My 22nd fairy crown is a celebration of the ornamental grasses I grow at the cottage on Lake Muskoka. The little seeds are from switch grass (Panicum virgatum); my “bangs” are big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii); and there’s also some pollen-laden Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) there as well. The pale lavender flowers are a little aster that grows wild on our property, sky-blue aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense). The pink flowers are the New England aster ‘Harrington’s Pink’ (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae).
In fact, #22 was the most unruly of all my crowns to make, given that the grasses had long flowering spikes that were difficult to attach to the wire frame. Here’s a little inside look at the nuts-and-bolts of fairy crown creation.
Many of my prairie grasses grow in the west meadow. In the photo below, you can see big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) mixed with heliopsis, lanceleaf aster and various goldenrods.
When native switch grass (Panicum virgatum) is in flower and the sun shines behind it, it adds a beautiful sense of lightness to the meadow. I planted a few nursery pots of various cultivars of switch grass in the naturalistic garden beds on the property, but I also sowed seed of the species throughout the meadows and it is gradually filling in in many places….
….. including the lake shore.
It has a swishing, kinetic quality that makes sitting beside it in late summer a sensory experience.
And in autumn, switch grass turns colour, with some taking on red hues and others golden-yellow.
Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) is sometimes called turkeyfoot grass because the flower spikes branch into three segments that resemble a turkey’s foot. It is native to southern Ontario.
By the time it blooms in early September alongside big bluestem, grey-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) is usually showing off its oblong black seedheads.
Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) is a stealth grass; one minute it’s in a tidy clump in a garden bed, the next minute it’s popping up in cracks between flagstones. But it’s one of the native grasses I’ve encouraged to grow in the shallow, sandy soil of the west meadow. I assume its deep, searching roots find cracks in the Precambrian bedrock that somehow approximate the deep soil of the tallgrass prairie that once covered millions and millions of acres of North America. That little aster peeking out from the Indian grass is sky-blue aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense).
I see it all over the countryside in Muskoka, but I adore the way it pops up amidst native species that I sowed in the meadows here, like wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa), below, showing its late summer seedheads.
It’s one of those plants that is unassumingly charming – and new plants emerge in different spots each September.
But bees are sure to find it, including the orange-belted bumble bee (Bombus ternarius), below.
In my east meadow, September features another plant I received from the gardeners at Toronto’s Spadina House Museum – only this time, I purchased at their plant sale (unlike my cup plants, which were gifted to me by Spadina’s gardeners with a warning about their rambling ways.) Meet Symphyotrichum novae-angliae ‘Harrington’s Pink’, below, partnering with sweet blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia subtomentosa).
Bumble bees are fond of ‘Harrington’s Pink’…. even if the flowers sometimes don’t fully open in my dry meadows and tend to look a little wonky…..
….. unlike the spectacular display this plant makes at Spadina House in early autumn, along with other cultivars of New England aster.
The goldenrod in my crown is not one you see in nurseries; in fact, it took me a while to identify it, but I think I have. It is hairy goldenrod (Solidago hispida), native to dry, rocky places in a large swath of the northeast.
I’ll leave you with a bouquet I made many years ago that celebrates the big grasses, asters, seedheads and goldenrods that shine in my meadows at this time of year. The cowboy boot? Well, it just seemed fitting for this celebration of the prairie on Lake Muskoka!
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Here are the blogs on my previous 21 fairy crowns!
My 20th crown for August 19th had a sweet scent that was meant for the bees, not me, but I did appreciate the soft, vanilla perfume of the dusty-pink, hollow Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium fistulosum) that grows in the parts of my meadow that retain a little moisture. Along with it are the violet-purple flowers of New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis); the big, yellow daisies of cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum); the small yellow blossoms of grass-leaved goldenrod (Euthamia graminifolia); and a few sprigs of rough goldenrod (Solidago rugosa).
The plants I gathered came mostly from my west meadow…..
….. where the New York ironweed and Joe Pye weed make excellent companions, appreciating the tiny extra bit of moisture at the midpoint of our sloping property and maturing at about the same height, 2-3 m (6-9 ft), depending on the season.
I think I bought my first plant at a nursery, but New York ironweed has popped up on our property in soil that was brought in from neighbouring woodlands. Provided it can maintain fairly damp feet, it is happy in our sandy conditions.
Bees adore it, as do butterflies like the great spangled fritillary, below….
….. and the ruby-throated hummingbird is a fan, too.
One of my favourite photos was of a female goldenrod crab spider disguised as an ironweed stamen, just awaiting her unwary prey.
The hollow Joe Pye weed attracts lots of bumble bees. It’s much paler than its spotted (E. maculatum) cousin.
Grass-leaved or flat-topped goldenrod is not a true goldenrod in the Solidago genus, though it was considered part of the gang until recently. It is one of the late summer “weeds” on our property, including near our Waterloo Biofilter septic structure, below, where it definitely emitted a light floral perfume (that was not that of the septic system).
Bumble bees, such as the red-belted bumble bee (Bombus ternarius) below, and other bees seem to love it during its rather short blooming period.
Another abundant goldenrod that occurs naturally on our property is rough goldenrod (Solidago rugosa). Better behaved than its cousin, Canada goldenrod, it is nonetheless proficient at spreading itself around, much to the delight of all kinds of bees. This species gave rise to the popular garden cultivar ‘Fireworks’.
Finally, a few words about one of the tallest plants in my meadows, cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum). I was given my first tuberous roots of this northeast native by the gardeners at Toronto’s Spadina House Museum, with a warning that it would be invasive and I might be sorry I planted it. Fortunately, my meadows are filled with invasives and they all like to duke it out, so for the most part cup plant has been kept in check. Here it is at the base of our stairs.
My meadows are dry and sandy which also works against its invasive tendencies. But I saw it on a riverbank at the Chicago Botanic Garden, below, and I can say that it would be much more aggressive in the moist soil that it craves.
It’s a great favourite of bumble bees…..
….. and, occasionally, of passing butterflies.
I’ve made up a little video on my cottage cup plants, with a humorously surprising last scene;
Finally, here’s a little August bouquet from my meadows to you… until the next fairy crown.
I was excited when I heard that the Garden Writers Association was meeting in Chicago this past summer. I hadn’t attended for a long time because of calendar conflicts, but this symposium was one I was determined to make. Why? The lectures would be good and it would be fun to see some old friends, but mostly it was an opportunity to see the Lurie Garden downtown and the Chicago Botanic Garden in their late summer glory. A glance at the tours being offered suggested that CBG would be a small part of a northern suburbs tour, so I decided I would take an entire day and Uber myself the 25 miles up to the garden north of the suburb of Glencoe. I shared the cost of the $50 (approximate) ride with another GWA member, arriving before 10 am. If you go, it’s a good idea to take a look at the comprehensive garden map online and upload the Smartphone App. Keep in mind that CBG is 385 acres, featuring 27 interesting, far-flung gardens and 9 islands set in 60 acres of lakes comprised of the Skokie River lagoons. Even with my 7-hour stay in August, I didn’t see all the gardens. It is also a spectacular resource for students of some of the most eminent contemporary landscape architects, including Dan Kiley, John Brookes and Oehme, van Sweden.
CBG offers free admission, but charges a fee for parking. Even in the Parking Lot, you can see that CBG’s gardeners pay close attention to colour, with signs referring in several places to relationships on the artist’s colour wheel.
I walked past the Visitor Center containing the restaurant (where I would dine with a local relative later) and marvelled at this…..
…… amazing planting, below, on the edge of one of the garden’s many water courses: the big red flowers of ‘Lord Baltimore’, a hardy swamp hibiscus hybrid, with wine-red Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium sp). Isn’t it beautiful?
The Crescent near the entrance is devoted to seasonal displays of spring bulbs and annuals set in concentric, crescent-shaped, boxwood-lined beds. It was conceived by the renowned modernist landscape architect Dan Kiley in 2002, and installed posthumously.
Dan Kiley also conceived of the plan for the adjacent formal garden, The Esplanade, which is described as the garden’s “village green”. Here is the view along its sculpted walkway back beneath the alleé of Commendation™ elms towards the entrance. As CBG says, “Kiley saw the Esplanade as an opportunity to create a great sense of place and arrival, offering visitors glimpses of vivid sweeps of color against the water and sky as they pass over the bridge outside the Visitor Center.” Following his death in 2004, the designs for both the Crescent and Esplanade were completed and installed by Kiley’s colleague Peter Morrow Meyer.
And here are the Esplanade’s lovely niches. You can see here the influence that André LeNôtre’s 17th century work at Versailles had on Kiley, who visited France while working as chief designer for the U.S. Army during WWII.
As CBG notes of the modernist ethos: “The tenets of modern landscape architecture continue to resonate: Keep it simple. Make it useful. Let the spaces flow. Strive to make connections. Dan Kiley was a master of these ideas.” The Esplanade’s lake walk and water terrace offer visitors a unique opportunity to engage with the garden’s “deep ties to the water”.
Similarly, the three long water fountains and their line of splashing water plumes (very Versailles!) create music that draws visitors towards them.
The beautiful Gertrude Nielsen Heritage Garden, opened in 1982, was funded by the daughter of the man who invented the Nielsen Ratings for television.
Designed by Pittsburgh landscape architect Geoffrey Rausch, it pays tribute to the early tradition of botanic gardens with its circular, four-quadrant shape modelled after the earliest such garden, in Padua, Italy, the Orto Botanico di Padova (1545). The central bed recalls a classic ‘physic garden’ and medicinal plants from around the world.
The garden is dedicated to Carl Linnaeus, who developed our modern system of binomial nomenclature to name plants, and whose statue, by Robert Berks, adorns the border in the background.
Canna lilies are just one of many aquatic plants represented in the three water gardens arrayed around the central bed.
Visitors are educated about taxonomy as they circle the garden. For example, they learn that both snapdragons (light-yellow flowers halfway up the border) and…..
….. butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii ‘Pink Delight’) are both in the Scrophulariaceae or Figwort Family. Late summer monarchs enjoy nectaring on butterfly bush.
Tender plants from the Bromeliaceae family are brought from greenhouses into the border, like this Aechmea ‘Yellow Berries’.
Or they might discover (via a sign in the border) that chaste-tree (Vitex agnus-castus ‘Lecompte’), below, has been moved by the naming authorities from Verbenaceae to Lamiaceae. In this way, even beginning gardeners understand the complexity of the plant world.
I made a quick stop in the Buehler Enabling Garden, where various strategies are demonstrated for people with physical infirmities that prevent them from traditional gardening, or for gardeners who find it harder to follow the same methods as they age. Raised beds, below, are one way to make gardening easier.
There are lots of beautiful planting ideas in the garden, all in delicious colour combinations, and many with perfume to create a sensory garden. In the background you can see the Tool Shed, which features adaptive tools for gardeners.
I loved the violet, lilac and pale-blue tones in this combination.
Gardeners limited to tight spaces will find inspiration in the living wall vertical gardens and splashing water wall in the Buehler Garden. (To learn much more about the Enabling Garden, download the .pdf at this American Public Gardens site.)
I was determined to spend lots of time at Evening Island so I hurried there via the interesting Water Gardens edging the Great Basin. That’s white-flowered bog bean (Menyanthes trifoliata) with red-stemmed thalia (Thalia geniculata var. ruminoides) out there near the duckies.
Standing quietly, I watched a ruby-throated hummingbird nectar on canna flowers. I believe this is a cultivar called ‘Intrigue’.
Although the water gardens were located near the meandering Serpentine Bridge to Evening Island…..
……. I went down the shore to the Arch Bridge.
Unsurprisingly, this sleek bridge with its overhanging weeping willows and waterlilies was inspired by Impressionist painter Claude Monet’s bridge at Giverny.
There are some wonderful gardens along the water here, filled with aquatic and marginal plants like pink-flowered swamp hibiscus (H. moscheutos) with sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), below…..
….. and a native North American duo with which I’m very familiar from fens and swamps here in Ontario: blue-flowered pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata) and pink water willow (Decodon verticillatus).
Then it was over the bridge and onto Evening Island itself. (I made a video of my tour of the island which you’ll find below, complete with birds chirping and kids laughing.) Dedicated in 2002, the island was designed by Oehme van Sweden of Washington, D.C. whose founding principals James van Sweden and the late Wolfgang Oehme are renowned for articulating a garden style called the New American Landscape. From the OvS website, “The style is characterized by large swaths of grasses and layered masses of perennials that boldly celebrate the ephemeral through mystery, intrigue, and discovery.” After walking along a pathway from the bridge, I arrived at my favourite spot: a simple, linear garden arrayed along the Great Basin and featuring some of those bold plants. I took the steps down past yellow daylilies, blue Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and ‘Tardiva’ hydrangeas (H. paniculata).
Along the path was more Russian sage, threadleaf coreopsis, feather red grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) and ‘Gateway’ Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum ssp. maculatum) nearest the water.
Here you see the genius of James van Sweden and Wolfgang Oehme. These beautiful, low maintence plants, used in masses, are not just attractive to people and pollinators, they are designed to frame the view in the most beautiful way. Through the layers of perennials, grasses and waterlilies at the shore, visitors look across the Great Basin and see the formal gardens of the CBG, including the McGinley Pavilion where weddings and receptions are held.
From the path, I could look up at the Theodore C. Butz Memorial Carillon on a rise nearby. Its 48 bells ring out the hours throughout the day. You can hear it in the video, too. Bell concerts are also held here.
I took a quick peek into the stone-walled Nautilus terrace at a family waiting for their child to finish nature camp nearby.
Then I took the path around the island, stopping to admire the eye-popping hillside meadow of the white-flowered hardy hibiscus hybrid ‘Blue River II’, annual spider flower (Cleome hasslerana) and more Joe Pye weed.
I loved the random insertion of big sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) into this garden, Some birds were going to be very happy with all that seed!
Further along was a drift of purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) with ‘Heavy Metal’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum) under ‘Whitespire’ birches (Betula populifolia), which are more disease- and insect-resistant than paper birches.
Though many native plants are used, the flower meadows on Evening Island are stylized with colourful combinations that have the advantage of being wildlife-friendly, like this pretty vignette of purple chaste-tree (Vitex agnus castus), annual orange Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia ‘Fiesta del Sol‘) and blue bog sage (Salvia uliginosa).
Check out the bee on the sage – and there were monarchs nectaring on the tithonia.
I found myself at the beautiful Trellis Bridge connecting Evening Island to the Lavin Plant Evaluation Garden.
Look at all that gorgeous, purple New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis) mixed with ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora)!
And this is a view of the bridge looking back at Evening Island. I think this is my favourite of the three bridges.
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So it was back across the Trellis Bridge to Evening Island. As I walked over the bridge I spotted this weed harvester, used to reduce the growth of various aquatic plants in the Great Basin, North Lake and elsewhere. The garden also has a zebra mussel problem in the lakes and waterways; these mollusks filter the water for the algae they eat, increasing its clarity and paving the way for even more aquatic weeds.
Back on Evening Island, I stopped at the outlook below to gaze out through another carefully-designed Oehme van Sweden view: under the sycamore and over the feather reed grass, utilized so perfectly here as a shimmery half-curtain framing the view of the water.
Then I came upon a native shrub we don’t see in Ontario, for some reason, though it is perfectly hardy for us: shining sumac (Rhus copallinum).
And that Evening Island video I promised? Here it is…..
…. and this is the lovely cottage garden with its mix of flowers and vegetables….
….. and a sunken garden with hexagonal pool.
I hurried back to the visitor center to meet a relative for lunch in the lovely Garden View Cafe. Then it was on to the Native Plant Garden. For me this is one of the most important gardens at CBG, especially as gardeners aim for more pollinator- and bird-friendly gardens using indigenous plants adapted to the climate and soil conditions. In August this garden is filled with a profusion of Chicago area native forbs and grasses and divided broadly into three spaces, a prairie garden, a bird and butterfly garden, and a woodland garden for shade. As a prairie-lover, I focused on what was in bloom at this peak time of summer, like white flowering spurge (Euphorbia corollata), tall compass plant (Silphium laciniatum) and a yellow daisy, possibly heliopsis or Rudbeckia subtomentosa.
You rarely see bright-red royal catchfly (Silene regia) in a garden but it’s a wonderful hummingbird and swallowtail butterfly lure. Here it is with prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostachya).
Part of the prairie section of the Native Plant Garden overlooks North Lake and Smith Fountain. This is a combination of purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and showy tick trefoil (Desmodium canadense).
I loved the muscled bark of this old American hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana) in the woodland garden.
Naked ladies, aka resurrection lilies (Lycoris squamigera) popped up in several places in the garden, here with just one of a series of fruit tree espaliers in the background.
Sunflowers and corn are native North American food plants, along with squash, barely visible under the corn at rear.
Visitors can check out unusual offerings like okra, front.
What beautiful leafy crops!
Education is a principal mandate of CBG, and the Fruit and Vegetable Garden tool wall offers an excellent how-to primer.
Vegetables are planted everywhere, including in these beds terraced out over the water. Vegetable growing is part of the internship program of CBG’s Windy City Harvest Apprenticeship Program, which educates and employs 80-90 teens from low-income communities at four sites in the Chicago area. Through the program, vegetables grown here are sold to the CBG’s cafe.
Next up was the Graham Bulb Garden. As I gazed at the bees foraging on the wonderful ‘Millenium’ flowering onions (hybridized by my friend Mark McDonough), I thought how beautiful this garden must be in springtime after Chicago’s long winter, filled with tulips, daffodils and loads of tiny bulbs.
Nearby were some great color ideas, with explanations based on the artist’s color wheel. This happy melange of zinnias with dahlias and cannas represented analogous colours of red, orange and yellow.
Nearby was the Farwell Landscape Garden and I had a brief look at the Informal Herb Garden, below, but aware of the time I elected to keep going.
Though my knees were beginning to complain about all the walking I’d done, I made the decision to head out to the Dixon prairie. My walk paralleled the 22-acre Skokie River Corridor which introduced me to this little profile on Joan O’Shaughnessy, the lawyer-turned-ecologist in charge of the Skokie River Corridor and the nearby Dixon Prairie. If you’re interested in riparian and prairie ecology, you might enjoy this podcast with Joan.
The Suzanne Searle Dixon Prairie, opened in 1982, is named for a long-time Lake Forest resident who was so passionate about the Illinois prairie and its wetlands, that she made conservation and ecology a prime focus of her community activism and philanthropy (her great-grandfather founded G.D. Searle, a pharmaceutical company which invented the first birth control pill and aspartame, i.e. Nutra-Sweet.) Though the Dixon Prairie occupies a 15-acre site that was never part of the iconic Illinois tallgrass prairie, it has nevertheless been painstakingly designed to represent 6 prairie ecotypes that exist in northeastern Illinois: 1) sand prairie; 2) gravel hill prairie; 3) bur oak savannah; 4) tallgrass prairie; 5) fen prairie; and 6) wet prairie. (I got to all of them but the wet prairie.) My first look was over cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) and moisture-loving obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana) onto the lake separating the prairie from Evening Island in the background. CBG is proud of its lakes, and a sign nearby states that its 60 acres of lakes support native plants and largemouth bass, crappie, carp, bluegill as well as ducks, egrets, herons and cranes.
To be honest, without a guide it’s not easy to distinguish the different communities, but if there are bur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa), you know that’s savannah, which features occasional trees in a sea of grasses and forbs.
I could discern the gravel hill prairie easily, because it jutted up above the flat prairie and was bereft of tall species, as these relics from the last ice age tend to be. CBG achieved this rare habitat by adding a thick layer of gravel over topsoil. Around the hill’s base in more mesic soil, I saw the long, dark-purple seedheads of leadplant (Amorpha canescens), spotted Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum), blackeyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta), the spiky balls of rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium), pale-mauve obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana), the big basal leaves of prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) and the dancing flowers of gray-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata).
Visitors are introduced to the plants of a fen prairie, which features an abundance of groundwater…..
…. and supports prairie moisture-lovers like great blue lobelia (L. siphilitica) and swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), a favourite larval food of the monarch butterfly.
Bumble bees were nectaring on pollinator-friendly culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum).
The Dixon Prairie is vast and full of so many interesting plants, but much more understated than CBG’s Native Plant Garden, which seems extra-floriferous in comparison.
Here are nodding onion (Allium cernuum) and sweet blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia subtomentosa).
I loved all the educational signs, especially this one showing the complexity of the below-ground community and deep roots of prairie species.
Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) features abundantly in the August tallgrass prairie, along with the baby’s-breath-like flowers of flowering spurge (Euphorbia corollata).
Switch grass (Panicum virgatum) is another mainstay of the tallgrass prairie.
It was time to leave but I stopped for a few minutes to watch a song sparrow foraging on the fruit of biennial gaura (G. biennis), one of those plants that many gardeners would likely pull out, given its tendency to look a little weedy. But that would deprive a lot of bees of nectar and birds like this one of food. These are the valuable lessons of the Dixon Prairie.
Despite the gusting wind, I made a little video to remember some of the sounds of my hour or so here on this special prairie.
Chicago Botanic Garden deserves at least a full day’s visit, but I certainly could have used at least four more hours. As it was, I missed the Aquatic Garden, the Bonsai Collection, the Children’s Growing Garden, the Japanese Garden, the Dwarf Conifer Garden and the greenhouses. I had seen a few of those on my previous visit a decade ago, but I do need to return to see them again. As I walked back through the gardens to catch an Uber back to the city, I heard singing coming from the Krasberg Rose Garden.
The roses were looking lovely in August….. this is Love and Peace™…..
….. but my takeaway from the Rose Garden was the crowd of little children and parents listening to the singer giving a nature-oriented outdoor show, one of hundreds of annual events, programs and classes that make Chicago Botanic Garden not just a beautiful, leafy oasis in urban Illinois, but a vital part of the cultural community here too.
What a pleasure it was for me to visit the University of Washington Botanic Garden’s (UWBG) Center for Urban Horticulture and the Soest Herbaceous Display Garden in Seattle earlier this month! Part of the fun was that I was meeting a little group of Facebook friends for a picnic – a bring-what-you-wish buffet among people who’ve “known” each other online for years, but answered my invite to meet “in the flesh” on the first leg of a 2-1/2 week circular driving vacation my husband and I embarked on from Vancouver throughout Washington and Oregon. (More on that later.) But much of the pleasure came from exploring a garden where the fullness of late summer was on show everywhere, including these spectacular swamp hibiscus (Hibiscus moscheutos) adjacent to the parking area.
We wound our way past an impressive Hydrangea integrifolia (a new species for me) blanketing a building wall…..
…. down a path beside the library…..
…and arrived in a courtyard outside the NHS Hall. Here were colourful container displays of annuals and tropicals…..
…. and a lovely combination of ‘Rustic Orange’ coleus (Plectranthus scuttelarioides) with Begonia boliviensis.
I was drawn by the sound of water through the arches in the little Fragrance Garden (where we’d have our picnic later)…..
….toward the charming fountain at the center of the Soest Garden.
The Soest Garden is designed with eight beds radiating out from the central fountain and all divided by paths. This is what it looks like standing at the fountain and turning slowly to view the garden.
At the beginning of September, the garden was resplendent with ornamental grasses and late-flowering perennials. Here are some of the spectacular plants and combinations, beginning with beautiful ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ pineapple lily (Eucomis comosa) combined with Antonow’s honey bush (Melianthus major ‘Antonow’s Blue’).
The foliage on the honey bush is entrancing, isn’t it?
It was fun to see azure-blue Agapanthus inapertus.
I liked the dark-red colour echo going on with the Potentilla thurberi and the ‘Cheyenne’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum).
The beds have useful signs to identify some (not all) of the plants.
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen largest masterwort (Astrantia maxima) before.
Northern sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) was one of several native grasses putting on a late-summer show..
Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) is always among the most graceful of edgers in any design.
In a garden full of often-rare plants, there were some familiar favourites, like Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’.
Persicaria ‘Painter’s Palette’ was paired with Phlox paniculata ‘Nora Leigh’.
Long-blooming Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’ peeked out from a cloud of fall asters still in bud.
Here’s a fabulous Spanish grass I wish was hardy for us, giant feather grass (Stipa gigantea).
And here it is as background for hemp-agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum) and the newish white-flowered coreopsis Star Cluster, at front.
I’ve always liked the romantic late-summer combination of pink-flowered border sedums like ‘Autumn Joy’ with the soft blue flowers of Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Little Spire’).
The shape of this bed is enhanced by the chartreuse foliage of Sedum ruprestre ‘Angelina’, which is itself enhanced by the soft shield fern (Polystichum setiferum ‘Divisilobum’) behind it.
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At the opposite end of the garden to that which I entered is the public entrance from the parking lot. Here visitors can see the donors who made this wondrous garden possible, the late Orin Soest and his wife Althea Soest. As the obituary for Orin Soest stated: “In 1990, he began a relationship that continues in perpetuity with the University of Washington and the Center for Urban Horticulture. In 1998, The Orin and Althea Soest Herbaceous Garden was dedicated and has been a cherished gift to the University and the community of Seattle for its educational and healing purposes.”
And here we see the overall layout of the Center for Urban Horticulture and the context of the display garden within it.
Grasses like variegated purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea ‘Variegata’) are airy enough to act as scrims or screens for plants behind them. I liked how the little flame lilies (Hesperantha coccinea) sparkle behind the molinia.
Here’s the purple moor grass from the far side of the bed.
And this fabulous big shrub is Himalayan honeysuckle (Leycesteria formosa).
Although the flowers had withered, angel’s fishing rod (Dierama pulcherrimum) still created an interesting effect in this bed.
One of my favourite images of the Soest garden was this luscious pairing of globe thistle (Echinops ritro) and ‘Gateway’ Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium maculatum). Even in the northeast, this is one combination we can carry off!
This is the view from the far end of the garden. What a lovely place for strolling slowly, absorbing the plant combinations and taking in details large and small.
I think this is a dry streambed in the South Slope below the garden, with a variety of heaths, heathers and drought-tolerant sedges like Carex buchananii.
The beautiful begonia (B. grandis ‘Heron’s Pirouette’) was collected in Japan in 1997 by Dan Hinkley (Heronswood) and is hardy to USDA Zone 6.
Circling around the garden, I came to some benches framed with ornamental grasses and containers of succulents.
I loved the way this tree aeonium (Aeonium arboreum var. atropurpureum) – in the container with blue chalk sticks (Senecio serpens) – echoed the flowers of the fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides). Behind is tall toe toe grass (Cortaderia richardii) and yellow-flowered shrubby hare’s ear (Bupleurum fruticosum).
Finally I came to a generous stand of Fuchsia magellanica …..
….being explored for nectar by a honey bee. It seemed like the perfect time to stop for lunch.
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For it was now time to meet my friends: Seattle photographer-writer-philosopher David Perry and his partner, UW School of Medicine Administrator Mary Pyper, (me in the centre), the Center for Urban Horticulture Elisabeth C. Miller Library’s librarian-poet Rebecca Alexander, and Sue Nevler, who has been trustee or board member for some of Seattle’s finest gardens, including this one.
We tucked into our picnic, made special with freshly-smoked salmon and all the trimmings from David and Mary…..
…… and an apple cake made by Rebecca’s partner, Carlo, from their own Akane apples.
There was a gift of dahlias from Sue’s garden, with a special ‘pollinator nosegay’ to honour my love of bees.
We took our plates to the Fragrance Garden, where scented lilies…..
…. and white summer phlox (P. paniculata ‘David’)…..
… and English roses perfumed the air.
It was a day for exploring a most charming garden – and bringing friendships made in cyberspace down to fruitful, late-summer earth.
For the first time in more than 20 years, I spent a few days this month at Ontario’s venerable Stratford Festival. (For the record, we saw Guys & Dolls – highly recommended; HMS Pinafore – fun Gilbert & Sullivan; and The Changeling – read a story précis before seeing!). We walked along the Avon River on our way to the first play, and I thought for the thousandth time how lovely our native wildflowers look in early autumn. This is heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides) with lots of bees!
The entire countryside around Stratford is gorgeous in September, with rows of tall corn and nearly-ripe pumpkins filling the fields near Highway 7 as you drive in. In fact, it’s one of the beautiful farms in the area that renowned singer Loreena McKennitt calls home. I interviewed her in Stratford for a story I proposed and wrote for Chatelaine Gardens! magazine some 21 years ago.
A few summers later, I visited Stratford to photograph the new garden at the Festival Theatre for a story I proposed and wrote for Landscape Trades Magazine. Having opened in 1997, it was under the expert care of Stratford Festival head gardener Harry Jongerden, who is now Executive Director of the Toronto Botanical Garden.
Returning to Stratford this month, I was excited to see how the garden had weathered over the past few decades and, especially, to see what was in bloom in the first week of autumn. Since my magazine story was published such a long time ago, I’ll take the liberty of quoting it from time to time here, as we tour the plants – like this lovely Japanese anemone (Anemone x hybrida ‘Whirlwind’).
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Two hours west of Toronto, on a hill overlooking the Avon River, sits the Festival Theatre, main stage and head office for Canada’s renowned Stratford Festival. Since its first production in 1953, a play directed by Tyrone Guthrie, starting Alec Guinness and mounted under a canvas tent, the Festival has enjoyed wide critical acclaim, and Stratford has become a mecca for theatre lovers — and garden lovers. Isn’t this swamp hibiscus (H. moscheutos) spectacular?
In 1997, the Festival Theatre (one of three in Stratford used by the festival) underwent a major renewal under the direction of Toronto architect Thomas Payne, then of KPMB Architects, now with Thomas Payne Architect. Trained at Yale and Princeton and one-time protégé of Barton Myers, Payne’s work includes the ethereal Fields Institute for Mathematics at the University of Toronto, a new home for the National Ballet of Canada, the much celebrated Tanenbaum Sculpture Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), the restoration of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the Young Theatre for the Performing Arts (Soulpepper). His work at Stratford involved indoor renovations such as changing the rake of the theatre floor to create more spacious seating; adding technical gutters and an acoustical canopy; and renovating the lobby. And with the collaboration of Toronto landscape designer Neil Turnbull, Payne created The Arthur Meighen Gardens, named for Canada’s ninth prime minister and funded, in large part, by the Meighen family foundation. It was a new garden that was as rich in theatrical allusion as it was in stone and plants.
A horseshoe-shaped entrance driveway lined with concrete arbor columns, each one draped with a clematis in early summer – or morning glories in late summer — encircles the garden. “At night,” Payne told me then, they look like Noguchi lamps.”
The columns, each dedicated to a local benefactor, are clothed in a sock of inexpensive, water-repellent canvas symbolizing the canvas roof of the first performance tent.
The garden is a fragrant, romantic tumble of perennials, designed to be in bloom as the curtain rises in mid-April, and still have something in flower for October’s final curtain call. In late September, ligularia and blackeyed susans (Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’) are still providing colour as the ornamental grasses begin to flower.
Of the garden’s hard structure, Thom Payne said: “We wanted a great stone wall with greenery growing on it. The concept is quite mathematical. It’s a cribbage – a series of limestone terraces – that fall away on a grid toward the lowest point.” Typical of Mr. Payne’s tendency to use the landscape to hint at what can be found indoors, the main path travels through the garden and over the bridge above the formal lily pond – all on the axis of Aisle 2 Entrance Lobby. “It plays a prominent role in delivering people to the front door.”
In creating the cribbing for the terraces, Payne was mindful of his budget but still wanted the natural appearance of stone. He used pigmented, specially-finished, architectural concrete as an inexpensive foundation for the walls. He then capped it with 6-inch split-faced Eramosa limestone from local quarries. “There are a lot of things,” he says, “that are extremely cost-effective, yet I think the overall effect is one of richness, theatricality and permanence.” Below is a sturdy, gold yarrow (Achillea filipendulina) with a deep red swamp hibiscus.
When it came time to plan the 32 terrace beds, Neil Turnbull drew on a long career as one of the country’s most inspired plantsmen and landscape designers. In seeking a theme, he hit upon another powerful symbol of early Shakespeare theatre, its festival banners and ribbons. “I decided to create three ribbons of thyme that flow like curving rivers through the beds,” he explained. (The thyme is evident in the magazine cover above but I suspect other perennials have overwhelmed it somewhat over the years.) Below is Japanese anemone with blue leadwort (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides).
Known for solving geometry on the drafting table but aesthetics on-site, Turnbull reasoned that the garden’s strength would be in the sheer massiveness of its plantings. He had 21,000 plants expressly grown, and then placed them in recurring combinations throughout the beds. In late summer, some of our wonderful natives provide spectacular colour, like goldenrod (Solidago sp.) and magenta-purple New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) below.
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…. and a dwarf lavender-purple aster paired with ‘Rosy Jane’ gaura (Oenothera lindheimerii), below.
This summer has seen an extraordinary amount of rain and below-average temperatures until September, when we had a heat wave. So some plants had already begun to undergo a foliage change, like spring-flowering Euphorbia griffithi ‘Fireglow’, below.
As visitors reach the top of the planting beds on their way into the theatre, they cross a bridge over a formal rectangular pool…
…..featuring the splash of a steel fountain.
The pool spans nearly the width of the garden….
….and features aquatic plants like canna lily…..
……water lilies,….
…. and unusual aquatics like rain lily (Zephyranthes candida).
As I left the garden, I noted all kind of pollinators flitting about. I saw bumble bees foraging deep in the yellow wax bells (Kirengeshoma palmata)…..
….a carpenter bee nectar-robbing on obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana)….
….and a hover-fly getting lost in the throat of a morning glory (Ipomoea tricolor).
Almost twenty years after my first visit, it was good to see the garden still looking gorgeous and being enjoyed by thousands of theatre-goers annually — plus untold numbers of tiny buzzing and fluttering visitors, too.
The Festival Theatre gardens are located at 55 Queen Street, Stratford, Ontario. The Festival is open from mid-April to the end of October; for more information visit the Stratford Festival website.
Adapted from an article that appeared originally in Landscape Trades magazine
