Monthly Archives: October 2018

Venice in the Rain

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Poor Venice. I saw the news about this week’s catastrophic acqua alta event that brought heavy rains and record-breaking high tide water into parts of the city. Tourists carried their suitcases above the flooded squares and shopkeepers used buckets to bail out water in the fourth worst flooding event ever, with 150 cm (5 feet) in places. The worst flooding in November 1966 brought 193 cm (6.3 feet) of water to vulnerable places. Autumn, of course, is also when it rains in Italy and Venice has no way to drain away rain or tidal water, which conspires with waves in the wind-swept lagoon to create disastrous conditions quickly. We were in Venice in November eight years ago when the famous acqua alta sirens awoke us before dawn in our pretty room….

… with the lace-curtained windows……

… at the lovely and convenient Hotel Flora.

But that year, the flooding was manageable, and even a little thrilling. We were given rubber boots by the hotel and proceeded to walk around the city.

We visited Piazza San Marco, the venerable St. Mark’s Square, where the 15th century Doge’s Palace or Palazzo Ducal…..

….and St. Mark’s Basilica merely looked beautiful reflected in the water in the square.

Pigeons and seagulls fought at the edges of the water for the crumbs thrown their way.

Nearby, Venetians and tourists walked purposefully along tables set up above the water beneath St. Mark’s Basilica….

…. as unconcerned as if they were strolling down Madison Avenue or the Champs Elysee.

The tables are simply part of the tourist experience in Venice and easy to negotiate, as long as you don’t overindulge in grappa or Chianti with your lunch.

If you climb the Campanile…….

…. which is a 1912 reproduction of the 16th century original on this spot where Galileo…..

…. on August 21, 1609, showed the Doge of Venice his new spyglass, a refractor telescope which was….

….. a grandfather of these modern binoculars…….

….. which provide a wonderful view of the city over the domes of the basilica.

From the campanile, you can see where Venice meets the lagoon shore…..

….. and how vulnerable the piazza is to acqua alta……

….. when the tide brings the sea right up onto the paving.

Even if it rains, you can still put on a colourful slicker and line up for a gondola…..

….. though the gondoliers never look very happy in the pouring rain….

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…. and squint up at the palazzos from under your umbrella.

But native Venetians take acqua alta in stride……

…. including the letter carrier, who finds high ground to keep the mail dry.

Here you can see the ravages this beautiful old palazzo has suffered as a result of its hundreds of years on this small canal.

Another great idea for a rainy day is to cross the Grand Canal on the Ponte dell’Accademia…..

….. and spend a few blissful, quiet hours in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, as I did, gazing up at the spectacular works of the Venetian School, including Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese.

Walking through the city, you might find enchanting reflections in the acqua alta, like this one of the Fabbriche Viecchi di Rialto….

….as you make your way to the markets of the Rialto, to see the wonderful displays of vegetables……

…. and fish.

You can take a vaporetto down the Grand Canal…..

….. and give your camera a workout on the fabulous palazzos along the way….

…… or tootle over to the island of Giudecca where you can pause to look back at the stunning view of the city before……

….. finding a pew to sit and reflect on the grandeur of Andrea Palladio’s magnificent, 16th century Il Redentore.

The outdoor caffès in the piazzas in Venice may be empty on acqua alta days……

….. but provided it’s not a catastrophic event like 2018 or 1966, you can always tie on some garbage bags and find something wonderful to do!

I did an entire blog about spending the day looking at beautiful blown glass on the island of Murano.

Go window-shopping at a luscious Fortuny shop…..

…… try a little marzipan…..

….. or put up your umbrella and search out the best gelato ever! Try to stay dry. But do visit Venice, the most wondrous city ever. Ciao.

An Illinois Flower Garden

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One of the joys of participating in the annual symposium of the Garden Writers Association (GWA) is the opportunity to tour local gardens. It’s especially fun to visit private gardens where the owner is clearly a long-time, passionate gardener – and the garden is big enough to accommodate a few busloads of visitors at a time. That was the case in August when we visited Susan Beard’s wonderful 3-1/2 acre garden in Oak Brook, Illinois, in Chicago’s western suburbs. Though the Beards have lived on the property for 37 years, the frame house is one they built in 1996.  And the welcome couldn’t have been more flowery!

Flanking the driveway was a sea of blackeyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta) – the old-fashioned biennials, not the fancy perennials.

The entrance to the back garden at the end of the driveway was announced by a bench, birdhouse and picket fence…..

…. and a planting of ‘Queen Lime’ and pink zinnias and butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii).

I loved this chartreuse and magenta combination!  And this was just the first of scores of birdhouses in Susan’s garden.

Inside the fence, the garden dips steeply to one side via flagstone steps.  On the stairs, ‘Margarita’ sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas) was deployed as a brilliant edging.

Down below I could see a lime-green Tiger Eye sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) and a bridge over a damp part of the garden.

Here’s a closer look at the bridge.

There is dampness here…..

….. and Susan takes advantage of the moist soil with swamp hibiscus (H. moscheutos) doing its beautiful, late summer thing in shades of white….

….. and cranberry-red.

Back up near the house, zinnias are such cheerful flowers and Susan used them throughout the garden, including here as an edging.

The honey bees approved!

Around the corner flanking the house was another visually stunning edging of Japanese hakone grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) – another one of Susan’s mainstays.  And I liked the way the flagstone pavers are set flush into the soft lawn, rather than forming just another hard surface.

Ahead was Susan’s swimming pool, set on an interesting angle and framed by a stone sitting wall and a split-rail fence with the main garden behind.  Long ago, the pool was bright blue, but she had it painted it black so it wouldn’t be an eyesore.

There’s a good patch of lawn here, but the main show is from flowers grown in a lovely, informal, cottage garden style.

The view looking into the back garden was an August tapestry of hydrangeas, summer phlox and blackeyed susans……

……… with the occasional obelisk bearing purple clematis.

This was the swimming pool view towards the house.

The walls of the blood vessels become clogged with plaque deposits, lessening order cheap viagra why not try this out blood flow to body parts. Erectile dysfunction is also something which is hotly talked about today when it viagra in uk comes to male’s sexual health. Taking one of my hands in buying levitra in canada hers, the kissing continued. Stretching will promote healthy joints, muscles, prix viagra pfizer bones, connective tissues, and even generate new skin, etc. Susan Beard was standing near her kitchen to answer our questions. As well as being a former president of garden clubs and active with Chicago’s Morton Arboretum, she has made the garden available to charities, tours and artist groups for many years.

We were welcomed into her kitchen with homemadc cakes and cookies!

But there was still much to see and I returned to the garden. I passed another birdhouse and more waterfall-like hakonechloa.  Although flowers create colour throughout the growing season, Susan has included lots of conifers in the borders for bird habitat and visual interest and structure throughout Chicago’s long winter.

A birdbath sits amidst blackeyed susans.

Then it was into the woods: a mature forest containing oak, shagbark hickory, ash and hawthorn……

….. and some lovely pieces of metal sculpture.

Susan has cleared away some of the understory here to create a beautiful shade garden.

There are lots of native ferns and buckeyes…..

…… and piles of firewood left in place (which attract fireflies).

Another lovely fish sculpture graces the forest garden.

When Susan’s six grandchildren were young, they played hide-and-seek on the paths through the forest and gardens.  And I’ll bet they loved this garden house.

With so much shade here, hostas are used extensively (300 varieties!), along with native plants like Solomon’s seal.

The compost heaps and nursery plant area even have their own gated section!

New plantings here are carefully mulched…..

…. with the abundant leaves shed each year.

Though the woodland is predominantly green, garden art supplies a little brilliant colour.

According to a story in the Chicago Tribune, the forest garden owes much to Susan’s late father, a retired U.S. Air Force general from Santa Barbara who needed a project when he visited long ago, so used a chainsaw to begin the process of clearing the edges of the woodland. And it was from her father’s garden that Susan brought back the naked ladies or surprise lilies (Lycoris squamigera) that were just moving past their prime in the photo below.

Soon we were out of the forest and back into the garden via another stone path edged with invaluable hakone grass…..

….. and found our way to the comfy teak tables beside the pool where we relaxed until the call to load up the buses that would take us to the next stop on our tour of Chicago’s beautiful western suburbs.

Six Months in the Life of Leatherleaf Sedge & Other Potted Tales

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This didn’t start out to be a blog. This morning I was uploading grasses & sedges to my online stock library of plant images when I came to the genus Carex. It’s a very slow process, keywording and uploading, squeezed in between the rest of life. Last winter, I managed to get Cacti and Succulents and Ferns and Cycads uploaded; this year I’m hoping to complete Grasses and Bulbs.

As I uploaded photos of Carex buchanani, leatherleaf sedge or Buchanan’s sedge from New Zealand, I recalled fondly the year I grew it in the pots on my lower deck in Toronto. It was 2013 and the containers are the double-walled resin pots I’ve had for two decades. In British Columbia leatherleaf sedge would be perennial but in my Toronto garden—and especially in exposed pots – it’s an annual. As I looked at photos from that year, it occurred to me that ornamental grasses don’t always get their due as hardworking container plants. As a compulsive chronicler, I had photos from the week I planted it until the very end of the year (which featured a disastrous weather event in the city’s history). I thought you might enjoy browsing through six months in the life of Carex buchananii, the leatherleaf sedge.  First of all, let’s raise a glass (grass?) to John Buchanan (1819-1898), Scots-born New Zealand botanist and draughtsman and author of the 3-volume folio The Indigenous Grasses of New Zealand for whom leatherleaf sedge is named.

June 1 – Now let’s look back at the spring of 2013. I planted the six pots at the end of May, and this is what they looked like on June 1st.  Carex buchananii was in the centre with an assortment of fancy-leaf pelargoniums and orange Calibrachoa and dusky-hued sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas) surrounding them.

June 12 – By now, my neighbour’s beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) was in full bloom and the deck pots were filling out a little.

June 21 – On the summer solstice, my deck garden down the stairs from the containers was frothy with Clematis recta ‘Purpurea’….

…… and the leatherleaf sedge was fountaining as the pelargoniums grew bigger.

July 4 – Now summer was here and the fancy-leaf pelargoniums sported flowers. My favourite is the red-splashed, chartreuse cultivar ‘Indian Dunes’.

July 22 – A few weeks later, my patio edging of hostas was in flower and the last few annoying, invasive tawny daylilies were still blooming.

August 7 – This would have been peak flowering for the containers, which now showed the lovely effect of the bronze grasses and the colour echoes of the splashes on the pelargoniums……

…… while the sweet potato vines trailed ebulliently over the pot edges.  But as a gardener who goes away to a lake north of the city all summer long, this array of containers relied on my husband’s regular watering. Within a few years, he’d be working at the lake, then fully retired (which he did last December). The pots would, in time, need some rethinking.

October 8 – With the cooler temperatures of autumn, flowering had now slowed on the annual flowers but the grasses continued to look good.

October 21 – See that azure-blue in the background, below? My garden is filled with fall monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’) and it shines between Canadian Thanksgiving and Remembrance Day, one of the latest perennials to flower. And the Tiger Eye sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) in the rear that was bright chartreuse all summer now turned bright apricot-orange.

Here’s a closer view of the pots with the sedge even richer in colour. I loved this combination of bold fall hues.

November 9 – By the beginning of November, there’d been a hard frost and the pelargoniums had died. But the grasses still looked good – because it’s hard to tell a dead carex from a live one, as the saying goes…..

November 16 – After cleaning out dead annuals, I added cut conifer boughs and Southern magnolia (M. grandiflora) for the holiday season and (hopefully) all winter. The leatherleaf sedge added some needed texture.

November 27 – Snow came early in 2013 and provided an apt illustration of why Canadians from the prairie provinces eastward smile when they hear the phrase “winter garden”.

Well, the holly looked good anyway.

December 22 – On the night of December 21, 2013, freezing rain began to fall on Toronto, lasting for hours and leaving behind ice-coated trees and shrubs, downed wires and a city without electrical power, in places for several days. Winter was so cold that year, there were shady areas in my garden where flagstones were still icy in late March! But my winter pots and the leatherleaf sedge looked quite beautiful, in a crystalline way.

Had the leatherleaf sedge not already died, the ice storm was the nail in the coffin. But I had enjoyed those textural sedges-with-edges for six full months.

EPILOGUE: 

The deck pots have always been both fun and a challenge to plant up each spring, especially considering the summer watering issue.  Below are a few of the other years.  And they haven’t always held grasses.

2010 – I’ve always loved pelargoniums in bright, Mediterranean hues, and this year I combined them with the newly popular ‘Margarita’ sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas) for eye-popping effect.  The pond garden looked quite…. tame… that year. And I hadn’t yet planted the Tiger Eye sumac in the background.

2011- The next year, I switched up the sweet potato vine in the pots for gold oregano (Origanum vulgare ‘Aureum’) but it wasn’t nearly as vigorous and turned plain green by midsummer, as many chartreuse-leafed plants do.

2014 – The spring after the leatherleaf sedge saga above, I had just been to California and was wowed by the orange Anagallis hybrid ‘Wildcat Mandarin’ in the Santa Barbara area. I decided to go all out and plant it in the pots with ‘Red Rooster’ leatherleaf sedge (Carex buchananii) and burgundy and chartreuse foliage accents, but my California dreaming simply didn’t pan out for a summer’s worth of bloom (at least with an absentee gardener). You win some, you lose some…..

2015 – This was the year I decided to stop buying expensive annuals and try to perennialize the pots. Good plan. My mistake was doing it with expensive heucheras. All summer, they looked understatedly beautiful with their jewel-like leaves, especially perked up with a reprise of the sedge and apricot-orange Calibrachoas.  But not one heuchera survived a Toronto winter. Fail.

2016 – I decided to get serious about keeping plants alive two years ago, and invested in the ultra-hardy native grass sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula). Since it grows alongside railroad tracks on the Canadian prairies, I knew that would be a good bet. Harder to gauge was the likelihood that the pink sedums I selected to accompany the grass would be happy year-round in a container.  I seeded in some orange nasturtiums so as not to be too tasteful with the pinks…..

….. and by late summer, the deepening colours of the sedums echoed beautifully the plum foliage of the alternate-leafed dogwood (Cornus alternifolia) at the back of the garden.  And I liked the zing-zing of the grass!

2017 – Success! Everything lived through winter and by July, the sideoats grama was filling out nicely. But was it filling out a little toooooo much?  Could the sedums survive a prairie grass?

The sedums did their pink thing in September.

By October 21st, everything was still alive, but a little underwhelming in the looks department. Ah well, I hadn’t spent a penny on plants and the grasses looked absolutely fabulous as the autumn winds blew them around. 

2018 – This year I added some seeds of Viscaria oculata ‘Blue Angel’ to bare spots in the containers in early spring and I think every seed germinated (I removed some and took them to the cottage on Lake Muskoka). I thought it would be fun to end this blog with a video I made of the deck containers on a cicada-buzzy, bird-chirpy August day.

A September Visit to Bellevue Botanical Garden

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On our brief stop in Seattle in September, we paid a visit to Bellevue Botanical Garden. I had been to the garden years earlier and it was still enchanting — if only the weather had cooperated (she says, with a wink). For unlike most people who revel in a warm late summer day without a cloud on the horizon, photographers tend to gaze skyward hopefully for the chance of overcast – even a light sprinkle – because midday sunshine creates difficult, contrasty light in a garden. Nevertheless, that’s what we had and I was resigned walking in that I would be focusing on shadier spots in the garden.

This is a map of the garden, which I modified to show both the small keys and actual sections in one image. From their website a bit of history:  “The Bellevue Botanical Garden Society (BBGS) was founded in 1984, by Iris and Bob Jewett, with the idea to build and support a free public botanical garden for their local community. It came to fruition when Harriet and Cal Shorts generously donated their home and 7.5 acres to develop the Bellevue Botanical Garden (BBG). The Society was then incorporated in January 1986, as a non-profit organization. Beginning in 1992, and in partnership with the City of Bellevue, more than 45 acres has since been added to the Garden. Today, the 53-acre Bellevue Botanical Garden is a world-renowned community treasure for everyone to enjoy”.  

The entrance walkway features a unique in-ground rock fountain which feeds a rill that flows along the pathway.

Beyond is an interesting slatted wall fountain.

If you have a cellphone, you can use the Tap or Scan app for the garden.

The Fuchsia Garden has been maintained by Seattle’s Eastside Fuchsia Society since 1992. I could have spent a long time here shooting macros, but we had a big driving day ahead, so I satisfied myself with….

…. just one or two close-ups. This lovely blossom is ‘Delta’s Sarah’.

Then we were approaching the famous NPA (Northwest Perennial Alliance).Perennial Border, which is actually a series of parallel borders arrayed on a slope.  Though this is an older article, I appreciated reading about the history of the border. 

There are attractive benches throughout the garden…..

….. and interesting stacked stone sculptures (these ones in goldenrod about to flower.)

I wish I could show you the border as it should be seen, but in the harsh light I took very few photos.  There was an ebullient display of Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), Verbena bonariensis and blue mist bush (Caryopteris x clandonensis).

And out of the sun, I liked the way V. bonariensis insinuated itself into this heavenly bamboo (Nandina domestica).

Verbena bonariensis always attracts bumble bees, and since I do a lot of photography of bumble bees and all kinds of other native bees and honey bees, I stopped for a moment to watch a yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) nectaring on the tiny flowers.

Gaura (Oenothera gaura) was a cloud of tiny flowers.

The purplish-blue spikes of anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) made a pretty pairing with the gaura.

Rudbeckia subtomentosa ‘Henry Eilers’ is one of the late season charmers among the myriad yellow daisies.

I loved the way false hemp (Datisca cannabina) created a living arch on a path behind towering pink Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum ‘Gateway’).

Ornamental grasses are featured abundantly in the perennial border.

Bulbs are also used in the perennial border, like this tropical ginger lily (Hedychium coccineum ‘Tara’).

And the border features shrubs and small trees like crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia) ….

…. and hydrangeas, which were undergoing their beautiful late summer colour transformation.

Red-orange heleniums (H. autumnale) were attracting pollinators in one section of the border.


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In a shady section, below, I was charmed by this small vignette of hydrangea, brunnera and geranium……

…. and the azure-blue flowers of Gentiana asclepiadea cascaded over stairs between the parallel paths.

The cultivar name of this pure white toad lily (Tricyrtis hirta) is ‘Shirohohotogisu’, which means ‘white cuckoo’, a descriptive metaphor for the upswept petals.

On higher ground beside the lawn near the garden’s gift shop, I stood in the shade of the silk tree (Albizia julibrissin) and looked back at the borders below.

The silk tree was in full flower.

At the far end of the border, the Dahlia Display Garden maintained by the Puget Sound Dahlia Association was at its late summer best.

Who doesn’t love the brilliant colours of dahlias?

The bright sun on this dahlia suited the leafcutter bee just fine. (Bees love single-petalled dahlias!)

Even this southern green stink bug nymph looked fetching on an orange dahlia.

Since our schedule had us driving to the beaches of Oregon that day, we hurried out of the NPA Perennial Border area on a path through the forest. Here you’ll find the Native Discovery Garden. From the website: “The Native Discovery Garden, maintained by the East Lake Washington District of Garden Clubs and the Washington Native Plant Society, inspires visitors to look to the native plant palette when planning their home gardens. Adapted to the climate and conditions of the Pacific Northwest, native plants in urban landscapes can be ecologically sound, beautiful, and low maintenance. Adjacent to a natural wetland, this garden illustrates the many layers of plant life in the Northwest, from ground covers to trees. It serves as a transition from the gardens to the woodlands and forested lands to the south.” 

 

I stopped at a beautiful bench, sculpted from Washington state hexagonal columnar basalt by sculptor Barry Namm.

There were excited children watching the fish beneath the waterfall in the Shorts Groundcover Garden.

Water is used throughout Bellevue Botanical Garden, in inventive ways both natural and highly artificial.

I captured some of those water features in this short video.

To honor its ‘sister city’ relationship with Yao City near Osaka, Bellevue originally established the Yao Japanese Garden at Kelsey Creek Park.  In 1992, the garden was moved to the Bellevue Botanical Garden, where it opened two years later. This is the entrance gate.

Unlike many traditional Japanese gardens, there are lushly beautiful plantings here.

I loved this timber bridge.

But there are also the more traditional features of a Japanese garden.

We stopped briefly at the Tateuchi Viewing Pavilion, nestled under massive red cedars (Thuja plicata).  It was a gift from the Tateuchi Foundation, i.e. Atsuhiko Tateuchi and his wife, Ina Goodwin Tateuchi.

Then it was time to take the Tateuchi Loop Path to return to our car and drive south towards Oregon.