Tag Archives: winter seedheads

Winter Magic Indoors & Out at the Toronto Botanical Garden

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I needed a few stocking stuffers today, so I headed to the gift shop at the Toronto Botanical Garden, my favourite spot for last minute treasures of all kinds. But I treated myself to a little garden therapy as well — and this year, the TBG has outdone itself with a special project indoors. Come along with me, but bundle up, it’s snowing out there! Let’s start at the west end of the Piet Oudolf-designed Entry border. I always love looking at those paperbark maples (Acer griseum)…..

…. with their peeling, coppery bark.

On the other side of the walkway is a little garden featuring Astilbe chinensis var. tacquetii ‘Purpurlanz’ – now handsome mahogany seedheads. Four season interest, of course, is what Piet Oudolf intended when he designed this garden – his aim for all his gardens around the world.

Dense blazing star (Liatris spicata) shows off its fuzzy cylindrical seedheads along the path.

Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Cassian’ is a handsome grass with lovely winter presence.

The button-like seedheads of beebalm (Monarda fistulosa) hold up well in winter. Beyond is Korean feathergrass (Calamagrostis brachytricha).

The tawny foliage of willowleaf bluestar (Amsonia tabernaemontana var. salicifolia) is a third act, after the ice-blue June flowers and the brilliant yellow-gold fall colour.

Foxglove penstemon (P. digitalis) seized a little territory this year, as it does (in my meadows, too). The bees don’t mind – and those dark-brown seedheads are so beautiful.

Even on a snowy December day, the tall, airy stems of ‘Transparent’ purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea) screen the border in an artful way.

I love the fluffy seedheads of autumn asters, topped with a dusting of snow.

Probably the tallest, most statuesque perennial in the Entry Border, ‘Gateway’ Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum Atropurpureum Group) is popular with bees and butterflies in summer.

The bristly, spherical seedheads of rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) stand out at the east end of the Entry Border.

I take a walk along Lawrence Avenue. This is the face that Toronto Botanical Garden presents to drivers passing by.

Grasses and hydrangeas provide interest for a long time in winter.

Around the corner heading back into the gardens, I enjoy the snow-white trunks of the Himalayan birches.

I could have spent a while watching the wind whip the seedheads of the maiden grass (Miscanthus sinensis) – but the snow was blowing at me too!

I remember way back in 2008 when the beech frames still showed their inner metal infrastructure.

Now it’s all beech (Fagus sylvatica ‘Cuprea’).

Winter snow shows off the swirling patterns of the clipped Korean boxwood hedges in the Beryl Ivey Knot Garden.

This one is kept clipped as a spiral.

How gorgeous is this? Dwarf papyrus (Cyperus papyrus) and dusty Miller strutting their winter stuff in the raised windowbox planters near the Spiral Garden.

Walking west, I come upon some of the colourful conifers that add a little pizazz to winter – like this ‘Vintage Gold’ false cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera).

And winter is when visitors notice the bright stems of ‘Midwinter Fire’ dogwood (Cornus sanguinea).

The perennial garden, intended as a Sunken Garden when originally designed, is a quiet expanse of lawn.

As I circle towards the Terrace Garden, I can’t resist peeking through the pendulous boughs of weeping larch (Larix decidua), still holding onto their autumn-gold needled leaves.

With its irises, roses, coreopsis and lavender, the sunny Terrace Garden is full of colour in summer. Now it shows off its curving metal retaining walls. In the background is the George & Kathy Dembroski Centre for Horticulture.

I circle around to the northern entrance to what was once the Edibles Garden, now a garden used to showcase new varieties of annuals.

The evergreen leaves of Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium) turn red in winter.

The copper beech hedge at the base of the Spiral Garden shows off a dainty skirt of Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’). Grasses and persistent leaves (botanically, they’re known as “marcescent” leaves) are important elements in a winter garden.

A birch arbour! What a wonderful way to celebrate winter stems! Now all we need is a winter bride & groom! (My daughter and son-in-law were married at the TBG in 2012 and I love looking at their photos made in this part of the garden.)

And it wouldn’t be winter without some attractive pots filled with colourful branches, conifers and berries.

THE FLOATING GARDEN!

But all the magic isn’t outdoors at the TBG this winter. Beginning at the door to the TBG’s wonderful library and extending all the way down the hall to the Floral Hall is an installation designed and made by the horticultural team and volunteers called The Floating Garden. Using hanging, dried flowers, it celebrates summer’s harvest from the gardens.

How much fun is this?

Roses, hydrangeas, gomphrena – little bouquets that banish the cold winds of winter and recall warm days of July and August.

I’ve made bouquets from my golden yarrow – but this takes “dried flowers” to a new level!

It’s wonderful to contemplate the delicate bracts of a hydrangea….

… or the shiny, seedpod of honey locust (with a fresh coat of blue paint?).

Gomphrena globosa ‘Fireworks’ with hydrangea.

The distinctive fuzzy inflorence of amaranthus.

A little bit of indoor garden fantasy for our long Toronto winter.

I asked dad if I could photograph him walking through the floral gauntlet.

Then it was time to take my stocking stuffers home. One last look along the Entry Border – here showing a big drift of the Perennial Plant Association’s (PPA) 2024 ‘Plant of the Year’, clustered mountain mint, Pycnanthemum muticum.

Here’s what it looked like on August 22nd.

But now it’s making its presence known in the snow. And, as Piet Oudolf has always said, “brown is a colour too.”

I have spent a few decades chronicling the plants, bees and brilliant designs of the Toronto Botanical Garden. What a joy it has been.

My best wishes for a brilliant holiday season – however you celebrate it!

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Are you curious about how the Entry Border was designed? Read my 2-part blog titled ‘Piet Oudolf – Meadow Maker’.

Fairy Crown #27-Winter in the City

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In this festive season, my 27th fairy crown celebrates a few stalwart plants that give some structure and life to my garden for the four-to-six months when the soil is completely frozen.  I see red hawthorn fruit, aka “haws”, from my beloved Washington thorn tree (Crataegus phaenopyrum).  Hanging down over my right shoulder is a bough from one of my gangly hemlock trees (Tsuga canadensis), complete with four sweet little cones. The dark-green prickly needles come from my yew blobs, i.e. the balls of Taxus x media ‘Hicksii’ in my pond garden. Over my left shoulder are bits of lacy arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis), aka “white cedar”, from the very long hedge separating my garden from my neighbour’s.  The broadleaf evergreen is wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei). Finally, the seedheads are purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and snakeroot (Actaea racemosa) sticking out on my right side.

When you garden in Toronto, you learn not to expect too much – aesthetically – from “the winter garden”.  Unlike those exquisite December scenes from England, France and the Netherlands of silvery hoar frost delicately coating each leaf and seedhead, December in the northeast is often more like a thick blanket of snow that not only buries all the plants in the garden, but the car in the driveway too!  Yes, this was our car on January 17, 2022.

It broke a daily record with a total of slightly more than 21 inches (55 cm).

And it was a very hard slog with the snow shovel for my husband Doug!  But I added a little muscle and together we cleared a path to the door.

As I write this, there’s a big red weather warning on The Weather Network. “Rain, transitioning to freezing rain, transitioning to snow with expected accumulations of 10-15 centimetres.”  That’s 4-6 inches for Americans, not a lot, but in the course of a normal Toronto winter, we can see deep snowfalls, then complete thaws, then sub-freezing temperatures that hit certain plants very hard.  Those vagaries are more challenging than a nice, cozy, insulating snow blanket that stays in place until March, like the one in the photo below taken in my garden a few winters back after a less dramatic snowfall than this year’s. Nevertheless, it’s what we have – and why books were invented, i.e. to while away these months before the earliest spring bulbs come into bloom.

If I stand on my verandah after a normal snowfall, this is my view of the pollinator island.  Most of the seedheads of the perennials – echinacea, sedum, perovskia – stand up well through winter, until I cut them all down in March in anticipation of the crocuses.

This is dense blazing star (Liatris spicata) that fed so many bumble bees in summer.

Purple coneflower seedheads were foraged by loads of goldfinches in the autumn and now clearly show off the “cone” of the capitulum.

I love the brown “shaving brush” seedheads of New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis).

Every year I fill a big pot near my front steps with pine boughs, Magnolia grandiflora boughs with their rich copper-brown leaf reverses and bright-red winterberry boughs (Ilex verticillata).  Usually it’s covered by snow within a few weeks, but with melt-and-thaw cycles in winter it does add a little festive touch to the garden.

And when we get the Christmas lights up on the Japanese maple and around our front door, the plant silhouettes in the pollinator garden add a natural touch.

My old garden gate lost its sentry boxwood shrubs this June as we resurfaced the driveway. There was no way to move the whiskey barrels I’d planted them in way back around 1990, since the barrel staves had finally started to break and the 30-year-old boxwoods had begun to suffer.

From the back yard deck, my garden always looks lovely in winter…..

…..even somewhat nicely maintained, which is the miracle disguise of snow!  That’s my frozen lily pond in front of the lantern. The shrubs are the Hicks’ yews and that golden grass is Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea ‘Skyracer’.   Sadly, the crabapple tree was also removed this year, the victim of one of the many blights that hit certain Malus cultivars. I am giving some thought to what its replacement could be, but I do want it to be bird-friendly!

Speaking of birds, they do love the hemlock trees (Tsuga canadensis). I often see “my cardinals” against the green boughs, but it’s black-capped chickadees that make most use of the cones.

However, the most popular plant in my garden for birds is not actually in my garden, though I pay each year to have a lovely young man come by to shear it, below, once the border perennials have finished for the year and been cut down. It’s my neighbour Claudette’s long arborvitae hedge (Thuja occidentalis), aka “white cedar”.  As I’ve written before in my blog about designing a garden for birds, a tall, thick evergreen hedge affords wonderful habitat for birds – and it’s where “my” cardinal family resides, as well as unknown numbers of house sparrows in their own nests.

The other tree that shines in winter – and provides those red fruit for my fairy crown – is my Washington thorn (Crataegus phaenopyrum).  Birds of all kinds love the berries – and occasionally leave some on the branches so I can photograph the clusters with snowy little caps.

But winter arrives on the calendar in 6 days – even though it always looks like winter long before that here.  And like good old Saint Nick, I plan to do a little napping, plus a little reading, and a lot of photo-editing through the long months of winter that stretch ahead!  After all, that view from inside the house through the witches’ balls is very inviting!

Merry Christmas to you all, and I’ll return before New Year with my final fairy crown celebrating winter in my meadows on Lake Muskoka!

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Did you miss a fairy crown blog in 2022?  Here they are:

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