Tag Archives: wildflowers

The Wildflower Moat at the Tower of London

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It was a showery May 26th morning as we crossed the Tower Bridge over the Thames while watching for the first competitors in the LondonRide bicycle race to charge across the finish line just beyond. The bridge opened on June 30, 1910 after sixteen years of construction — 800 years newer than the crenellated White Tower, seen through the bridge’s struts at left, which was built by William the Conqueror in 1078 and finished after his death around 1100. The oldest castle in England, it sits behind battlements at the centre of the Tower of London Fortress, along with the Waterloo Barracks containing the Crown Jewels and the old Mint. But we were crossing the bridge to visit the moat encircling the Tower and its spectacular show of wildflowers.

On the embankment of the Thames in front of the Tower, interpretive signage greets visitors, highlighting moments in English history. This portrait of Elizabeth I (1533-1603) is a reminder that royalty has always been a point of intrigue in Great Britain, though much more dramatic than in modern times. The daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn, she was just 2 years old when her mother was beheaded by the king, the first execution of a queen of England. She would assume the throne after the 1558 death of her half-sister, Mary Queen of Scots, daughter of Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon, and rule England and Ireland for 44 years as “Good Queen Bess”.

The Yeoman Warders – the “Beefeaters” – who guard the Tower and have apartments within the complex are also featured on signage.

The closely-shorn lawn at the Tower’s southwest corner near Byward Tower is part of the original dry moat, but a much tamer version of the wildflower moat beyond. As the sign in the photo above said, it was once used as a bowling green by the Tower’s residents; its sunny aspect mean it was also used for growing vegetables. Note the cross-shaped “arrow slits” in the fortification walls.

The moat wasn’t always dry, of course. It was fed by the River Thames, below, and extended in 1285 by King Edward I to keep potential attackers at a distance. Fifty metres (164 feet) wide in places and very deep at high tide, it was also stocked with pike to be farmed for the fortress residents. In fact, wicker fish traps from the 15th or 16th century were found by archaeologists, complete with fish skeletons. But around 1843, a deadly, water-borne infection struck, believed to be caused by the “putrid animal and excrementitious matter” of the moat at low tide. So the Duke of Wellington ordered the moat drained and turned into a defensive dry ditch or “fosse”. Dry it would remain until January 7, 1928 when heavy rain caused the Thames to overflow its banks and flood the moat, allowing photographers to briefly capture how it looked when filled with water. During the Second World War, it was used as an allotment Victory Garden for the residents. By the way, that pointed skyscraper on the south side of the Thames is The Shard, the tallest building in the UK at 1,016 feet (309 m).

We watched as a Yeoman Guard began his guided tour of the Tower in the wildflowers of the moat. Unlike those tourists who headed inside the walls, I was content to spend my entire visit in the flowers.

The 2024 version of the “Moat in Bloom” I saw was two years after the Superbloom of 2022, part of the 4-month-long Platinum Jubilee celebrating the 70-year reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II, who acceded to the throne on February 6, 1952 upon the death of her father, King George VI. Here we see the artistry of both landscape architect Andrew Grant of Grant Associates and planting designer Nigel Dunnett, Professor of Planting Design and Urban Horticulture at the University of Sheffield and founder of the seed firm Pictorial Meadows in 2003, who collaborated under Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) to transform the moat into what Grant called “a joyous shout out for change; a marker in how we can move forward in the way we think about and manage our heritage for the benefit of future generations“. In the photo below taken from the public area near the ticket entrance above the moat, we see how Grant designed the willow-edged cutouts in the moat to mirror the arched windows in Mount Legge, the northwest tower in the outer fortification wall (all the towers have names and histories). We also see the descendants of the 20-million wildflower seeds of 48 species and 16 seed mixes sown originally for Superbloom.

Long before Superbloom, Nigel Dunnett had established his reputation with the 2012 planting at the London Olympic Park; the Buckingham Palace Diamond Garden for the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne; a 2013 redesign of The Barbican complex in London with drought-tolerant, perennial steppe species; a Gold-Medal-winning rooftop design for the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show; and his stunning ‘Grey to Green’ landscape work with the industrial city of Sheffield beginning in 2014 and continuing today, and many other projects to beautify the public realm. As for the moat, the scene below could be an Impressionist painter’s canvas! In fact, Nigel Dunnett was inspired by pointillism, especially the work of artist Georges Seurat, as he wrote on the original Superbloom design process in his Instagram account. “These brilliant and analytical explorations of colour relationships… were pivotal in the design development of the seed mixes and their spatial arrangement. The precise selection of individual colours, their proportions, densities and distributions give rise to the larger scale impression. It’s just a small leap to make the connection to meadows and naturalistic planting.” To accomplish this with technology, Dunnett used pixel diagrams as abstractions to create the colour balance and mix proportions with flower seeds.

Then it was time to take the curving path through this magical moat meadow, its exuberance held at bay by low willow wattle fencing produced by Wonderwood Willow in Cambridgeshire. Wrote Nigel Dunnett: “The 2022 Superbloom was a catalyst, a tipping point for this permanent transition of the moat, which must be Central London’s largest and most prominent ‘wilding’ project. It was great to see people down in the moat as part of the everyday visitor experience to the Tower – before 2022 these were inaccessible monotonous mown lawns.”

In certain places, perennials such as yellow-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium striatum), lambs’ ears (Stachys byzantina) and magenta Knautia macedonica flower alongside the annuals.

The white form of biennial rose campion (Lychnis coronaria ‘Alba‘) added its silvery foliage while lilac Scabiosa columbaria was attracting loads of bumble bees.

This is Bombus terrestris, the common buff-tailed bumble bee sharing a scabious bloom with a hover fly.

A number of benches are placed at intervals throughout the moat.

My three menfolk, husband Douglas, London-based son Doug and his partner Tommy were blown away by the beauty of the moat in bloom. And of course we needed a selfie!

Readers who know my interest – and the name of this blog – know I love to focus on colour. But meadows are also a great passion with me, tracing back to my childhood on Canada’s mild west coast. I talked about this at the beginning of my 2017 two-part blog on Piet Oudolf’s design for the entry garden at the Toronto Botanical Garden: “Piet Oudolf: Meadow Maker“. More than anything else, this is my favourite style of garden, its wildness as vital as its colour associations. Nigel Dunnett also felt this attraction as a child: “From as long as I can remember, I have been inspired by the wild; by the experience of nature. It’s an emotional response. Some of my earliest memories are of being in beautiful flowering meadows, or woodlands in the spring full of wildflowers, and it’s these more intimate or human-scale associations that perhaps made a stronger impression than big dramatic wide landscapes and scenery. That emotional response was, and is, strongly positive: provoking hugely uplifting and joyful feelings.” Below we see various colours of California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) along with blue cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus).

I was fortunate to be in the moat when the poppies and cornflowers, below, were at their very best.

Here we see annual yellow corn marigolds (Glebionis segetum formerly Chrysanthemum) with the California poppies and cornflowers.

We were all competing to see who could get the best photo of…..

…. bumble bees on pollen-rich corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas).

Mauve and white corncockle (Agrostemma githago) is one of my favourite annuals. In fact, I grew it from seed in a big pot this year, along with corn poppies.

In places, the path was marked by drilled bamboo posts threaded through with rope.

A profusion of scentless Mayweed or chamomile (Matricaria inodora) along with oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) created drifts of starry white throughout the moat. White bishop’s flower (Ammi majus) had not yet started to bloom here, but I saw that beautiful umbel as the star of another Pictorial Meadows seed mix garden at the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh in late August 2022, next photo.

I think this meadow was my favourite part of our visit to RBG Edinburgh. It is the Classic mix in the Pictorial Meadows brochure.

Back to the moat. Circling the northwest Mount Legge fortification tower built in the 13th century, it’s interesting to contrast it with The Shard, built eight centuries later. The blue flowers at right are blue thimble-flower (Gilia capitata). In the original Superbloom seed mix, Nigel Dunnett used washes of blue flowers to recall the water of the original moat fed by the River Thames.

Here is another view of this combination.

Is it possible I love Gilia capitata?

A little further down this path, some grasses have made their presence felt, creating a softening of the wildflower scene. Although most of the original Superbloom annuals have reseeded in the subsequent two years, additional reseeding and top-ups are now managed by the Tower of London garden team.

Gilia capitata from California is very attractive to the European buff-tailed bumble bee, Bombus terrestris. For me, this is yet more evidence of a scenario I’ve found in my photographic journey over the past three decades: bees need protein and carbohydrates, they don’t check the native provenance of plants when they’re foraging for food. Protein is protein; sugar is sugar. Obviously, a large population of native plants will appeal to the pollinators that co-evolved in the ecosystem. But if the ecosystem is degraded, i.e. if urban development has scattered native plant communities, bees will secure food from whatever plants are available.

Historic Royal Palaces is keen on messaging about pollinators in the moat. This year’s flowering is still the “ghost of Superbloom”, but as Nigel Dunnett notes the plan is “for the final transformation into a biodiverse habitat landscape based on native plant communities to happen in 2025.”

Oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) attracts short-tongued pollinators, including various types of hoverflies.

I was delighted to see plantain (Plantago major) in the moat, because even as an invasive weed at the edge of my meadows in Canada, it attracts lots of bees seeking pollen.

Corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) are a mainstay in the moat – as they are in fields of Europe, and as they were in the battlefields in John McCrae’s famous World War One poem. “In Flanders fields, the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row,/That mark our place.“

Though the initial soil for Superbloom was engineered for the site and free of weed seeds, two years on the odd adventitious weed species has found a home here, like the yellow sow-thistle (Sonchus arvensis), which was also attracting its share of pollinators.

Corncockle (Agrostemma githago) and corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) make fine companions.

Biennial blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta ‘My Joy’) was just coming into bloom.

Here and there, violet larkspur (Consolida ajacis) towered over the wildflower tapestry.

Though they have no nectar, poppies offer abundant pollen, like this California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) feeding a marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus).

Shirley poppies are a special seed strain of corn poppy, Papaver rhoeas featuring different colours, like white, pink (below), lilac and bicolour, some with semi-double petals and no black blotch near the stamens. They were selected originally by Reverent William Wilks, vicar of the parish of Shirley, England, who spent several years beginning in 1880 hybridizing the wild poppies in the fields near his garden to obtain the strain of poppies bearing his name.

Interpretative signage keeps visitors informed of Historic Royal Palaces’ plan for the moat.

Small scabious (Scabiosa columbaria) is a big draw for pollinators.

The buff-tailed bumble bee (Bombus terrestris) is Europe’s most common bumble bee.

Meadow sage (Salvia pratensis) is a clump-forming perennial that prefers well-drained soil in full sun.

Nigel Dunnett specified the biennial viper’s bugloss, Echium vulgare – another bee favourite. Here it grows with corncockle (Agrostemma githago).

The Tower of London is famous for its six raven guardians, an institution believed to have started with Charles II who insisted the birds be protected and thought the crown and Tower would fall if they flew away. But this magpie does not have any official duties and has staked out its own priority seating in the north moat.

Look at the lovely flower of corncockle (Agrostemma githago), so pretty despite being very poisonous. In the 19th century it was a common annual weed of roadsides, railway lines and wheat fields and it likely made its way throughout the world as part of exported European wheat.

Although cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) was mostly finished in England when we were there in late May, a few plants popped up in the moat, right.

Annual corn flower (Centaurea cyanus) also comes in mixes that contain blue, white, pink and purple flowers – all are foraged by bees.

When I was at the Chelsea Physic Garden the day before visiting the Tower of London (here’s my blog), they had used annual lacy phacelia or purple tansy (Phacelia tanacetifolia), below, in a mass planting as bee forage for their hives. Despite being a native of California, it is a strong polllinator lure.

Here a buff-tailed bumble-bee enjoys foraging on the unusual caterpillar-like inflorescences of Phacelia tanacetifolia.

Signage helps visitors understand the possibilities of the moat, beyond its origin as fortification.

A lovely combination of pink California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) and meadow sage (Salvia pratensis).

Marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus) on pink California poppy.

The north side of the moat offers a good view of the 20 Fenchurch Building, nicknamed the “Walkie-Talkie” for its shape. This is the building which, as it was under construction in 2013, reflected the sun in such a way as to melt the metal of a Jaguar car parked beneath it, forcing the developers to erect a permanent sunshade of horizontal aluminum fins. The north part of the Tower complex behind the battlements is the site of the Waterloo Block and the Jewel House containing the well-protected Crown Jewels. For Superbloom, the north moat was fitted with speakers to create a sensory experience beyond the floral show. Musician Erland Cooper was commissioned to create a soundtrack, which he called “Music for Growing Flowers”.

Along with the corn poppies and California poppies, the moat seed mix contained seeds of Viscaria oculata, the small, lilac-purple flowers at bottom right.

Some plants I photographed don’t appear on the original seed lists but were happily luring insects, like what I believe is a yellow sow-thistle (Sonchus spp.) below. The purple cranesbill in the background is Geranium pyrenaicus.

Circling around to the eastern moat, at the corner we pass through The Nest, an organic willow sculpture by Spencer Jenkins that frames the view of the Tower Bridge.

Yellow buttercups (Ranunculus acris) and purple knapweed (Centaurea nigra) can be seen in the wildflower mix here.

The hardworking willow wattle fencing – nearly one kilometre in length by Wonderwood Willow – keeps the meadow from subsuming the grit path here. According to Andrew Grant in an article in Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute: “We were after a palette that would complement the stonework: colours, textures and form found around the Tower, yet were low in energy in terms of construction, were low carbon and (where possible) were from a renewable resource. As a principle, the use of concrete was banned across the project.” 

Wrote Nigel Dunnett of the east moat: “Here the Grant Associates masterplan introduced areas that were more intimate and playful, with smaller paths bringing people into more intimate contact with the flowers. The use of natural materials and the rustic forms of the woven willow structures created a wonderful foil for the flowers.”

On the plantings in the east moat, Nigel Dunnett wrote: “The plants here were placed at low density around the path edges, and then the seed mixes were sown around them – it’s a technique I’ve used a lot to give some definite structure of deliberately-placed plants amongst the more spontaneous nature of the seed mixes. I used plants with a sensual character here – plants with tactile textures or aromatic plants. One of the most effective was Purple Fennel – the dark-leaved clumps were really effective early in the summer as the seeded plants grew up around them.” The swirling composite-wood pathway takes visitors towards the dragonfly sculpture by Quist.

Signage in the east moat recalls the allotment gardens of the past.

Even in my own meadows on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto, Canada (see my blog here on “Gardening Wild”), plantain (Plantago major), below, in the east moat, is a superb bumble bee plant in spring.

Brass and copper dragonflies fly over the moat, but the future plan is to bring real dragonflies into the moat with water features, as you see in the next photo.

This sign appears at the exit, presumably to greet visitors who might enter from the castle. But it promises a future for the moat: “We aspire to recycle rainwater to support flowering marshes, ponds, areas of food-related flowers and much more.” Fortunately a London-based son means we can and will revisit the Tower to see the development of this magical place. But I’m so delighted I experienced this late spring wildflower chapter in 2024.

Fairy Crown #17 – Beebalm & Yellow Daisies at the Lake

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This is truly my favourite time of year in the meadows at our cottage on Lake Muskoka. Why?  Because the flower variety is at peak and the bees are at their most plentiful and buzzy. So my 17th fairy crown for August 5th celebrates the pollinator favourites here, including the champion, pink-flowered wild beebalm or bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), as well as yellow false oxeye (Heliopsis helianthoides), biennial blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta), grey-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) with its dark cones, mauve hoary vervain (Verbena stricta), oregano (Origanum vulgare) and a few of my weedy Queen Anne’s lace flowers (Dauca carota).  

I call my wild places on either side of the cottage ‘Monarda Meadows’ because wild beebalm (M. fistulosa) is the principal perennial there and in all the beds and wild places around our house, where it grows as a companion to Heliopsis helianthoides, below.

There’s a reason wild beebalm is called that; it’s a literal balm for the bees, specifically bumble bees whose tongues can easily probe the florets! 

Another frequent visitor to wild beebalm flowers is the clearwing hummingbird moth (Hemaris thysbe).

False oxeye (Heliopsis helianthoides) is one of the most aggressive natives I grow. I’m happy to leave it where it lands, but it often sulks in very sandy, sunny spots when summers are hot and dry.  It’s much better in the rich soil at the bottom of my west meadow, and I try to ignore all the red aphids that line the stems in certain summers.

But heliopsis also attracts its share of native bees, including tiny Augochlora pura, below.

Unlike the blackeyed susan I wrote about in my last blog, R. fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’, the ones I have at the lake are all the drought-tolerant native Rudbeckia hirta, below, with a long-horned Melissodes bee.  Biennials, they have seeded themselves around generously since 2003, when I first sowed masses of seed (along with red fescue grass) on the bare soil of the meadows surrounding our new house.

Sometimes they manage to arrange themselves very fetchingly, as with the perfumed Orienpet lily ‘Conca d’Or’, below.

Other times, they hang with the other tough native in my crown, hoary vervain (Verbena stricta).  Both are happy in the driest places on our property where they flower for an exceedingly long time….

…… as you can see from this impromptu bouquet handful featuring the vervain with earlier bloomers, coreopsis, butterfly milkweed and oxeye daisy.

Bumble bees love Verbena stricta.

The other yellow daisy in flower now — hiding at the top of my fairy crown — is grey-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata), also a favourite of bumble bees and small native bees in the meadows.  A vigorous self-seeder, it nevertheless does not always land in soil that is moisture-retentive enough for its needs; in that case, like heliopsis above, it wilts badly. But I love its tall stems bending like willows in the breeze.

Also in my fairy crown is a familiar hardy herb that fell from a pot on my deck long ago and found a happy spot in the garden bed below:  Greek oregano (Origanum vulgare var. hirtum).  

Its tiny flowers are also favoured by small pollinators.

The last component of my midsummer fairy crown is the common umbellifer Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota).  As much as we think of this as an unwanted invasive weed in North America, it was reassuring to see a native potter wasp, Ancistrocerus, making use of its small flowers.

As always, my fairy crown has a lovely second act as a bouquet.

Finally, I made a 2-minute musical video that celebrates these plants that form such an important ecological chapter in my summer on Lake Muskoka.

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Are you new to my fairy crowns?  Here are the links to my previous 15 blogs:
#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom
#10 – June Blues on Lake Muskoka
#11 – Sage & Catmint for the Bees
#12 – Penstemons & Coreopsis in Muskoka
#13 – Ditch Lilies & Serviceberries
#14 – Golden Yarrow & Orange Milkweed
#15 – Echinacea & Clematis
#16 – A Czech-German-All American Blackeyed Susan

Garden in the Woods – Part 2

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In my previous blog, ‘Garden in the Woods – Part 1’, I left you poised to walk around the lily pond of this fabulous native plant garden in Framingham, Massachusetts, outside Boston. I love a garden that features good interpretive signage, so here’s the sign for the pond. Because it’s just May 14th, these marginal plants and aquatics are not yet in flower, but there are still interesting plants to see.

A native plant that is in bloom is golden ragwort, Packera aurea. In my photo below, I show a close-up of the flowers and also a view from the far side of the lily pond of the colony at the base of the slope, illustrating the topography it prefers: moist – but not wet – acidic soil.

In the wet soil near the pond is marsh marigold (Caltha palustris).

I note the ‘Mount Airy’ witch alder (Fothergilla) near the pond and realize why my own fothergilla shrubs aren’t exactly thrilled to be in my unirrigated front garden in Toronto.

The pond edge is wild and natural-looking, with ferns, highbush blueberry and winterberry competing for space.

Royal fern (Osmunda regalis) on the left and cinnamon fern (Osmandastrum cinnamomeum) on the right also grow in the woods near our cottage north of Toronto.

Early-blooming eastern leatherwood (Dirca palustris) is already bearing fruit in the moist soil adjacent to the pond.

I’ve never seen drooping laurel, aka doghobble (Leucothea fontesiana) before, another denizen of damp soil – but normally native further southeast.

As I leave the pond area to continue along the main path, I admire a lovely rustic post and railing. Simple and beautiful.

On the predominately alkaline slope, yellow ladyslippers (Cypripedium parviflorum) are in flower.

There are loads of wild leeks or “ramps” in the valley (Allium tricoccum), a native edible onion that is common in Ontario as well.

Appalachian barren strawberry (Geum fragarioides) grows in the dappled shade down here, too.

Throughout the garden, flowering dogwood’s (Cornus florida) white flowers light up the shadows in May.

A violet I know well with a large native range, common blue violet (V. sororia).

In the Habitat Display area in the valley, there are a few bogs where eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is plentiful, but its wine-red flowers are long gone…..

….. though the lovely pink flowers of pink-shell azalea are making up for it.

Thanks to the excellent habitat tour on the Native Plant Trust’s website, I’m able to understand a little more about the ecology of some of the areas.  Signage is educational, too. This one explains how regional pH determines which ferns require which kind of soil.

This custom limestone habitat was lovely with tall, white-flowered two-leaf miterwort or bishop’s cap (Mitella diphylla) combined with northern maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum).

Eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) is familiar to me, since it grows on our cottage property on the Canadian Shield.

I love these vignettes – here is maidenhair fern with rue anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides), a plant that does like acidic soil.

A closeup of rue anemone. Isn’t it lovely?

Nearby is starflower.  It also grows in acidic soil in the forest near us though it has a new name, not Trientalis any more but Lysimachia borealis.

Walking on, I come upon box huckleberry (Gaylussacia brachycera). Native to the Atlantic coastal plain and points south, it is a self-sterile shrub that spreads clonally. According to Wikipedia, it is “a relict species nearly exterminated by the last ice age”.

Here and there I spot little pools of pale blue, lovely Quaker ladies or bluets (Houstonia caerulea), another denizen of moist, acidic soil.

The path leads on through rhododendrons not yet in flower.

The Calla Pool has a colony of native wild calla or water arums (Calla palustris) thriving in the muck and sharing the same rhizome, but not in flower quite yet. I am very familiar with this one from our acidic woods on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto.

As the forest clears we come to sunnier areas and a sign describing a meadow ecosystem, which is not much in evidence in mid-May.  As the Native Plant Trust says in its video tour: “This meadow provides an example of succession, the gradual change from one ecological community to another. In the colorful foreground you may notice favorite native plants such as partridge sensitive-pea, little bluestem, gray goldenrod, and northern blazing star.  Behind the flowers are woody pioneer species such as gray birch, eastern red cedar, and sassafras. Landscapes are constantly changing due to ecological succession, climate change, and disturbances such as natural disasters. These changes allow invasive plants to move in and crowd out native species. Our conservation work includes controlling invasive species, banking native seeds, and augmenting populations of rare plants to ensure their survival.”

For me, the most interesting low-lying habitat in this valley bottom is the ‘Coastal Sand Plain’, which mimics the lean soil of the Atlantic Coastal Pine Barrens ecoregions of Cape Cod and the coastal islands off New England.  Two plants of the sand plain grasslands threatened by development are the sundial or perennial lupine (Lupine perennis), below….

…. and prairie dropseed grass (Sporobolus heterolepis).

Another plant of the coastal pine barrens is American holly (Ilex opaca).  It prefers moist, acidic soil and, like all hollies, it is dioecious, having male and female flowers on different trees. Thus, if you want those lovely red fruits, you need a male holly to pollinate the female flowers.

Canada rosebay or rhodora (Rhododendron canadense) is showing off its pretty flowers in this habitat, too. Though somewhat scrawny, it is an iconic shrub and lends its name and image to the 120-year-old journal of the New England Botanical Club, fittingly titled Rhodora.

It was so interesting to see this xeric community of the Coastal Sand Plain with prairie dropseed, shooting stars and prairie thistle growing near New England’s (and Ontario’s) only native cactus, eastern prickly pear, Opuntia humifusa.

I’m not sure why I thought of shooting stars (Primula meadia, formerly Dodecatheon) as woodlanders, but these were clearly happy in the sand plain habitat….

…. and included a stunning, dark-pink form.

I’m sure most gardeners would be itching to weed out this thistle, but it is the native pasture thistle (Cirsium pumilum) which is found from Maine to South Carolina.  A biennial or monocarpic perennial, it bears scented flowers (its other common name is fragrant thistle) that attract pollinators and its seed provides food for many birds. (But it might not be appropriate for a small garden of natives.)

I am happy to see wavy hair grass (Deschampsia flexuosa) here, a familiar grass in my own rocky, red oak-white pine woodland edge ecosystem at our Lake Muskoka cottage north of Toronto.

 And I make the acquaintance of two sand plain violets, coast violet (Viola brittoniana)…..

…… and bird-foot violet (Viola pedata) with its distinctive leaves, whose seed is spread by ants.

There is a different wetland habitat as part of this sandplain and it features Atlantic white cedar (Chamaecypaaris thyoides).

I have never seen swamp pink (Helonias bullata) before, an endangered coastal plain species whose habitat is freshwater swamps and seepage areas. A rhizomatous perennial, its pink flowers with blue stamens are very showy!

Golden club (Orontium aquaticum) is the only extant species in its genus, but there are several identified fossil species from the west coast.  It grows in streams, ponds and shallow lakes with acidic soil.   

Highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) grows in the moist soil edging the pond here.

Heading onto drier ground, I find familiar little Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense)…

…. and wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) hiding under a skunk cabbage leaf.

Pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea) has found boggy soil and is patiently awaiting an unsuspecting fly.

Evergreen Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) is an old favourite of mine, perhaps because it stays in one place, unlike ostrich fern.

Circling around to head back to the entrance, we walk through the Beech Forest. As the Native Plant Trust’s virtual tour says:  “Maple-beech-birch forests are a classic northern hardwood forest type, representing about one-fifth of forested land in southern New England. Nearly half of beech trees in southern New England have been affected by beech bark disease since the mid-20th century. Despite this insect-fungus complex, the resilient northern hardwood forest thrives in a spectrum of soil and moisture conditions and is home for a diversity of plant and animal species”. 

I love this rustic arch leading into the Family Activity Area.

There are no red and yellow plastic slides and swings here – it’s all au naturel and wrought from the forest.

No matter where you travel in North America, if you tour public gardens you’re likely to come upon one of my friend Gary Smith’s magical environmental art creations. This one, part of “Art Goes Wild” completed in 2007 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Garden in the Woods, is called “Hidden Valley” and it was crafted from fallen logs and branches arranged in a serpentine line.

As we climb out of the beech woods and circle up the hill towards the Visitor Center, I spot sweet white violet (Viola blanda)….

…. and the curved inflorescence of red baneberry (Actaea rubra)….

…. and the white form of crested iris (I. cristata)….

…. and finally, a drift of Allegheny spurge (Pachysandra procumbens), which surely should be a widely-marketed alternative to invasive Japanese spurge (P. terminalis).

We arrive back at the gift shop and I take a quick look at the plants for sale. This one is intriguing taxonomically, because for a long time purple chokeberry was considered a hybrid of red and black chokeberry (A. arbutifolia x A. melanocarpa). But its range outside those species, its viable fruit and unique morphology have resulted in it being given its very own species name, Aronia floribunda.

And with that bit of botanical trivia, we depart Framingham’s beautiful Garden in the Woods, filled with respect for Will Curtis’s fulfilled dream and for the breadth of New England’s spring flora. If you want to learn more about what natives can be grown in New England and further afield in the northeast, consider the new book by Native Plant Trust director Uli Lorimer, “The Northeast Native Plant Primer – 235 Plants for an Earth-Friendly Garden”.  

Garden in the Woods – Part 1

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On May 14th, I was able to cross off an entry on my “Gardens To See Before I Die” list. It was a supreme pleasure on our spring road trip from Toronto to New Jersey for my husband’s college reunion to detour eastward in order to visit Garden in the Woods in Framingham, Massachusetts 20 miles outside Boston. I had heard so much over the decades about this garden featuring native New England plants that I couldn’t imagine being so close in spring and missing it. So we expanded our trip to spend two nights in Framingham in order to meet old Wooster, MA friends for dinner and visit the New England Botanic Garden (formerly Tower Hill Botanic Garden) in Boylston, but more on that later. Right now, let’s head into the parking lot on 180 Hemenway Road in the leafy suburbs of the town of Framingham. Walking towards the visitor entrance, we pass a spectacular carpet of mayapple (Podophullum peltatum) under airy pink-shell azalea (Rhododendron vaseyi) and flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) and I’m delighted to discover……

…… that I can photograph a shy mayapple flower without getting down on my hands and knees!

The flowers of pink-shell azalea, endemic to the Appalachian highlands. are simply exquisite. 

I spot a little crested iris (I. cristata) in the entrance gardens and I am excited about what is to come!

We pay our admission and I take a fast glance around the beautiful little gift shop and the plants for sale, below, before heading out. (I’ll talk about the history of the garden and Native Plant Trust later, but the plants are grown at the Trust’s native plant nursery Nasami Farm 93 miles west in Whately MA.) 

It is 1:15 pm when we start our visit and we will spend 2.5 hours here on the main loop, which is probably an hour less than the time I would like to have had to explore the various satellite trails. I’ve shown our route with red arrows on the map below. (Note that the garden recommends an hour to do the mile-long main loop, but that might be for visitors without cameras!)

I photograph the What’s in Bloom display for the various garden areas so I can refer to it as we make our way around.  We are at peak bloom for the spring ephemerals, including trilliums; in fact the garden boasts a collection of 21 species of trillium!

The path is wide and flat here and bisects sun-dappled woodland with lots of signage to identify the native plants, like the spotted cranesbill (G. maculatum), below.

You can see brown autumn leaves between the plants – they are left on the garden to act as nature’s mulch. Now…. imagine this as your wild back yard, for that’s what it was to Cornell-educated landscape designer Will C. Curtis (1883-1969). One of his foundational roles was with Warren Manning, sometimes called the “Dean of Landscape Architecture”, renowned for his informal, naturalistic ethos in design. Later, he worked as the general manager of a tree farm in Framingham, and in 1931, while out hiking, he came upon this 30-acre piece of land in the rural north part of the city. Owned by the Old Colony Railroad and used as a gravel mine, it featured “undulating eskers, tumbling brooks and varied woodland with two bogs and one pond, plus an ever-flowing spring” (Dick Stiles). 

Will Curtis was able to purchase the land for $1,000.  At 48 years of age, he set about building a rustic cottage, felling trees, clearing garden areas, laying out trails, expanding the lily pond and making a rock garden. Soon, with the help of volunteers, the Garden in the Woods was opened to the public. In 1933, Curtis was joined by Howard O. (Dick) Stiles and in 1936 they began a full partnership, giving tours, selling plants and raising exotic, award-winning plants under glass. Over the next 30 years, Will Curtis (right, below) and Dick Stiles (left) became experts in native American plants while maintaining seed and information exchanges with international botanical gardens.

Photo – Native Plant Trust

As Framingham grew and houses sprang up nearby, they turned down offers to sell to developers. In May 1965, the decision was made to transfer the Garden in the Woods to the New England Wildflower Preservation Society, with Will and Dick staying on as director and curator respectively. But after a period of ill health, Will Curtis died in 1969 at his home in the garden. As Dick would write later, “This man was a most unusual character; rugged, determined, resourceful, undeviatingly honest with no use whatever for so-called ‘diplomacy’. He was a man with vision, a true artist who knew exactly what he wanted and went to any amount of time and labor to achieve it, whether doing landscaping for a client, or working at the Garden. He never used a plan—not once—for it was all in that brain that could envision and feel and know just how it should be.”

Today, the expanded 45-acre garden is owned by the Native Plant Trust, the new name as of January 2019. According to director Uli Lorimer in an interview with Margaret Roach, the name was changed from the New England Wild Flower Society “to better align with the conservation, horticulture and education work we have been doing for years, and will continue to do in the future”.  But for the average visitor, it’s simply a place to be inspired with the native plants of New England and how to use them in design, like the yellow wood poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) with Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium reptans) below.  On that note, just days before our visit, Uli Lorimer’s book ‘The Northeast Native Plant Primer – 235 Plants for an Earth-Friendly Garden’ was published

I’m excited as I spot my first trillium, large toadshade (Trillium cuneatum)!

Some plants are familiar, like the white foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia), below with Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), while others….

…. like the goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis)….

…. and the green-and-gold (Chrysogonum virginianum var. brevistolon) are not.

Not far along the trail, we check out the Idea Garden, with its residential scale.

I love the shed’s green roof of native plants, with chokeberry and redbud tree in flower at right.

Although the garden is virtually 100% native, I note a little drift of Anemone nemorosa ‘Vestal’ alongside the ferns, Solomon’s seals and wood poppies (one of the ‘well-behaved’ non natives that made its way in).

Pink flowering dogwood (Cornus florida ‘Rubra’) lights up the woodland.

For visitors looking for a native lawn substitute, swards of Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica) are there to inspire!

Native plant cultivars are used here and there. This lovely combination is mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) in a carpet of bright-pink creeping phlox (Phlox stolonifera ‘Home Fires’).

I see my second trillium, yellow wakerobin (T. luteum)….

…. and note how lovely it looks with the pink creeping phlox.

We pass by Carolina rhododendron (R. carolinianum)….  

…. and Piedmont rhododendron (R. minus)…..

…. under towering yellow birch trees (Betula allegheniensis).  The birdsong here is amazing.

We descend to a valley (though this entire part of New England is referred to as the Connecticut River Valley) and the topography hints clearly at the property’s use as a gravel quarry a century ago. There’s a little enclave with a stone wall that acts to retain the hillside above….

…. and a stone bench where visitors can sit and contemplate the native flora.

And here I find a treasure trove of trilliums, including bent trillium (T. flexipes) and…

….the pink form of showy trillium or wakerobin (T. grandiflorum var. roseum) and….

….. sweet white trillium (T. simile) and…..

….. toadshade (T. sessile) and…..

…… showy trillium (T. grandiflorum), here with long beech fern (Phegopteris connectilis)…

….. and finally nodding toadshade (T. cernuum).

How tranquil it is here, without the hordes of visitors I expected, given the peak bloom.

The most brilliant show at the moment is decidedly creeping phlox (P. stolonifera). I believe this is ‘Sherwood Purple’…..

….. pairing beautifully with yellow wood poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) in one area….

….. and foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia) in another.

I see one of my own garden’s… um… more aggressive plants, ostrich fern (Matteucia struthiopteris) looking quite well-behaved in the midst of creeping phlox. Perhaps all I need are a few dozen gardeners to help me control it?

A little andrena bee is foraging on star chickweed (Stellaria pubara).

I find fringed bleeding heart (Dicentra eximia) down here, both the light-pink form…

…. and a raspberry-pink form, here with wild leeks (Allium tricoccum).

Look at this valley. Isn’t it stunning?

We’re now at the Rock Garden and I find Phlox subulata ‘Emerald Cushion Blue’ making good use of the outcrops.

Nearby is a little colony of plaintain-leaf pussytoes (Antennaria plantaginifolia). Like all members of the genus, its leaves are a larval food for the American painted lady butterfly (Vanessa virginiensis).

And a new-for-me plant, stiff amsonia (A. rigida).

Next up is the pond… so stay tuned for Garden in the Woods – Part 2!

Into the May Woods Once Again

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On Victoria Day weekend, with almost two warm weeks having elapsed since my first May wildflower foray into the woods flanking the dirt road near our cottage on Lake Muskoka, near Torrance, Ontario I was curious to see what else had come into bloom.  This time, knowing the blackflies and mosquitoes would be active, I came prepared with a Coghlan’s head net for my hat.  What a lifesaver that was!

As I left our place on the Page’s Point peninsula, I noticed the sand cherry in flower down by the shore. Prunus pumila is a plant not only of sandy shores along the Great Lakes, but of smaller lakes, too. It also emerges from soil in granite outcrops, like Lake Muskoka.

Spring bees love the sand cherry flowers. This is an andrena mining bee.

Lowbush blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) were in flower, too. Fingers crossed for sufficient rain to produce fruit.

I also noticed the rather subtle flowers of limber honeysuckle (Lonicera dioica), another Muskoka native.

Further down the path was a little stand of gaywings, aka fringed milkwort (Polygala paucifolia).

Back on the dirt road, hepatica, spring beauty and dogtooth violet were all finished, but I found some sweet little downy yellow violets (V. pubescens) in the grassy centre of a neighbour’s driveway.

Wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) was now in full bloom.

False Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) was just about to flower…..

…. .and across the road, little starflower was becoming used to its new name, Lysimachia borealis (formerly Trientalis).

I stepped down into the wetland on either side of the road to get a better look at the violet that my Field Botanists of Ontario Facebook page had identified for me in my last blog. You can see it in the mud under the emerging royal ferns (Osmunda regalis var. spectabilis). It’s called Macloskey’s violet or small white violet (Viola macloskeyi) and is native to much of northeast N. America. This is when I really appreciated my bug veil!

Here’s a close-up look at the violet.

In the wetland on the opposite side of the road, cinnamon ferns (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) had mostly unfurled since my last visit.

There were masses of Macloskey’s violets here too, but what was that white flower at the edge of the swale?

It was wild calla or water arum (Calla palustris) – my first time seeing this lovely marginal aquatic plant.

Wild calla bears the spathe-and-spadix floral arrangement typical of the Arum family (Araceae). According to the Illinois Wildflowers site: “The spadix has mostly perfect (bisexual) flowers… These small flowers are densely arranged across the entire surface of the spadix and they are numerous. Each perfect flower has a green ovoid pistil that is surrounded at its base by 6-9 white stamens”. Flies are its principal pollinators. After flowering ends, the spathe and spadix both turn green. As fruit develops, it turns bright-red.

I actually made a little video of my foray into the wet areas and you can hear the mosquitoes in the blue violet segment, as well as the lovely Muskoka birds. It ends with the chokecherries (Prunus virginiana) further up the dirt road.

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The chokecherries had just been in bud two weeks earlier, but were now in full flower….

….. and hosting native bees as well as this little beetle.

In the woods, beaked hazel (Corylus cornuta) had leafed out.

Eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) grew here and there on shallow soil atop rock outcrops.

I saw exactly one rock harlequin (Capnoides sempervirens) but it was difficult to capture with my cellphone so I’ve added a camera closeup from a previous spring behind our own cottage.

And of course loads of wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana).

The forest floor under this sugar maple seedling (Acer saccharum) was thickly carpeted with the leaves of countless species still awaiting their time to shine – or perhaps never rising at all, but merely part of the great fabric of nature here.

There were also seedling oaks, both red oak (Quercus rubra) and white oak (Quercus alba). The latter, in this neck of the woods, never seems to get bigger than a small scrubby tree.

Those oak photos were the last ones I made for 30 minutes because I got turned around and lost in the woods. It was only for a half-hour, but it felt like hours. I climbed over and under downed trees and came to hemlock stands and fairly high cliffs, beyond which lay… more forest. Since it was mid-afternoon, I followed the sun, thinking I needed to go south – but I was in fact walking more west than south.  Nothing looked familiar – I was really lost, and getting thirsty in the heat!   Feeling a growing sense of panic, I called my husband Doug back at the cottage. “You need to veer left as you’re looking at the sun to find the dirt road,” he said. Within 10 minutes I started to recognize some of the plants I’d seen earlier and then I heard the voices of children and saw the roof of a truck heading down the dirt road. Whew!  Next time I won’t wander without taking water and leaving a trail of cookie crumbs! (Note to self: also get compass and GPS apps on phone.)  The arrows below with our cottage marked in red approximate my wanderings.

When I got back to the dirt road, I found the first instar of the gypsy moth caterpillars that will  ravage our Muskoka oak and pine trees this summer. Very tiny, it was crawling up the leaf of striped maple or moose maple (Acer pensylvancum) which was also sporting its pendant green flowers. Some of my readers will recall my 2020 blog A Gypsy Moth Summer on Lake Muskoka in which I described how I used a homemade oil spray to kill the egg masses.

Heading back to the cottage, I found maple-leaf viburnum (V. acerifolium) in bud…..

….. and a few trilliums that had not yet withered in the unseasonal May heat. And I had learned a few valuable lessons about going into the Muskoka bush alone!

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If you want to read about my meadow gardens in Muskoka, have a look at this blog from 2017, Muskoka Wild – Gardening in Cottage Country.