Chanticleer Garden in Early Autumn – Part 2

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Janet

When I paused my tour in my last blog, Part 1, we were leaving the Ruin Garden. Let’s take a moment to explore a little section of Minder Woods, nearby. This entrance moves through a planting of white wood aster (Eurybia divaricata) and ostrich ferns on the left and Begonia grandis var. evansiana ‘Alba’ on the right.

Further down the path are ‘Pamina’ Japanese anemones (Anemone hupehensis var. japonica) with ostrich ferns.

I loved this artful bench, just one of numerous handsome places to sit in Chanticleer’s gardens.

This tea viburnum (V. setigerum) is known for its dependable autumn display of berries.

Japanese toad lily season had begun; the one below is Tricyrtis hirta ‘Miyazaki’.

Though I grow a few species of snakeroot, I had never seen this compact one: Actaea japonica var. acerina.

Touring the Gravel Garden, below, is a little like walking into a drought-tolerant plant treasure box. Situated on a sunny, south-facing slope, it is packed with plants thriving in gritty soil that has also been top-dressed with gravel. Plants might be native drylanders, Mediterranean species, succulents or cacti. Below, a big beaked yucca (Y. rostrata) adds exclamation marks to one bed. Though this yucca is cold-hardy, any tender plants used here are moved by cart to heated greenhouses for the winter.

I had to work to find the name of the yellow-flowered plant in the trough on the right; it’s Bigelowia nuttallii, Nuttall’s rayless goldenrod.

Look at this beautiful Agave attenuata in its trough. Alongside is an interesting prickly-pear cactus that I think might be Opuntia cochenillifera ‘Variegated’.

Lisa Roper, the Gravel Garden horticulturist (and my friend) likes to combine different plant textures, for example the big century plant (Agave americana) below with fine-textured plants like lavender and santolina. Oh, and that lovely little purple-flowered plant?

I’m so glad you asked! I asked Joe Henderson and he supplied the name. It’s Eryngium leavenworthii or Leavenworth’s eryngo, an annual native to dry, rocky prairies and waste places in the central U.S.

The gravel garden occupies niches and stone steps up a gently-sloped hill. In fact, each step has its own little collection in Chanticleer’s plant list which is updated yearly. Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) is allowed to self-seed around, but all self-seeders are carefully edited — a chore in rich gravel.

Seedheads offer a clue to what was blooming here in summer, like the wand-like Liatris microcephala and the Seseli gummiferum with its umbel inflorescence, below.

Lisa incorporates lots of interesting gladiolus species in the garden, including the beauty below, which I believe to be G. oppositiflorus.

Of the fine-textured carexes and grasses, this seep muhly grass stands out, Muhlenbergia reverchonii.

I had to ask my friends on Facebook’s Plant Idents page to help me out with an i.d. for the plant below. We finally came up with the genus Pseudognaphalium.… and then I was able to refer to the online plant list to give us the species P. obtusifolium, better known as sweet everlasting, or rabbit tobacco. It has a rich ethnobotanical history.

I could have stayed in the Gravel Garden all night, but our 4-hour stay meant I had to keep moving, so down I went to explore the sweeping beds between the Gravel Garden and the great lawn below the main house. These beds are considered part of Minder Woods. They’re always inspiring and often seem to have a purple-and-orange theme, including big purple alliums and orange kniphofia I photographed one spring. This time of year, asters (Symphyotrichum laeve ‘Bluebird’), Russian sage (Salvia yangii/Perovskia atriplicifolia) and tender sages like Salvia ‘Amistad’ and Salvia leucantha form the purple/blue palette while the orange is supplied by Zinnia ‘Queen Lime Orange’, tall ‘Garland Orange’ marigolds (Tagetes erecta), Cosmos sulphureus ‘Sunset Orange’, Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifolia) and dahlias ‘Sonic Boom’, ‘Kabloom’, ‘Honeymoon’ and ‘David Howard’, among others.

The orange flowers below include zinnia, cosmos and marigold. In these photos you can also see the first year rosettes of the biennial verbascums that will tower in these beds next year.

What would our late summer-autumn gardens be without asters? Chanticleer uses a combination in its gardens, but the taller lavender-lilac ones seem to be Symphyotrichum laeve ‘Bluebird’.

Well-grown annuals add so much to the late summer garden. Below is the fabulous, tall zinnia, ‘Queen Lime Orange’. On the right is tender Mexican sage, Salvia leucantha ‘Santa Barbara’. The hydrangea is H. paniculata ‘Limelight’.

Adding a screen-like grass in front of plants turns plant design into a bewitching form of stagecraft. That’s purple love grass (Eragrostis spectabilis), below……

…. and look how it serves as a mysterious scrim curtain in front of the brilliant zinnias. Isn’t it magical?

The Elevated Walk was built in 2015 to access the main house from the ponds and the great lawn below, and its plant roster has matured beautifully now. Here is that white-flowered sweet everlasting again, along with the compact Russian sage ‘Little Spire’ and rattlesnake master. The wine-coloured seedheads are Angelica gigas. The walkway itself is composed of porous materials.

The areas beneath the Elevated Walk are also planted with trees, shrubs and perennials, like the Aspen Grove, below. That means they’re at eye level with visitors on the walkway, a little like a treetop walk in other gardens.

With its persistent seed heads, rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) adds seasons of interest to a border. And those oblong, dark seedheads belong to Rudbeckia maxima.

The Apple House occupies a place of honor on the walkway. Go inside and you’re treated to fabulous, colourful murals – but no apples these days.

A few of my fellow garden bloggers stopped on the Elevated Walk to admire the fall-changing foliage of this beautiful Japanese maple (Acer palmatum subsp. amoenum). And look at that stunning railing

The prize at the top of the walkway is Chanticleer House, once home to Adolph Rosengarten Sr. and his wife, and also the setting for several colourful flower beds, like the one in the Overlook below, punctuated by spears of the succulent Furcraea foetida ‘Mediopicta‘. The variegated plant at right is Euphorbia x martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’.

I grew angelonia (purple plant below) for the first time this summer, and though it lasted in flower for months, I didn’t see one bee or butterfly on it. Too bad – otherwise the perfect bedding annual. Blue-flowered Salvia farinacea, on the other hand, is a great pollinator plant. The nodding, white and pink flowers are South African foxglove (Ceratotheca triloba).

The fluffy white flowers below belong to Euphorbia hypericifiolia Breathless Blush.

The house terrace always features an array of chartreuse-leaved plants. I’m not exactly sure what the chartreuse plant below is, but it might be Salix sachalinensis ‘Golden Sunshine’.

This border was tropical-looking, with its spiky golden bromeliads (Aechmea blanchetiana Hawaii). The phormum at right is ‘Pink Panther’.

I love the little gloriosa daisy at front, R. hirta ‘Zahara’. The twirly, brown foliage plant at the rear is Acalypha wilkesiana ‘Ceylon’.

Dozens of pots were arrayed in front of Chanticleer House, and those with dark leaves played nicely with the dark shutters.

And here is a charming gesture that sets Chanticleer apart from so many gardens. There is always a basin filled with colourful floating flowers and leaves plucked from the gardens. This one even contains the green fruit colloquially known as, yes, “hairy balls”, but is more properly called Gomphocarpus physocarpus. A tender shrub related to milkweeds, it also provides food for monarch butterfly caterpillars.

A few of my fellow garden bloggers were relaxing on the sun porch. Originally glassed-in, it was a favourite lookout for Adolph Rosengarten Sr’s wife, Christine Penrose Rosengarten.

The porch featured one of the many beautiful floral arrangements crafted from the garden’s flowers. (And there is that spectacular ‘Harvey Koop’ dahlia from the Cutting Garden in Part One!)

As a confirmed ‘meadow gardener’, one of the reasons I was overjoyed to be visiting Chanticleer in late summer was the chance to see the Flowery Lawn. Originally a rectangle of manicured turfgrass between the house and swimming pool, the decision to let it become a tended meadow was such a good one. In spring, it’s all daffodils, but on this day it featured several types of anise hyssop (Agastache) including ‘Blue Fortune’, ‘Blue Boa’, ‘Little Adder’, ‘Purple Haze’ and ‘Serpentine’. Though native butterfly milkweed was out of bloom, tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) added flashes of orange. The tall plant with yellow flowers is a daylily, Hemerocallis ‘September Sol’.

The dark-blue salvia with the anise hyssop is ‘Big Blue’ — and it looks to me like pale-mauve calamint (Calamintha nepeta) is in this garden too.

A lonely monarch butterfly was nectaring on the asclepias before the big migration south. In our region, it was a very poor summer for monarchs – I only saw 2 at our cottage, and no eggs on all my milkweed.

A big carpenter bee was foraging on the anise hyssop.

The bloggers were treated to a delicious Middle Eastern meal in the Chanticleer House garden, which gave me time to sit and enjoy yet another bouquet. I love the way the crimson amaranth cascades so nicely. Those tiny orange fruits, by the way, come from Talinum grandiflorum, aka “jewels of Opar”.

The swimming pool always look so inviting. (Way back in the day, a few decades ago, I did have a dip in that pool – invited, of course!)

The Old French literary word for rooster was chantecler and there are many carved versions at Chanticleer.

Who wouldn’t want to roost in this lovely garden, amongst silvery euphorbias and crambes?

The East Bed forms the boundary to the house garden, and is filled with lush tropicals, like the bananas, ‘Hilo Beauty’ caladium, ‘King Tut’ dwarf cyperus, and more.

I’m always drawn to inspiring colour combinations, and this tropical duo in the East Bed rang my bell. The taro is Colocasia ‘Distant Memory’; the red-leaved Mexican native shrub is Euphorbia cotinifolia, sometimes called smoketree spurge.

Aiming for one last visit to the Teacup Garden, I walked out of the main house garden towards Emily’s house, i.e. the offices and visitor’s centre, where this massive oak tree was carpeted with Symphyotrichum ericoides ‘Snow Flurry’, a compact heath aster used extensively in many of the gardens.

How much fun is this? Tropical lianas getting the balcony treatment.

I circled around the front of Emily’s house, where of course there were more spectacular plant designs.

This luscious arrangement of tropicals was my last plant photo, including strap-leaved Alcantarea imperialis, pink-leaved caladiums, canna lily, begonias and other delicious plants. And, of course, a bench for enjoyment.

And as if these precious hours at Chanticleer weren’t enough, along with food and drinks there was a great band.

We danced! Even those of us with aching knees from walking up and down the garden’s hills danced. It was another visit we won’t soon forget. Thank you Bill Thomas and the entire Chanticleer team. You are simply the best.

Silver Lustre in the Garden

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Janet

A little holiday song, for those who’ve stuck it out through my Twelve Months of Colour blogs in 2016:

Silver belles, silver belles,
It’s Christmas time in the city.
Ding-a-ling?? No, they don’t ring,
My “Silver Belles” just look pretty.

Yes, we’re finally in December, and as befits the tinsel month in my year-long celebration of monthly colour themes, I’ve pulled together a treasure box filled with pieces of silver (and some nice blue-greys) for your garden. You should know that I’m a big fan of grey, especially mixed with that little dash of brown that tips it into ‘taupe’. In fact, my house is painted that colour, and my deck and fence are stained a darker shade of stone-grey. It is a beautiful background for all plants.

If you add a little blue-green to silvery-gray, you get a colour we often describe as “glaucous”. That word has travelled a long way since it was first used by the Greeks, including Homer, as glaukos to mean “gleaming, silvery”. In Latin, it took on the meaning “bluish-green”, and in the 15h century, the Middle English word glauk meant “bluish-green, gray”. That fits the color of luscious Tuscan kale, below.

So we’ll look at some lovely plants with glaucous foliage as well.

Shrubs & Trees

Let’s begin with a few trees and shrubs. Weeping willowleaf pear (Pyrus salicifolia ‘Pendula’) is a pretty little (20 ft – 7 m) tree with silvery-grey foliage. Here it is at Victoria’s Horticulture Centre of the Pacific, underplanted with Allium ‘Purple Sensation’.

Then we have a true willow, dwarf blue Arctic willow (Salix purpurea ‘Nana’). This is a very hardy, useful shrub, standing about 5 feet (1.5 m) tall and wide, that will lend its soft greyish texture to a variety of applications, including as hedging or a filler.

As for conifers, there are lots of blue junipers and silver firs, and of course, blue spruces. For a big silvery tree, perhaps none is as stately as the concolor or white fir (Abies concolor ‘Candicans’).

If you want a cool blue-grey spruce at garden level, consider Picea pungens ‘Glauca Procumbens’.

And I love the look of Juniperus conferta ‘Blue Pacific’, especially as it takes on mauve hues in winter, below, along with Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’.

Speaking of winter, there’s even a shrub with silvery fruit that persists into winter: Northern bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica).

Though we often think of lavender as perennial, it is actually a sub-shrub. English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) has greyish-blue foliage, and even the commonly available cultivars like ‘Hidcote’ and ‘Munstead’ will provide a good colour contrast, as they do edging this beautiful potager.

But if you want a really silvery, hardy lavender, try ‘Silver Mist’, shown below contrasting with a bronze carex.

And if you are in a climate where you can grow the more tender Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas), there’s a gorgeous silver-leaved cultivar called ‘Anouk’.

Perennials

Who hasn’t seen lamb’s-ears in a perennial border? And who hasn’t questioned whether the plant’s name should be a single lamb or a flock? Kidding aside, using hardy lamb’s-ears (Stachys byzantina) is one of the easiest ways to inject a note of silver into the garden. Here it is with lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) at Burlington, Ontario’s Royal Botanical Gardens …..

… and fronting a June border at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Botanical Garden.

I love the way my pal Marnie White intersperses her lamb’s-ears with pink portulaca.

Sea holly has a few beautiful silver forms; this is Eryngium giganteum ‘Miss Willmott’s Ghost’ with liatris and switch grass (Panicum virgatum) at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) has several cultivars with lovely silvery variegation. This is ‘Jack Frost’.

Russian sage (Salvia yangii, formerly Perovskia) has fine silver foliage. Here it is with Liatris spicata.

And this is Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’ creating a silvery pool at the edge of a border.

In the fern world, luscious Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum) is literally ‘painted’ with silver variegation. The stunning cultivar below is ‘Pewter Lace’.

Though they don’t come in pure silver, there are many blue-grey hostas to add texture to a shaded or semi-shaded place. At the Toronto Botanical Garden, I love the juxtaposition of Hosta ‘Blue Angel’ with the silvery-blue glass screen behind it.

Here is an assortment of blue-grey hostas.

1 – Ultramarine; 2 – First Frost; 3 – Fragrant Blue; 4 – Earth Angel; 5 – Paradise Joyce; 6 – Halcyon.

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With their rainbow foliage colour and myriad leaf markings, heucheras have become a plant breeder’s bonanza in the past few decades. Below are ‘Rave On’ (left) and ‘Silver Scrolls’ (right).

Euphorbias also offer delectable silver makings. Though it’s borderline-hardy where I garden in Toronto, I do love Euphorbia characias ‘Tasmanian Tiger’.

The silvery foliage of Scotch thistle (Onopordum acanthium) can be quite stunning, but careful it doesn’t escape – clip those flowers before they go to seed.

Grasses

Blue-grey grasses abound. Here’s Festuca glauca ‘Blue Glow’ with berried cotoneaster and silvery Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) behind.

This is ‘Heavy Metal’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum) – one of my favourites.

Little bluestem is a wonderful native prairie grass, and ‘Prairie Blues’ has a more pronounced silvery-blue hue.

‘Wind Dancer’ love grass (Eragrostis elliotii) is hardy only to USDA Zone 6, but I’ve seen it used as an annual grass to lovely effect.

Tender Shrubs, Annuals & Tropicals

Montreal Botanical Garden knows how to create wonderful knots and parterres with silvery plants. This is the tender grass Melinis nerviglumis ‘Savannah’ (ruby grass – USDA Zone 8-10) with Angelonia ‘Serena Purple’.

…. and this is Cerastium ‘Columnae Silberteppich’ with lantana.

Montreal Botanical’s Herb Garden has also used silvery herbs in formal design schemes over the years. The tapestry-like knot garden below features the sages (Salvia officinalis) ‘Berrgarten’ and variegated ‘Icterina’ in the circle, along with hedge germander (Teucrium chamaedrys) with the pink flowers; clipped lavender and santolina are in the background.

Here’s a closer look at santolina or cotton thistle (Santolina chamacyparissus) in flower. Its ease of shearing makes it a prime candidate for parterres and knots, but it is only hardy to USDA Zone 6.

There are several Mediterranean plants that fit our silvery-blue theme. A tender perennial (USDA Zone 8) with silver foliage that can be used as a drought-tolerant annual is Greek mountain tea (Sideritis syriaca).

And Senecio viravira or silver groundsel has textural foliage.

Isn’t this combination at the Niagara Botanical Gardens beautiful? The big, felted silver leaves of Salvia argentea with Tradescantia spathacea ‘Tricolor’ seem made for each other.

Also at Niagara Botanical one summer, I loved this juxtaposition of blue-grey cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) with the cascading silvery Dichondra argentea in the hanging baskets behind.

Speaking of dichondra, here it is at the Toronto Botanical Garden paired with Centaurea gymnocarpa ‘Colchester White’. This, of course, is the work of the TBG’s container wizard Paul Zammit.

Dusty miller (Centaurea cineraria) is an old-fashioned annual that’s easy to source and offers a lovely hit of silver, as with this rich autumn combination of dusty miller and ornamental cabbages.

We mustn’t forget the spectacular leaves of the newer Rex begonias like ‘Escargot’, below, many of which have silver markings.

There are loads of silvery succulents available, because being silver-grey (reflecting the sun) and being succulent (storing your own water in your leaves) are both adaptations to plants growing in extreme hot and dry environments. I loved this combination of Kalanchoe pumila ‘Quicksilver’ and Senecio serpens at Eye of the Day Garden Center in Carpinteria, California.

This pairing of blue sticks (Senecio mandraliscae) with Scaevola aemula at the Montreal Botanical Garden was simple, yet dramatic.

And the gorgeous container below was in the former Vancouver garden of garden guru Tom Hobbs and Brent Beattie, owners of Vancouver’s Southlands Nursery. It features Echeveria elegans, salmon-red Sedum rubrotinctum and silvery parrot feather (Tanacetum densum), along with astelia in the centre.

Succulents have been used extensively over the years by Paul Zammit at the Toronto Botanical Garden. Check out this silvery monochrome masterpiece.

And finally, this gorgeous windowbox from the TBG, with its luscious mix of silver echeverias, aptenias, kalanchoes, senecios, rhipsalis and more, all enhanced by the dwarf Arctic willow hedging around it.

With that, I finish my monthly 2016 exploration of the garden paintbox. But not to worry! 2017 is a whole new ballgame, and there will be garden colour galore (plus the odd travel journal and personal reminiscence) throughout the coming year.

A November Wine Tasting

Posted on November 29, 2016 by Janet

This is my month to explore that dark, rich, full-bodied, dowager great-aunt of ‘red’ – otherwise known as ‘wine’. Or burgundy, if you like. Like its viticulture companion, a little wine in the garden goes a long way. Overdo it and you might not like the heavy feeling that results. But a little sip here and there adds depth and elegance to the garden. So let’s sample a few good vintages, shall we?

In my part of the world, spring wines are quite common, given that the Lenten roses or hellebores are flowering in profusion. This is Helleborus ‘Blue Lady’.

There are a few excellent wine-red tulips for later in spring, like the lovely lily-flowered tulip ‘Burgundy’, below.

And I loved this combination of the bicolour Triumph tulip ‘Gavota’ and dark ‘Queen of Night’ at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

I know I might have included the late-flowered tulip ‘Queen of Night’ in my blog on ‘black’ flowers, but it often shows with more red. This is that sensuous tulip spangled through an uncharacteristically wild bulb planting in the very formal Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. Notice how the repetition of the dark colour carries your eye up through the various beds, unifying them and lending them a somewhat ‘designed’ feeling in keeping with the place.

One of the more elegant little spring bulbs is snakeshead fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris). Apart from the checkered, wine-red species, there is a white form as well.

Of all the small trees for gardens, the biggest choice in red-leafed selections can be found in Japanese maples. This is the highly regarded Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Inaba-shidare’ at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

But the ubiquitous ‘Bloodgood’ Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) also puts on a beautiful wine-red show throughout summer, and colours beautifully to bright scarlet in fall. Here it is with the Triumph tulip ‘Boston’ in the Mary Fisher Spring Garden at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

One of the best shrubs for adding deep wine-red colour to an herbaceous border is purple smokebush. There are a few cultivars but the most common is Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’. The trick is to cut it back to the ground, i.e. ‘coppice’ it, in spring. Here is ‘Royal Purple just emerging with tulips.

Here is coppiced ‘Royal Purple’ a little later in the season with a lovely matching brushmark lily (possibly ‘Latvia’) in Bev Koppel’s wonderful garden at the Deep Cove Chalet Restaurant outside Victoria, B.C.

Here is coppiced Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’ with tropical Tibouchina urvilleana at the Conservatory Garden in New York’s Central Park.

And in Toronto horticulturist Frank Kershaw’s garden, there is an entire symphony of wine colour around Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’, including shutters, window awning and dwarf Japanese barberry.

Given all the hybridizing that’s occurred with heucheras over the past few decades, there are numerous selections with luscious leaves of burgundy and reddish-purple. At the Horticulture Centre of the Pacific outside Victoria, B.C., I adored this beautiful spring combination featuring Heuchera ‘Amethyst Mist’, Allium aflatunense ‘Purple Sensation’ and the dark-leafed ninebark Physocarpus ‘Diablo’ at rear.

Heuchera micrantha ‘Rachel’ is quite lovely.

And Heuchera ‘Pinot Noir’ has a name that fits our theme very nicely. It’s shown below frolicking with blue-flowered Gilia capitata.

One stunning peony is dark enough to be called ‘wine’, even if its actual name describes another favourite indulgence. Here is Paeonia ‘Chocolate Soldier’.

Though true-red irises have eluded hybridizers, there are many that come close to our November colour. Below is the heritage bearded iris ‘Col. Candelot’. Other deep-reds to check out are ‘Red at Night’, ‘Galactic Warrior’, ‘War Chief’, ‘Raptor Red’ and ‘Nebraska Big Red’, to name just a few.

And what about this gorgeous thing? Meet Iris spuria ‘Cinnabar Red’.

Though the mourning widow geranium (Geranum phaeum) is a little on the purplish side, I’ve included it here anyway. (And it’s a great bee flower!)

The breeders of the sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) below decided on a memorable name for their dark-flowered beauty. Meet ‘Heart Attack’, hanging out here with airy Allium schubertii at Wave Hill in the Bronx.

Early summer gives us masterworts (Astrantia major), and though many seem to be wishy-washy in their colouration, that’s not the case with ‘Hadspen Blood’, below, from Nori and Sandra Pope’s once glorious garden.

I simply adore Knautia macedonica with its dark-red button flowers that flower from spring well into autumn. It is the zingiest zing you can have in a border (or meadow), and all the bees love it, too.

Daylilies (Hemerocallis) aren’t really my thing anymore, other than the dear old orange tawny lily (H. fulva) that I have given up trying to annihilate in my garden. That being said, there are lots of wine-colored selections to choose from, including the lovelies below.

Clockwise from upper left: Strutter’s Ball, Round Midnight, Regal Finale, Tuscawilla Blackout, Black Ice, Jungle Beauty, Starman’s Quest, Jennifer Napier

Admittedly, Mexican hat (Ratibida columnifera) isn’t very showy, but it’s a fine choice for well-drained soil and a naturalistic garden.

Martagon lilies (Lilium martagon) are the epitome of elegance and will take light shade. Below is the fabulous ‘Sarcee’, named for a First Nation tribe in hybridizer Fred Tarlton’s province of Alberta. I photographed it in his astonishing collection at the Devonian Gardens near Edmonton.

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For tough, low-maintenance perennials with wine-red leaves, you simply can’t beat sedums. Below is my array of some notable selections. The bees will thank you!

We don’t always stop to observe the subtle colour changes that happen as flowers age beyond their prime. I loved this dreamy crimson-wine duo of Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum ssp. maculatum) and fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Cassian’).

Japanese barberry (love it or hate it) occupies a special place in the world of wine foliage, and its response to trimming makes it especially appealing in formal gardens. Without a red barberry, how could you possibly achieve the beautiful creation below, in the Knot Garden at Filoli Garden near San Francisco? Along with the Berberis thunbergii ‘Crimson Pygmy’, we have dwarf lavender cotton (Santolina chamaecyparis ‘Nana’), germander (Teucrium chamaedrys) and dwarf myrtle (Myrtus communis ssp. tarentina ‘Compacta’).

Though not particularly showy, the pineapple-scented, deep-red flowers of Carolina allspice (Calycanthus floridus), below, are intriguing – and they fit my category!

What about trees with dark-red leaves? One that is deservedly popular – and much smaller than its parent, almost a tall shrub – is weeping copper beech (Fagus sylvatica ‘Purpurea’), below.

And I cannot go on without mentioning ‘Forest Pansy’ redbud (Cercis canadensis) – especially when it looks like this from underneath the canopy!

Now for some warm-weather wines: tender bulbs, tropicals and annuals.

A few of the pineapple lilies (Eucomis) are an interesting combination of olive and burgundy, like E. comosa ‘Oakhurst’, below. Look at that dark-red stem. (‘Sparkling Burgundy’ is another with similar colouration.)

Although they can look parkimental (park+regimental) grown in rows or Victorian-style bedding, many cannas have beautifully marked leaves and, in the right spot, add a luscious touch. Here is ‘African Sunset’ canna lily (Canna australis).

Speaking of the ‘right spot’, in Bev Koffel’s garden, a reddish canna and the deep-burgundy succulent Aeonium arborescens ‘Zwartkop’ add rich notes to an elegant urn.

Do you grow dahlias? If you like dark and dramatic, look no further than ‘Black Knight’.

Perhaps no species offers more possibilities in the wine spectrum than the foliage plant coleus (Plectranthus scutellarioides, formerly Solenostemon, formerly Coleus blumei). I was enchanted by the way the gardeners at Toronto’s Spadina House worked ‘Wizard Mix’ coleus into their late summer plantings.

Want to see a few more? Here is ‘Kong Red’…

… and ‘Dipt-in-Wine’…..

… and ‘Big Red Judy’.

Though it’s not hardy in my part of the world, Pennisetum setaceum ‘Fireworks’ is a fabulous, variegated, dark-red grass to add movement and colour to the summer garden.

I’m a frequent visitor to the Montreal Botanical Garden, and I loved seeing these burgundy-leaved tropicals against a yellow and gold three-panelled screen there a few years ago. From left rear are red spike (Amaranthus cruentus), rubber tree plant (Ficus elastica ‘Burgundy’), calico plant (Alternanthera dentata ‘Purple Knight’) and ‘Carmencita’ castor bean (Ricinus communis).

Here’s a look at the flowers of ‘Carmencita Bright Red’ castor bean (Ricinus communis). (Caveat emptor. Do be aware that this plant’s seeds contain one of the deadliest toxins known to man, ricin. Just a few salt-sized grains of purified ricin can kill an adult.)

When we visited Nancy Goodwin’s Montrose Garden in Hillsborough, NC, a few years ago, spectacular and unexpected colour combinations were everywhere. I did enjoy this red-leaf hibiscus (Hibiscus acetosella) with orange dahlias.

In my own garden, I experiment each year with the contents of the six containers on the lower landing of my sundeck. One summer, below, I tried ‘Sweet Caroline Red’ sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas) with Anagallis ‘Wildcat Orange’. (The truth is it looked better in June than it did in August, since the anagallis petered out and the chartreuse-leaf pelargoniums were underwhelming, but the sweet potato vine thrived.)

Speaking of pelargoniums, ‘Vancouver Centennial’ is a real winner, with its bronze-red foliage.

One of the best spiky ‘centrepiece’ annuals is Cordyline australis ‘Red Star’, seen here in a pot at the Toronto Botanical Garden. Just look how its deep tones are picked up in those colour splotches on the luscious ‘Indian Dunes’ pelargonium.

And hello ‘grains-as-ornamentals’! This was redspike (Amaranthus cruentus) with slender vervain (Verbena rigida) and ‘Lemon Gem’ marigolds (Tagetes tenuifolia) in a fabulous planting one year at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Botanical Garden.

Speaking of edibles, you can’t get find a more beautiful, wine-leafed edible than this beet: Beta vulgaris ‘Bull’s Blood’ with nasturtiums and chartreuse ‘Margarita’ sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas).

And my last sip for our November wine tasting is a fine, full-bodied claret – yes, ‘Claret’ sunflower (Helianthus annuus).

Whew! ‘Wine-ding’ down now, that takes me through eleven months in my 2016 paintbox. Stay tuned for December and some lovely silver ‘belles’.

Wonderful Wave Hill

Posted on September 21, 2016 by Janet

One of my ‘must-do’ gardens when I have a few days in New York (apart from New York Botanical and the Conservatory Garden at Central Park and the High Line) is fabulous Wave Hill, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. And so it was that in mid-August, I caught the Metro North ‘Hudson Line’ train at Grand Central Station and took my comfy window seat for the scenic ride along the Hudson River. (Excuse the dirty windows, please – not my fault!)

When you get off at Riverdale-Wave Hill, you really should wait for the shuttle, which meets northbound trains at 9:50am, 10:50am, 11:50am, 12:50pm, 1:50pm, 2:50pm and 3:50pm. (Return shuttles for southbound trains leave Wave Hill’s front gate at 20 minutes past the hour, from 12:20pm through 5:20pm). But I was feeling energetic – and had forgotten how steep the hill is and how long the walk from the station up towards the garden, set in a lovely, leafy Bronx neighbourhood. So I walked.

Wave Hill, overlooking the Hudson River and the towering Palisades on the New Jersey shore, was built by lawyer William Morris in 1843 to serve as his country home. It was enlarged by publishing scion William Appleton in the late 1800s, and played host to visiting notables such as Thomas Huxley. Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t yet in his teens when his parents rented the estate in the summers of 1870 and ’71, and likely helped to foster in him the love of nature that propelled him to protect America’s wild lands as national parks. Perhaps its most famous resident was Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), who leased Wave Hill from 1901 to ’03, and entertained guests in a tree house on the back lawn. Later residents included conductor Arturo Toscanini (1942-45). In 1960, Wave Hill’s last private owners, the Perkins-Freeman family, deeded the estate to the city of New York and it was incorporated as a non-profit, one of 33 city-owned cultural institutions and specializing in programs of horticulture, environmental education, woodland management and presentations of the visual and performing arts. while seeking to “foster connections between people and nature”. (Sources: Wikipedia & Wave Hill) Wave Hill House underwent a two-year $9.8 million renovation and was reopened in 2013. When I visited the following June, I was impressed with the gleaming woodwork – not to mention the stunning bouquet of delphiniums in just the right shade of blue to enhance the walls.

As I headed into the garden this August, I was greeted by some lovely new touches to the Perennial Flower Garden, which I had last seen in 2014, including the beautiful, sky-blue tuteurs in each of the central four sections.

The flower garden, overseen by gardener Harneck Singh, consists of eight plots arranged in cruciform quadrants, each loosely colour-themed. And there’s always something big and beautiful from the greenhouses in the centre; this summer it was a luscious, variegated agave.

Those blue tuteurs add to the elegance quotient in the flower garden. Here’s how it looked in June 2014. below. Not nearly as dramatic.

There were a lot of silver-spotted skippers flying about, including this one on Clematis heracleifolia.

I enjoyed seeing Clematis crispa climbing the rose bower in the flower garden.

Speaking of rose bowers, I fondly recalled making former director of horticulture Marco Polo Stufano pose for me in one of the bowers, when I was there in 1994. Though it was terribly sunny and not great light for a portrait (especially with my limited photography skills more than 20 years ago), I do enjoy having this reminder of a very talented man who lent his expertise to the garden. Today, Louis Bauer is horticulture director and is putting his own creative mark on Wave Hill’s gardens.

My 1994 visit was seven years after Marco Polo Stufano was featured on the cover of the November 1987 issue of Horticulture magazine. (Photo by Allen Rokach) And yes, I am a packrat, and I really should clean out the mags in my office!

The story inside the magazine was about the flower garden, as redesigned by then curator of gardens John Nally. His name is now memorialized in Wave Hill’s practice of hiring interns – called Nallies – to work in the garden. I had a little chat with one of Wave Hill’s 2016 Nallies, Gabe Santoriello, who was carefully deadheading flowers in the red garden. He made me chuckle when I called out ‘Gabe’, to ask him about a plant. “You know, I had my earphones in,” he said, “but you sounded just like my mom when you called me.” (I’ve had some family experience calling out to young men!)

Being late summer, grasses were good-looking, like this Calamagrostis acutiflora with Helenium autumnale.

I loved the duo below in the red garden, when I visited in June 2014: ‘Heart Attack’ sweet william (Dianthus barbatus) and the airy seedheads of Allum schubertii. Isn’t this cool?

Walking into the entrance to the tropical and desert greenhouses, I saw that Marco Polo Stufano has also been honoured with his name on the conservatory, a gift of Frank and Anne Cabot, who also founded The Garden Conservancy. .

Lovers of tropical plants should be prepared to spend a lot of time exploring the jewels in the tropical house.

What a fascinating plant: Strophanthus preussii. I had a discussion with plant nerd friends on Facebook about the evolutionary significance of the long, red corolla threads. We couldn’t come to an agreement about why nature gave this African liana such decorative accents (but nature rarely creates adaptations for the fun of it).

I loved seeing this little arrangement of air plants (Tilliandsia ionantha).

This is what greeted me in the tropical house in June 2014: can you say Indian clock vine (Thunbergia mysorensis)?

Crossing into the desert house, I paused to take in the stunning variety of small succulents and cacti.

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Walking back into the garden through the blue conservatory doors (matching those tuteurs), I was reminded how effective a little paint is at drawing landscape elements together – and how complex the textural plantings in those containers just outside the doors were!

I never visit Wave Hill without heading down to the long pergola overlooking the Hudson River and the Palisades on the New Jersey shore. Apart from the stunning view, there are loads of wonderful plants displayed there!

Another section of the pergola.

And lookng towards Wave Hill House along the pergola.

That cascading, yellow-flowered vine intrigued me, but I had no idea what it was. So I cornered Wave Hill gardener Coralie Thomas who carefully dug out the label to show me: Petraeovitex bambusetorum, or Nong Noch vine, a Vietnam native. Thank you Coralie!

Then it was time to move on to some of the other wonderful gardens, but I stopped to take a quick shot of the happy confection of flowers (gomphrena ‘Fireworks’ & yellow strawflower) in the Paisley Garden across from the Visitor Centre.

Immediately behind the conservatory on a rise of land are two long gardens. The first is the Herb Garden…

…. with its late summer profusion of aromatic herbs.

The second is the Dry Garden.

There are always interesting surprises dotted about here and there, like this Boophane disticha on the steps. .

Behind these is a lovely display of bonsai plants.

Beyond is the Alpine House, which is not open to the public but easily observed through the glass.

Head back out to the path and circle around behind the Alpine House and you’ll come to the Wild Garden.

This is a tough theme to pull off without attracting loads of weeds, but the August display was beautiful – naturalistic, yet reasonably controlled.

I liked the contrast of the staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) with the bronze colour of the upright spurge (Euphorbia stricta).

One of my favourite spots to spend a little time sitting is the Aquatic Garden. I loved how it had filled out from June….

….to August, when the big lotuses (Nelumbo nucifera) are at their sumptuous best.

Adjacent is the Monocot Garden, with its luscious grasses, lilies and bromeliads, among many other plants.

With a date on Manhattan’s High Line in late afternoon, it was time for me to pick up a lunch at Wave Hill’s lovely restaurant and make my way to the shuttle for the drive to the Riverdale train station. As I looked around at all the spectacular but residential-scale gardens here (there are others besides those I’ve written about), I thought of a sentence from that Horticulture magazine story 29 years ago, Though it described the redesign of the Perennial Flower Garden, it could be applied to all the gardens at Wave Hill: “…its style would be in keeping with Wave Hill’s history as a private estate.” Indeed, this garden is sheer inspiration for those who create modest gardens around their own homes. It is truly a garden for people. But as I walked down the path beside a scrambling maypop vine (Passiflora incarnata) and watched the carpenter bees and honey bees nectaring madly on the August blossoms, I was reminded that it’s also a garden that nourishes and sustains nature’s myriad other creatures.

August in New York’s Conservatory Garden

Posted on August 28, 2016 by Janet

It was a steaming hot August afternoon in New York City. I’d arrived just hours before from Toronto with three days of area garden viewing and photography on my agenda. I hadn’t made plans for today, but then I remembered a city garden I hadn’t visited for more than a decade. There were still hours of daylight, albeit crushingly humid hours with temperatures in the mid-90s. So I filled my water bottle, slung my camera bag over my shoulder and headed out of my hotel (Hotel Boutique at Grand Central), conveniently located near Grand Central Station and the 42^nd Street Subway. The subway tunnel felt like a tropical jungle, but it was nothing compared to the inside of the subway car heading north, whose air-conditioning was broken. “59-68-77-86”, I counted down the stations, fanning myself madly and hoping I wouldn’t faint before arriving at my stop. When I climbed the stairs to 96^th Street (the dividing line between Manhattan’s Upper East Side to the south and Spanish Harlem to the north), the humidity was even higher. I’d only walked a block or two westward towards Central Park before the first fat raindrops fell. Fortunately, I’d tucked my umbrella into my bag and as the rain became a torrent, I pulled my camera bag closer to me and hurried on. By the time I’d crossed Fifth Avenue and walked north along the park to 105^th, people were running out and taking shelter under trees or dashing along the sidewalk to their cars or buses. I, on the other hand, was heading into the park, and as I entered the Conservatory Garden through the Vanderbilt Gate, the rain magically abated and the lawns and hedges steamed in the late day heat. Ahead of me was the formal Italianate garden with its lush lawn and fountain. In May, those crabapple trees on the sides are fluffy clouds of pink and the pergola in the distance is wreathed in wisteria.

I watched a young girl playing in the fountain’s cooling spray.

The Italianate garden is in the middle, one of three sections that make up the 6-acre Conservatory Garden, which is named for the lavish greenhouse that occupied the site from 1899 to 1934, before it was officially opened as a garden in 1937. After the second world war, the garden was increasingly neglected; by the 1970s it was a derelict place Under Central Park Administrator Elizabeth Barlow Rogers and renowned New York designer and public gardens champion Lynden Miller (who also did Bryant Park and numerous other urban spaces), the gardens were completely renovated and reopened in 1987.

At the north end is the French garden….

.. with its low broderie parterres….

… and the Untermyer Fountain, “Three Dancing Maidens”, a 1947 donation to Central Park from the children of famed New York lawyer Samuel Untermyer, whose Yonkers estate is now a conservancy open to the public.

But as a plant-lover, I was interested in revisiting the southernmost section, the English Garden. To get there I walked past the perimeter of the French garden, with its crabapple allées. A few visitors took shelter from the last raindrops under their umbrella.

I passed a raised garden filled with a tapestry-like assortment of luscious tropicals.

Then I was walking into the English Garden under a magnificent sourwood tree (Oxydendrum arboreum), its tiny, pendulous, white blossoms alive with bumble bees. Trees, shrubs and various perennials act as leafy enclosure in the outer beds in the concentric arrangement of hedge-backed plantings in Lynden Miller’s original design. The current curator of the English garden is Diane Schaub, whose talent is very much on display here. (See note at bottom of my blog).

Below is one of Lynden Miller’s favourite shrubs: oak-leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia), as the big panicles take on their tawny autumn hues.

The outer bed below features Japanese anemones (Anemone x hybrida), an August mainstay, with cascading Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) in the foreground. Mid-border is another Lynden Miller trademark: a clipped purple barberry globe (Berberis thunbergii), adding a sculpted architectural note. (One of my favourite photos from a visit here in the 1990s was one of these globes graced with deep-violet Clematis durandii.)

Here is a closeup of Japanese anemone with the delicate flowers of Thalictrum rochebrunianum.

White coneflowers (Echinacea) brighten the shade-dappled outer bed under the trees. There’s a lovely colour echo of the cones with the dark foliage of the black bugbane beside it (Actaea racemosa Atropurpurea Group).

Post-rain, the subtle baby-powder fragrance of summer phlox (Phlox paniculata) and the perfume of hosta flowers wafted in the enclosed spaces in the garden.

But as lovely as the mixed perennial-shrub beds were in the outer rings, it was the inner hedged beds in the English Garden that beckoned me. They offered a master class in the use of annuals and tropicals to create exquisite designs that can be changed every year. But these aren’t your grandma’s annuals; there are no impatiens, geraniums or petunias in the garden. Instead, you see statuesque plants in lovely colour combinations that rival any perennial border. The bed below offered fabulous ideas for combining chartreuse foliage with oranges and bronzes.

Here’s a closer look at the inspired pairing of Cuphea ‘David Verity’ — one of many ‘zing’ plants — with a charteuse colocasia.

Who could dislike stiff, old canna lilies when they do THIS in the late afternoon sun? (Especially when paired with bronze fennel flowers and a luscious azure-blue Salvia guaranitica.)

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Tender grasses add a punch of colour, too. Below is Pennisetum setaceum ‘Fireworks’.

Hedges of Japanese holly (Ilex crenata) and euonymus act as a permanent framework in the inner rings, and both sides are planted with annuals in classic colour combinations. The bed below…….

…..featured a lovely pairing of chartreuse ‘Gay’s Delight’ coleus (Plectranthus scutellarioides) and purple Verbena bonariensis — another good ‘zing’ plant.

Deep burgundy-blacks — like Dahlia ‘Mystic Illusion’, front, and the grass Pennisetum ‘Vertigo’, below — added depth to a dark-foliage border.

Exploring all the inner beds was a challenge. Just when I thought I’d seen them all, I’d turn a corner and spot something entirely new! I loved the way this heuchera (maybe ‘Black Taffeta’?) anchored the design below.

In some hands, pink flowers can be just too cotton-candy sweet. But Diane Schaub used a deft touch, below, to incorporate the pink spires of Agastache cana ‘Heather Queen’ and the zingy pom-poms of Gomphrena ‘Fireworks’ and purple Verbena bonariensis into a pale-green matrix of tropical plants, including variegated Furcraea foetida ‘Mediopicta’, centre, and variegated plectranthus (P. forsteri ‘Green on Green’), right.

Stronger pinks like the verbena, below, were partnered with darker greens, like Colocasia esculenta ‘Blue Hawaii’.

I loved the combination, below, of Gomphrena ‘Fireworks’ and blue pitcher sage (Salvia azurea). Such good clear colours.

Sometimes horns would honk nearby and I would be reminded that I was in a leafy enclave a stone’s throw from one of the most famous streets in the world: Fifth Avenue!

Unusual annual pairings were everywhere. Below is Perilla frutescens with airy Ammi visnaga ‘Green Mist’.

And I adored this vignette of magenta-pink Gomphrena ‘Fireworks’ with lacy centaurea, a deep-red salvia and coleus.

I was very impressed with the way tropical shrub Tibouchina urvilleana, below, was used in the purple border. It looked perfectly at home with magenta Gomphrena globosa and dark pink zinnias.

Finally, that concentric maze of flowery beds led me to the intimate centre of the English Garden, with its enclosing borders and a pink-flowered crepe myrtle (Lagerstromeia indica). Benches were arranged so visitors could…….

…. relax and enjoy an intimate view of the Burnett Memorial Fountain, the centrepiece of the English Garden. Sculpted in 1936-7 by Bessie Vonnoh (1872-1955), it honours children’s book author Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) and depicts the children Mary and Dickons from her classic Secret Garden.

I paused for a moment in the secret garden, but towering storm clouds were building in the sky to the west and it was time to head back to my hotel.

I bade farewell to this lovely secret garden and strolled out to catch a southbound bus to midtown. What a lovely first evening for my short New York stay.

** Thanks to my online friend Marie Viljoen (66 Square Feet) for her 2015 Gardenista article on the English Garden, which provided a few of the plant names for my photos above.

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Tag Archives: tropicals

Chanticleer Garden in Early Autumn – Part 2

Silver Lustre in the Garden

A November Wine Tasting

Wonderful Wave Hill

August in New York’s Conservatory Garden

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