flower bulbs, as I do, the saffron crocus is a kind of holy grail – historic, culturally rich, with a mellow yellow whiff of mystery and romance. So it was a very special morning, followed by a saffron-themed lunch in Kozani three miles away. Our tour started in the town of Krokos (yes, that’s Greek for “crocus”) at the Kozani Saffron Producers Cooperative, called the Cooperative de Safran, below. Founded in 1971, it has 2,000 members from 41 villages in the area. According to Greek law, the Cooperative holds the exclusive rights to the collection, distribution and packaging of Greek saffron under the name ‘Krokos Kozanis’.
Outside the building, I saw my very first saffron crocus (Crocus sativus) in a weedy little bed in front of the building. Note the three very long scarlet stigmas (or as the Greek say, stigmata). The saffron crocus is not actually found in nature, but is an “autotriploid” version of its endemic progenitor Crocus cartwrightianus, which I’ll explain more about below.
Along the raised driveway behind the building, the murals celebrated this plant of antiquity…..
….. and the people who strain their backs to pick the flowers and harvest the stigmas from late October into early November (we visited on Halloween day) …..
…. and those who work with the stigmas once they’re dried and ready to become the saffron of our kitchen herbal.
In the building, we passed a room with a group of women at work weighing and packaging the tiny threads of saffron.
Depending on whose data you read, it takes between 85,000 and 150,000 flowers with their three stigmas to make 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of saffron. This has led to saffron being called “red gold”. In fact it was traditionally measured with the same types of scales used to measure gold.. I bought a few 2 gram packages from the Cooperative for €4.50 each, which I think was a very good price for top quality saffron. And given that there appears to be a lot of counterfeit saffron in powder form out there (usually with a little actual saffron supplemented with dyed filler), it’s important to buy your saffron from approved sources.
We listened to a presentation in Greek by the director of the cooperative, translated by Eleftherios.
Then we toured the product packaging area downstairs. I won’t even attempt to calculate what a tin like this filled with saffron threads would cost. But it would make a lot of risotto! There was a drying room, machines that did goodness-knows-what and big cartons addressed to places in the U.S. all ready to be shipped.
Finally it was time to drive out to the fields, the “Krokohória”. The harvesting season was in full swing, with purple flowers dotting bare soil in field after field along the roads.
The saffron crocus, Crocus sativus, below, is not known in nature. Recent genotyping-by-sequencing has determined that it is likely (99.3%) an ancient hybrid of…..
….. two different genotypes (autotriploid) of a wild Crocus cartwrightianus population south of Athens. During our tour I photographed this species, below, en route from Athens to Cape Sounion at the most southerly tip of Greece.
Like all crocuses, saffron crocus grows from a “corm”, not a bulb. But unlike all other crocuses which can be pollinated and make seed, its triploid nature means that it is sterile, therefore all new plants must come from offsets of mature corms.
Each patch had a few pickers bent over plucking flowers to place in their buckets. If this isn’t the most backbreaking work in all agriculture, I don’t know what is.
But it is an ancient practice, one that we know reaches back in Greece 3,500 years. We can be that specific because of the great preservative power of volcanic ash. If you visit the museum on the island of Santorini (Thera), as I did eight years ago, you can see fragments of wall frescoes, below, found buried under layers of the ash that descended on the Minoan Bronze Age settlement of Akrotiri during a massive, multi-stage volcanic eruption in roughly 1600 BC.
Though no human remains were discovered, leading researchers to conclude that the inhabitants fled a few months earlier during preliminary volcanic activity, the deep layer of tephra, which includes the thick, silvery pumice layer you can see in the upper part of my photo, below (I was on the deck of a ship which was floating on sea water at the surface of the caldera that formed during the resultant collapse of the volcano)…..
…… created a kind of Bronze Age museum, similar to Pompeii. And because of that, we know that the young Minoan woman below was doing exactly what…..
We were introduced to a husband-and-wife team of crocus pickers who agreed to be our interpretive guides. Their sweet dog kept them company. Look at the woman’s hands; saffron is also an ancient dye.
The man dug up a clump of crocuses to show us how the corms form offsets, gradually forming large clumps. In time, these are dug up, the older corms discarded and the younger corms replanted.
We saw their basket of newly-picked flowers. The stigmas must be harvested quickly to avoid deterioration in quality.
Then the woman pressed into our hands little piles of silky purple flowers.
We inhaled the light, enigmatic fragrance. Saffron absolute is an ingredient in many perfumes, including those by Bella Bellissima (Royal Saffron), Donna Karan (Black Cashmere), Giorgia Armani (Idole d’Armani), Givenchy (Ange ou Demon) and Lady Gaga (Fame), among others. Saffron was also said to be an aphrodisiac. According to an article in National Geographic about Iran’s saffron industry, “Cleopatra was said to bathe in saffron-infused mare’s milk before seeing a suitor”. (Please don’t try this at home. I’ve heard it doesn’t work with low-fat cow’s milk and I have no idea what would clean saffron from enamel.)
The crocus pickers’ dog was getting a little bored….
….. but our Greek guide Eleftherios was happy. We had hit the harvest timing perfectly!
Because I’ve been known to photograph a few honey bees in my time, I then looked around to see what I could find in the crocuses. There was one riding a stigma with great style (sorry, bad botanical pun)…..
…… and two rolling in the golden pollen. Like all crocuses, C. sativus produces lots of protein-rich pollen for bees, even though the flowers are sterile.
We walked down the road to see other pickers working their fields.
Discarded crocus tepals lay in piles at the edges of the fields, the end product of the morning’s harvest of saffron threads. What a wonderful visit we had.
Then it was on to the large town of Kozani where we sat down for a multi-course lunch, all saffron-themed. There was a saffron-infused chicken soup….
…… and a sweet (secret recipe) saffron sauce for grilled Greek cheeses….
….. and saffron chicken…..
….. followed by risotto, then saffron ice cream. All with wine. The Greeks do know how to do “lunch”.
It was the perfect way to finish our saffron adventure, to embroider our growing canvas of autumn-flowering Greek bulbs with these intricate, beautiful scarlet threads.
What a treat I had back in June, along with more than 70 other garden bloggers during our annual “Garden Bloggers’ Fling”, to visit the beautiful garden of Rob Proctor and David Macke in the Highlands district of northwest Denver – and then to visit it again in softer light, the following morning! So in the midst of a very busy summer up here on Lake Muskoka (during which I’ve scarcely had a moment to revisit my photos) I nevertheless wanted to share images from my visit. If you arrive in June, this is what greets you even before you open the charming front gate.
In front of the house is a “hellstrip” from heaven, below, filled with a drought-tolerant symphony of plants in purples and soft yellows. It’s your first clue that the plantings here have been designed by a master colourist who is also a painter and botanical illustrator. Rob now appears on Denver’s 9NEWS twice weekly as a garden expert, but at one time he was co-director with Angela Overy of the Denver Botanic Gardens School of Botanical Illustration. He also served as the DBG’s Director of Horticulture from 1998 to 2003. As his friend and former colleague, DBG Senior Curator and Director of Outreach Panayoti Kelaidis said in an interview once: “He transformed a sleepy, provincial research garden facility and made us one of the great display gardens in America.”
Bloody cranesbill (Geranium sanguineum) creates soft cushions of magenta blossoms in front of lavender-blue meadow sage (Salvia pratensis), middle left. At middle right is purple woodland sage (Salvia nemorosa).
Bees were everywhere, including this honey bee nectaring on the woodland sage.
Two unusual xeric plants are lilac-purple Kashmir sage (Phlomis cashmeriana) and golden drop (Onosma taurica), below.
At the eastern end of the hellstrip, a brighter colour scheme featured….
….. apricot desert mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) with basket-of-gold (Aurinia saxatilis).
A metallic green sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens) was nectaring on the desert mallow, while….
….. nearby, showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) was awaiting monarch butterflies.
The word “hellstrip” is usually attributed to Colorado garden designer Lauren Springer Ogden, author of the acclaimed book The Undaunted Garden, among others. She and Rob also co-authored Passionate Gardening: Good Advice for Challenging Climates. In an article she wrote for Horticulture magazine back in 2007, Ogden wrote of the Water Smart Garden she designed for Denver Botanic Gardens, shown in my photo below: “The Denver Botanic Gardens’ former director of horticulture, Rob Proctor, played a crucial role in developing the full potential of the garden. The first couple of years it floundered—a good number of the called-for plants were not actually put in, and it fell under poorly trained and often careless maintenance. When Rob took over, he made it his priority to support the richness of the planting and the high level of care the garden deserved. He let me shop personally for many of the missing plants and add the beginnings of a collection of fiber plants that now brings so much to the dynamic year-round textures of the garden: nolinas, yuccas, agaves, and dasylirions—plants that just a few years ago were rarely used in Colorado gardens and often thought not to be hardy.”
Though I could have spent an hour exploring the luscious hellstrip, I was ready to find what waited on the other side of the gate in the ebullient gardens that surround the 1905 “Denver square” brick house that Rob and David moved into in May 1993.
I was invited in to look at some of Rob’s art. I loved this botanical rendering of a passionflower, one of many of his works hanging in the house.
But I was anxious to see what was out back, so I made my way past Stranger, the stray cat that hung around Rob and David’s garden for such a long time that he first got the nickname, then his new home.
Though Stranger elected to stay behind on the sunroom table, Mouse accompanied me out onto the brick-paved patio.
And what a patio it is, nestled into its own little garden spangled with lilac-purple Allium cristophii. Here we see the first wave of hundreds of containers that Rob and David fill with annuals each season, adding to pots containing tropicals, bulbs, succulents or perennials. Pots with tender plants are lifted outdoors each spring, nurtured and watered all summer, then transported back to the basement in autumn before Denver’s Zone 5 winter winds blow. Cobalt blue – a favourite colour – is the unifying hue here.
Teak benches and comfy cushions abound here and throughout the garden.
Tropical foliage plants mix with colourful annuals and succulents like Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’ pair with potted lilies. Incidentally, Rob is an expert in bulbs in pots, having written The Oudoor Potted Bulb: New Approaches to Container Gardening with Flowering Bulbs way back in 1993, the year they moved here. It’s one of sixteen books he has authored or co-authored.
Though their property is more than a half-acre with several discrete garden areas, the patio is a lovely intimate extension of the house.
When I visited the first time, Rob, left, in his trademark vest and David, a retired geologist, right, held court out here.
I was impressed that David was able to reach out and pick a succulent pea….
….. from a pot of dwarf ‘Tom Thumb’ peas on the coffee table.
However on my second visit, it was just Mouse and me.
I enjoyed the sound of water from the raised goldfish pond….
….. and the splash of water from a unique watering can fountain set among pots on the stairs to the house.
But I was anxious to head out to explore the garden. When Rob and David moved in 26 years ago, the first thing they did was cut down eight “half-dead Siberian elms”. Said Rob in a 1995 article for American Horticulturist, he wanted to build perennial borders. “Because of the relatively formal look of the late Victorian Italianate house, I chose a strong, geometric layout of long borders. Occasional half circles soften the straight lines. Within this framework, I indulge in the controlled chaos that we associate with traditional herbaceous borders.” He carved out two rectangular beds each measuring 16 x 60 feet (4.9 x 18 metres) with an 8-foot wide strip of lawn in between. He then designed a backdrop of 12 brick columns – six per bed – connected by lattice screening and had a mason erect them on deep concrete footings. That resulted in four 8 x 60 foot perennial beds, two of which are visible below. At the far end on the property’s south boundary line is the gazebo, built atop an old carriage house and featuring a winding staircase to the flat roof and a shady dining area within. “Climbing the staircase,” wrote Rob, “it’s possible to view much of the garden from above.”
Mouse followed me dutifully out into the garden.
The colours here in June were exquisite, with purple and blue catmints, campanulas, cranesbills, meadowrues, salvias and veronicas enlivened by brilliant chartreuse. “Borders are like paintings,” said Rob. “Each one starts as a blank canvas. Working with a palette of plants, rather than paints, the possible combinations are limitless. The twin borders that cut through the middle of the garden contain the colors that I naturally gravitate towards – the blues, purples, and pinks.”
Each border held dozens of ideas for combinations. When I visited on June 17th, star-of-Persia onion (Allium cristophii) looked perfect with Kashmir sage (Phlomis cashmeriana)…..
….. and softened the flowers of broad-petaled cranesbill (Geranium platypetalum).
By the way, if you ever want to go down into a taxonomic rabbit hole, take a look at my blog on Allium cristophii.
The bold foliage of American cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum), below, offers a strong contrast to the soft colours and shapes of the central border. Later in summer, the white flower umbels reach up to 8 feet (2.5 metres). In one of the 2018 video clips from 9NEWS, Rob gives some pithy advice on how to handle this phototoxic native – just don’t! Clambering over the lattice in the back of this photo is golden hops (Humulus lupulus ‘Aureus’), one of a number of vines that Rob encourages for its lovely effect. As he wrote: “The golden hops vine needs little encouragement to thread through five or six feet of pink and blue flowers in this border, providing fresh, almost springlike foliage even in midsummer.”
Rob has used the red-leaved rose Rosa glauca as a background feature in one border, less for its single June flowers than for its strong foliage accent in order to enhance the massive beauty bush flowering in the background.
This was the view north along the twin central borders back to the house.
The third long border to the east featured white roses and the tall spires of Verbascum bombyciferum ‘Arctic Summer’….
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…… nestled in a snowy cloud of sea kale (Crambe cordifolia).
The fourth long border on the west side is a confection of pinks and burgundies – peonies, roses and cranesbills in June. As it turns west near the immense beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis), Rob gave special consideration to the unique colouration. “The beauty bush, its pale pink blossoms tinged with coral, inspired the color scheme of the surrounding plantings as the border turns to the west”. For the garden nearby, he chose sunset colours in lilies, red valerian, red sunroses, salmon pink nicotine and coral bells mixed with chartreuse and bronze foliage, to name a few.
In fact, he captured all three tints of beauty bush flowers in the cushions on the chairs placed strategically under its flowery boughs. This is colour perfectionism! Because of its size, Rob estimates the shrub was planted fairly soon after it was introduced to the west via Ernest “China” Wilson, who sent seed to Veitch’s Nursery in England in 1901. Flowers did not appear on the first seedlings for nine more years. It became very popular in gardens in the mid-20th century but deserves to be planted in gardens where its size can be contained.
This view melted my heart. And there were bees in that pink rose… scroll down to the video at the end of my blog and you’ll see them.
Clematis recta is a superb June-blooming herbaceous clematis. I’m not sure how Rob manages to keep his upright, but it does benefit from some kind of support, like a peony ring.
Further along, near the nuts-and-bolts of the garden (compost bins, potting shed, etc.) I noted one of Rob’s favourite strategies to introduce a splash of colour into the borders: a well-positioned pot with a bright red annual coleus. He does the same thing with red orach (Atriplex hotensis ‘Rubra’). Later there will be larkspur here.
We’ve arrived at the back where the gazebo is sited on the foundation of an old carriage house. A spiral staircase climbs to the top; it must be a lovely spot to sip a glass of wine and look back on the borders.
Down below, there was a table and chairs under the roof, providing a nice view and much needed shade in Denver’s notoriously hot summers.
Luscious tuberous begonias thrive here.
What a great spot for al fresco dinners – surrounded by tropicals and foliage plants. I loved the louvered panels at the back. And what do you suppose lies behind that dark picket fence?
Well, it’s an alley. A place where most gardeners would be content to create a couple of parking spots and leave it at that. But not David and Rob…. all that sunshine! So they not only reserved places to park their cars, but….
… also designed a potager divided into eight Native-American-inspired “waffle” beds, which are dug down below grade to capture precious rainwater, just as waffles collect syrup.
Bordered in thyme, the beds contain different types of seed-grown vegetables. At the centre of the potager is an artful cluster of pots.
As with every part of Rob and David’s garden, there is a comfy, colour-coordinated place to sit and relax – even in the alley!
Biennial clary sage (Salvia sclarea) is one of many plants allowed to self-seed here.
I loved this succulent-filled strawberry jar in the midst of the vegetables.
I headed back into the garden and made my way down the east side, where an old driveway has been re-imagined as the “gravel allée”. It’s a series of tableaux: sitting areas with colour-matched accessories and plants. Periwinkle blue and rusty-orange… sigh. You can imagine how enchanting this is for someone who called her blog “thepaintboxgarden”!
Such an inviting scene……
Double clematis are often less hardy than small-flowered species and varieties, so Rob pots them up and takes them to a less exposed area for winter.
Under the mature trees here was another semi-shaded sitting area set in amongst shrub roses with yet another bench. I loved the row of potted aloes!
Now I was gazing at the house through a delightful thyme parterre herb garden.
I walked around to the south to see the view….
…. and then from the corner nearest the house. This is such a classic design – also created in the lowered waffle bed manner – and so lovely when the thyme…..
…. and the rose are in flower together.
I had a plane to catch later that afternoon, so gathered up my things and headed around the house to the front. There on the west side under the shade of the trees was one final treasure in Rob and David’s garden. It was a patio filled with shade-loving plants adjoining their sunken garden (down the stairs and just out of the photo below). As Rob wrote in 1995: “One weekend, while digging up self-sown tree-of-heaven saplings, we kept hitting brick. We determined that it was the foundation to a building, about 15 by 10 feet. Friends joined us for some urban archeology as we excavated it, finding hundreds of patent medicine bottles, broken china, and a waffle iron designed for the top of a wood stove. The foundation may have supported a summer kitchen or an earlier house, perhaps a farmer’s. We stopped digging at about four feet and, exhausted, decided our sunken garden was deep enough. We mixed in extra-rich compost to nurture the shade-lovers we intended to plant there.”
It was so hot that day in June, I would have loved to settle in the shade on those blue and red cushions and contemplate the lovely caladium. But it was time to go.
So, reluctantly, out I went through the gate entwined with Virginia creeper, to meet my ride.
As a bonus, I created a little musical tour through David and Rob’s enchanting garden, co-starring a selection of the bees that find nectar there:
Rob and David have shared their garden annually for many years now. It’s for a cause near and dear to them – and to Stranger and Mouse, too. And I’m so glad I was able to share their garden with you, too.
The Andes, Uspallata Pass between Chile and Argentina – My only exposure to the Andes prior to crossing them on our wine tour was reading the book ‘Alive’ by Piers Paul Read, about the 1972 Uruquayan Air Force plane crash on a glacier and amazing survival of sixteen of the passengers, after 72 days (thanks to necessary cannibalism). So the mountain range had always seemed spooky to me. But I needn’t have worried, because our drivers knew the road and we climbed the famous serpentine ascent, stopping near the top to take a shot of where we’d been.
In winter – our summer – when the Portillo ski resort is open, the mountains are covered in deep snow and avalanche danger is real, so vulnerable sections of the highway pass through avalanche tunnels…..
….. like this.
We stopped to photograph the highest peak in Latin America, Aconcagua (6,960 metres – 22,841 ft), which is entirely in Argentina.
The Chile-Argentina customs hall (Complejo Fronterizo los Libertadores) is a little beyond the actual border in a giant hangar at an elevation of about 3800 metres (12,467 feet). Everyone must disembark and have passports stamped while the bus is thoroughly inspected.
While we waited outside for the bus to clear customs, I gazed around at the amazing formations on the mountains.
How I wished I had a geologist at my side on that journey over the Andes. Pretty sure this is sedimentary rock, but there were dark black volcanic rocks in places too. The Andes – or the Cordillera de los Andes – are quite young, geologically speaking, just 45 million years, compared to parts of eastern Argentina where the rocks of the Rio de la Plata Craton exceed 2 billion years. The longest mountain chain in the world, they extend 7,000 kilometres (4,300 miles) from Venezuela to the bottom of Argentina. The Andes sit on the Pacific Ring of Fire, with myriad volcanoes throughout the region. The mountain range was formed tectonically as the Nazca Plate and a portion of the Antarctic Plate are sliding beneath the South American Plate. It is this action that results in earthquakes and volcanoes.
Different colours indicate different mineralization and ages of the rock.
We made a stop not far down the highway at La Puente del Incas, the Bridge of the Incas. The amazing colours here come from the minerals in the hot springs. Set into the rock, you can also see the ruins of a thermal spa that operated here from 1905 to August 1965, when an avalanche and debris destroyed the spa hotel in the distance. According to Wikipedia: “Both glaciers and the hot springs were involved in the formation of the arch. During an ice age, glaciers would have expanded down throughout the entire valley; then, at the end of the ice age when the Earth began to warm up again, the retreating ice would have left behind massive piles of eroded debris. The water that flows from the hot springs is extremely rich in mineral content, to the point that it has been known to petrify small objects in a layer of minerals. Similarly, the piles of debris left by the glaciers were encrusted over time into a single solid mass. Finally, during a period where the climate was extremely wet, a powerful river formed in the valley. It cut a channel through the lower, least encrusted layers of debris, which gradually eroded into the large opening of the arch.”
Just beyond, you can see the little chapel, La Capilla de las Nieves, built in 1929. It survived the avalanche. Beyond that are the ruins of the spa hotel.
I’ll let a young Charles Darwin have the last word on the Bridge of the Incas, from his journal entries in ‘Voyage of the Beagle’. The Beagle was a British ship mapping the coast of South America and Darwin was a young naturalist on board. When the ship was at port, he travelled into the countryside, often on horseback. This was his pithy assessment of the bridge, which was accompanied by a sketch complete with vaqueros on horseback.
April 4th 1835 – “From the Rio de las Vacas to the Puente del Incas, half a day’s journey. As there was pasture for the mules, and geology for me, we bivouacked here for the night. When one hears of a natural Bridge, one pictures to oneself some deep and narrow ravine, across which a bold mass of rock has fallen; or a great arch hollowed out like the vault of a cavern. Instead of this, the Incas Bridge consists of a crust of stratified shingle cemented together by the deposits of the neighbouring hot springs. It appears as if the stream had scooped out a channel on one side, leaving an overhanging ledge, which was met by earth and stones falling down from the opposite cliff. Certainly an oblique junction, as would happen in such a case, was very distinct on one side. The Bridge of the Incas is by no means worthy of the great monarchs whose name it bears.”
We continued down the Argentine side past craggy peaks with talus slopes from erosion….
…. and others showing limestone strata in sandstone……
…. before arriving in a lovely valley where the Rio Mendoza flowed by in a summer trickle.
Looking up, I could see black lava outcrops in places.
From the rolling hills of the valley, the view of the cordillera was spectacular.
Soon we were near the little town of Uspallata with obvious signs of civilization.
After lunch in Uspallata, we continued on in a verdant valley along the Rio Mendoza. I believe they call these smaller mountains the pre-Cordillera.
I was sorry to leave the Andes foothills behind, but they would be in our view for the next week.
As we drove into Mendoza, we passed the turquoise-blue waters of the Potrerillos Dam.
Bodega Salentein, Uco Valley, Mendoza, Argentina – After arriving at our hotel in the Uco Valley for the next two nights, Posada Salentein, we headed out on the Salentein family’s large estate to visit their winery. Salentein is a castle in the Netherlands owned by the Pon family who made their wealth in the automobile business. In 1992 when newly-retired Mijndert Pon arrived in Argentina on a whim following a boating accident in the Panama canal (you must read this story on how this event triggered development of the wine industry in Mendoza’s Uco Valley) he purchased a farm followed eventually by other farms to create a tract of land roughly 30 kilometres long and 4 kilometres wide. Today, Salentein features 850 hectares of grapes and 1100 hectares of almonds and walnuts..
We toured the winery and looked down on the cellar, which doubles as an amphitheatre for concerts. They keep the concert length and audience to a minimum, so as not to raise the humidity and temperature levels in the cellar too much.
There is a complex mix of art and science to winemaking. It begins in the field with the choice of specific varietals for the climate and the terroir. How the grapes are then grown and harvested varies each year according to the vagaries of weather. In the winery, the grapes are fermented and aged according to the winemaker’s instructions – and this also varies year to year, according to each season’s expression. But behind each winemaker (or team of winemakers in the bigger wineries), there are numerous technicians who regularly analyze the wine at every stage, carefully noting the readings so each year’s harvest has its own paper trail from vineyard to bottle.
As always, we had a very good tasting.
Leaving Salentein’s reception centre, I was sorry I didn’t have more time to photograph the stunning landscape in front.
Early the next morning on the way to breakfast, I heard voices in the nearby vineyard and watched pickers harvesting the grapes. Since grapes must be picked cool, this takes place from first light and lasts only hours, just until the sun begins to warm the air.
After breakfast as we drove out to our first winery of the day, we saw the big mechanical harvester dumping Salentein grapes into waiting bins.
Zuccardi Piedra Infinita, Altamira, Uco Valley, Mendoza, Argentina – We drove south to La Consulta in the Altamira region to visit Zuccardi’s beautiful, award-winning winery. From the road, we knew we were in for an architectural treat.
Conceived of by third-generation winemaker/owner Sebastián Zuccardi and designed by Tom Hughes, Fernando Raganato and Eugenia Mora and opened in 2016, it features an entrance landscape of silver-leaved native plants that perfectly compliment the stone walls and silvery, egg-shaped dome of the building.
Here we look back along the stone entrance walkway that doubles as a bridge over water.
Before touring the winery, we were taken out to the vineyard since more than any other winery on our two-week tour, Zuccardi Piedra Infinita and Sebastián Zuccardi have zeroed in exhaustively on terroir. Not only were we shown the extensive topographic polygonal mapping that has occurred at this place where an ancient river once flowed, leaving behind a variety of soils: some alluvial (river rock), some colluvial (rock eroded from nearby hills and mountains), some silty, some calcareous, etc…….
……. we were encouraged to visit excavations between adjacent rows that illustrate the mixed terroir. The photo below shows typical alluvial soil; just ten feet away the soil was rock-free.
We also saw how Zuccardi and other Mendoza vineyards use netting at harvest time to prevent damage from hailstones.
Then we were taken indoors…….
…… to look at the cellar, where workers were busy ‘punching down’ the grapes in the egg-shaped cement fermentation tanks.
Back outside, we settled on the patio for our wine tasting. Note that many of the labels celebrate the terroir-mapping theme (Poligonos, Aluvionale) and the traditional use of cement for the fermentation tanks (Concreto).
And I admit I came home with a bottle of Zuccardi’s delicious olive oil. Now all I need to remind me of Argentina are the mountains… and the grapevines…. and the warm sunshine.
Rutini Wines, Uco Valley, Mendoza, Argentina – From the outside, Rutini’s winery looked deceptively small. But that berm, below, ….
….. hides the multiple floors of this operation, which was in the middle of harvest. We were so lucky to see traditional destemming and sorting…..
…. but we also saw the use of a computerized optical sorter. Here’s a little video I made that shows the grape must being pumped to the fermentation tanks, and then the marc or pomace being removed by a very small woman with a big smile!
I watched renowned winemaker Mariano di Paola tasting the juice, just one of a thousand steps in winemaking. A proficient winemaker can tell whether the juice has the correct balance of sugars, acids and flavours; that determines how he or she will proceed with the harvest.
In Rutini’s barrel room….
….. we saw a very special cask made by Sylvain of France from a 360-year old oak tree.
After the winery tour, we visited the tasting room….
….. with its beautiful view of the vineyard and the Andes.
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When I was researching our trip to Chile and Argentina, our friends’ son David German, owner of Fathom Expeditions (he sails to the Antarctic and Arctic, among other destinations and sailed the Shackleton IMAX documentary team to the Antarctic) gave us a few Argentina recommendations. On wine, he had just three words: “Rutini, Rutini, Rutini.” After our tasting at Rutini (and later many meals in Buenos Aires), I would heartily agree.
Finca Decero, Agrelo, Mendoza, Argentina – Decero means “from scratch” in Spanish and that’s the motif of this lovely Remolinos winery, which was created from scratch by Swiss cement billionaire Thomas Schmidheiny.
I spotted this raptor, a chimango caracara (Milvago chimango) on the roof.
We passed a gardener on the way into the winery…..
….. on our tour with winemaker Tomás Hughes, (middle below) who let us taste the 2018 Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon straight from the barrel.
The tasting here was really quite wonderful. Decero’s mission is to make high quality red wines that are “not overstructured”.
Especially fun was was the 2015 The Owl & The Dust Devil, a blend that has won all kinds of awards (including a Jancis Robinson Wine of the Week and 90+ points from a number of top sommeliers.) Remolinos, as it happens, means a little swirling wind, i.e. a “dust devil”.
It was also my first experience with an “augmented reality” label which, when scanned via the correct app, tells a little story about the wine.
After the tasting, we went outside to stretch our legs. I wandered through the garden with low rock walls arranged sculpturally as the fingers of a hand, symbolizing Decero’s “amano” hand-made philosophy of wine-making. And that isn’t a bad view of the Andes, either.
The lunch we were served at Finca Decero was one of the best meals of our entire trip. It started with a fried empanada of beef flank, pine mushrooms and lemon peel with tomato and plum relish.
Our starter was mouth-watering pork flank with peach emulsion, avocado ice cream and smoked peanuts.
Then came the delicious main course: beef filet with puree of sweet potato and dates, Japanese eggplant, green beans, cherry tomatoes, cream of peas and chorizo.
Next up was a little melon sorbet and “beebrushes”.
For dessert we had white chocolate cake with plum ice cream and a zingy Sriracha and red pepper coulis with raspberries. Outstanding!
After lunch, a few of us walked down the long driveway to wait for our bus to take us to our next hotel in Mendoza City. As I listened to the birds singing, I gazed down at the beautiful rocks arranged along the edge of the gardens flanking the vineyard. These were the Andes, literally parts of the mountains rolled down the slopes to become part of the ancient rivers, landscape and terroir of the vines of the Uco Valley.
Trapiche, Maipú, Mendoza, Argentina – When you’ve been around since 1883, you’re more than a winery, you’re also a museum. That is Trapiche, in the Maipú Valley. Founded by Argentine politician, banker and wine promoter Tiburcio Benegas, El Trapiche was the first winery to bring French vines to Argentina. In fact, Tiburcio Benegas, Silvestre Ochagavia in Chile and Agoston Haraszthy in California are considered to be the fathers of the wine industry in the Americas. Trapiche remained in the Benegas family until the 1970s, when it was sold and later re-sold. Today, it’s owned by a private equity firm and sells its wines into 40 countries.
Some of the winemaking equipment used in the 19th century is on display…..
…. and the original cement tanks are still in use, but with modern fittings and epoxy seals added when the building was renovated in 2006-08.
Train tracks still run up to the winery, from the era when the grapes arrived by rail cars.
There is an old-fashioned feel to the olive grove at Trapiche. Indeed many of the trees are more than a century old.
Close to the winery was the Biodynamic Malbec vineyard.
I seem to have a lot of enthusiastic stars next to my tasting list of Trapiche wines. I loved the 2015 Grand Medalla Cabernet Franc; the 2014 Single Vineyard Malbec; and the 2014 Altimus Merlot.
One favourite was the 2014 Unánime Blend, which represents the unanimous tasting vote of Trapiche’s winemakers. It is 60% Cabernet Sauvignon 25% Malbec and 15% Cabernet Franc, sourced from different valleys in Mendoza.
Trapiche gave us a lovely lunch. After the obligatory empanada appetizer, there was pork shoulder with gremolata….
…… and a delightful dessert of Malbec-poached pears with spun sugar. Then it was back to the hotel until our dinner tasting.
Bodega Lagarde, Luján de Cuyo, Mendoza – We arrived at Lagarde in early evening, and I was impressed with the welcoming garden of agaves and grasses, with vintage farm equipment.
Lagarde was established in 1897, but has been in the Pescarmona family for 50 years. The colonial house is from the 19th century. Irrigation comes straight from the Andes, in the form of canals. This use of Andean meltwaters, i.e. controlled flood irrigation, was pioneered by Tiburcio Benegas of El Trapiche, above.
Winemaker Juan Roby led the tasting – I especially loved the 2017 Guarda Chardonnay.
As our tasting finished, Juan encouraged us to hurry outdoors to capture the sunset over the vineyard. It was spectacular.
Then we sat down to a wonderful formal dinner catered by the winery’s restaurant Fogón. The appetizer course was sweetbreads.
And of course there was beef from the Argentine pampas……
….. followed by an exquisite dessert: grilled and fresh figs with marmalade, fig ice cream, sweet peach mousse, a grilled peach and almond praline.
As we lingered over dessert, Marcos Ortíz, one of the Fogón waiters came out of the kitchen to serenade us.
Then it was time to head back to our hotel in Mendoza City. And what a treat it was to walk out under a full moon, framed by the vineyard’s trees.
Pascual Toso – Barrancas, Mendoza – En route to the last winery visit of our trip, we stopped to walk out onto a bridge to look down on the mighty Rio Mendoza. Except…. the river bed here was dry at the end of summer. (As we drove across the bridge, we did see a narrow channel of water at the far side.)
Minutes later, we arrived at one of Mendoza’s first vineyards, Pascual Toso, named for the man who came from Piemonte, Italy in the 1880s and decided to make wine, as his family had done in the old world. In the early 1900s, he expanded into the Mendoza River highland of the Maipú region, at Las Barrancas, meaning small canyon. (Fun fact: Pascual was a friend of Alfredo Di Lelio of “Fettucine Alfredo” fame.) Today, Pascual Toso has 400 hectares (988 acres) of vineyards here.
We met winemaker Felipe Stahlschmidt in the winery (he worked at renowned Catena before coming here), and after greeting everyone with a glass of Toso Brut – the celebratory sparkling wine that remains their best-seller, along with a deep line of excellent reds – he told us a little about the winery. Tour leader Steve Thurlow is in the background; he put together such a wonderful trip through Chile and Argentina, and knows all these wineries and the personalities behind them very well.
On our tour, we saw the original concrete fermentation tanks, still in use.
For our tasting, we went outside to a shelter overlooking….
…… “las barrancas”… the canyon.
As a plant photographer, I was excited to be close to a unique parasitic plant from the family Loranthaceae. It doesn’t bother making roots in the ground, but takes its nourishment from plants to which it attaches.
But we were there to taste wines, and that we did. Pascual Toso (like many other Argentine winemakers) is working hard to chip away at Argentinians’ reverence for Malbec (which is the foundation of Argentina’s wine industry) by making truly excellent Cabernet Sauvignons and Syrahs. For one thing, Malbec bottles are much heavier in glass than other reds, because traditionally that’s how the wine was bottled; thus shipping costs are more. But winemakers like Felipe Stahlschmidt are anxious to see an acceptance of more sophisticated wines as Argentina comes of age in a global market. To that end, California vintner Paul Hobbs has worked as a consultant to Pascual Toso in managing the harvesting and oak aging of the high end red wines.
As we finished the tasting, we were treated to an asado, a traditional barbecue of goat, beef and chicken.
It came with a mouth-watering provolone fritter. At least, that’s what I think we were eating, because Argentines have many ways of eating melted cheese!
After the main course, we had dessert, accompanied by sparkling Toso rosé wine. Salut!
And that marked the end of our last official tasting, though we convened at a lovely restaurant in Mendoza City that evening for a farewell dinner, before flying off on our own to Buenos Aires for a final four days. I’ll leave that city and its botanical garden to another blog some day. In the meantime, muchasgracias if you managed to get this far with me on our delightful Chile/Argentina wine tour!
