Category Archives: Private Gardens

Visiting Cougar Annie’s Garden – Part One

Posted on by
16

Perhaps this blog actually began in the 1960s in Montreal when my husband, in his 20s and fresh out of business school and in his first real job, was invited to a party given by some young women from Vancouver where he met their friend Peter Buckland. The two men would reconnect a few years later when my husband moved to Vancouver where they both worked in the financial industy. In 1974 Peter invited Doug to visit him at Boat Basin in remote Hesquiat Harbour in Clayoquot Sound on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island.  Doug was invited for Peter’s “World Tidal Hockey Championship”, the fourth annual edition of a rollicking game played with friends on the sandy beach.  Doug remembers meeting a little old woman who sold them eggs for breakfast. By then, Peter Buckland had known Ada Annie Lawson, aka “Cougar Annie”, for some six years, a friendship cultivated during his monthly trips to the area as an amateur prospector. Annie’s legendary life in the rainforest spanned more than 60 years and included 4 husbands (three of whom were mail order grooms she advertised for in the same paper where she ran ads for her dahlias), 11 children, a sprawling garden hacked out of mossy first-growth forest, a mail-order plant business and well-earned notoriety for being a crack shot of the cougars that terrorized her goats and whose hides brought a government bounty to supplement her sale of dahlia and gladiolus bulbs.

Cougar Annie, 1962. Photo by John Manning-Royal B.C. Museum & Archives

The award-winning 1998 book Cougar Anne’s Garden by Margaret Horsfield recounts the story of her life, from her 1888 birth in Sacramento, California to her Vancouver marriage to Scotland-born Willie Rae-Arthur, the black sheep of his family; her 1915 arrival in Hesquiat Harbour aboard SS Princess Maquinna with her opium-addicted, alcoholic husband and their three oldest children and a cow; her life as a homesteader on 117 government-deeded acres of primeval forest; her hardscrabble career as a nurserywoman and postmistress; the 1981 sale of her property to Peter Buckland; and finally her 1985 death at the age of 97. In 1987, Peter retired and moved to Boat Basin full-time.

Then again, this blog might have begun in 2016 at the Idaho Botanic Garden, when Doug relaxed with my friend, Boise garden writer Mary Ann Newcomer, while I climbed to the top of the wonderful Lewis & Clark collection for a blog I would eventually write on the garden.  As they waited for me to come down, Mary Ann mentioned an award-winning story she’d written for a 2013 issue of Leaf magazine (pgs 48-59), below, about Cougar Annie’s Garden in British Columbia. Doug chuckled and told her about his friendship with Peter Buckland and that he’d actually visited the garden and met Cougar Annie more than 40 years earlier. It was a serendipitous moment, because…..

….. it led to a May 2019 Facebook message from Mary Ann asking for contact information for Peter on behalf of a California photographer named Caitlin Atkinson, who was working on a book project on wild gardens. Since we were planning an autumn trip to Vancouver Island prior to a holiday in San Francisco anyway, we did some calendar juggling and back-and-forth emailing with Peter that resulted in all four of us meeting for a night at the beautiful Long Beach Lodge in Tofino, then checking into the Atleo River Air Services office on a dock in Tofino. bright and early on October 1st 

…. and finally preparing to climb into our chartered Cessna floatplane. We had been warned to keep our soft baggage to the bare minimum, and we added enough groceries for 2 days as well as a little bit of wine. We were heading to a paradise with no electricity or indoor plumbing, after all, so we knew chardonnay would be a welcome touch.

Then we were off, flying northeast on a 20-minute flight over the most spectacular scenery towards our destination 51 kilometres (32 miles) from Tofino.

The rugged west coast of Vancouver Island is the last stop on the North American continent. Here the breakers are massive, making Tofino a mecca for surfers. The temperate rainforest we were about to visit is part of the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation, specifically the Hesquiat (Hesquiaht) First Nation, who have been there for some 6,000 years. Through their oral history and written Japanese records of the giant tsunami, we know that on the night of January 26, 1700, a massive 9.0 megathrust earthquake struck near Pachena Bay, not far south of Tofino.  In fact, it was thought to be just the latest tectonic collision in the Cascadia Subduction Zone as the Juan de Fuca Plate pushes under the North American Plate, since it is estimated that 13 such massive earthquakes have occurred in the 6,000 years that first nations have been here. And, of course, west coasters have repeatedly been warned to prepare for the next “big one”.

In the floatplane, Mary Ann was in the middle seat with me focusing on the view….

….. while Caitlin was smiling in the back seat.

We flew over massive tracts of forest and ….

…..sandy beaches and turquoise ocean dotted with rocky islets and dark kelp beds where rivers ran into the sea.

As we approached our landing on Hesquiat Lake, I noticed the landslides on the mountain. We would learn later that these originated in previously-logged areas high above on Mt.Seghers, and during a November 2018 rainstorm had filled the lake with debris.

I made a cellphone video to remember this flight, looking out west towards the open ocean.

Peter Buckland was at the Hesquiat Lake dock waiting for us and helped take our bags and supplies up the hill to his truck parked on the gravel road.

A short drive later, he stopped and invited us to get out and walk with him on the grand tour. He would drive our bags to our overnight accommodation later.  As we made our way under towering red cedars (Thuja plicata), he began by showing us his eagle woodshed, a sloped structure surmounted by the mythical bird that he designed and built.

This eagle woodshed was our first clue that though Peter had to be highly resourceful to live here with no modern conveniences, he was also an artist, a designer, a carpenter, a gardener, a chef and a quirky, funny, well-studied natural philosopher.

He pointed out the stump of a “canoe tree” that had later been felled, showing us the dugout shape at the wide base.  In the lexicon of indigenous people of the west coast, this old red cedar is a culturally-modified tree (CMT).


Then he showed us the little shop building near his house featuring an in situ tree stump as its facade and door frame. All the buildings at Boat Basin, including Peter’s house, the central lodge and guest cabins, were designed by Peter, who also milled and split the lumber, primarily from old-growth windfall on the property. The larger buildings were framed by renowned west coast builder and surf legend Bruno Atkey, working with local crews and with Peter as interior finish carpenter; Peter built many of the smaller buildings himself.

Inside, we stood on a floor of mortared floor tiles made of sinuous Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia).

We made a quick pass through the house he shares with his partner, Makiko, who was away on a trip.  The woodstove here was identical to the ones we’d see later in the eco-lodge on the ridge above.

Then we headed out to sit in the autumn sunshine at the beach cabin on Hesquiat Harbour. Dahlias, below, seem to have a special place here at Boat Basin because Cougar Annie sold the tubers until she was no longer able to operate her business, even peeling them by feel, rather than sight, when she became blind.

Peter’s canoe was tucked into the driftwood…..

….. and a moon snail shell (Euspira lewisii) decorated a log.

We sat nearby as Peter talked about the property, its history and geology while sipping a glass of fresh water pouring from a carved cedar flume.

Then it was time to take the boardwalk that Peter built atop Cougar Annie’s old path from the beach. I looked up and saw evergreen huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum) creating a lacy understory to ancient cedars….

…. and down at the deer ferns and salal flanking the boardwalk.

We stopped at a massive cedar, below, and Peter pointed out how it was in line with two other huge cedars whose roots reach down to bedrock, while shorter trees around have roots in gravel sediment left behind by glaciers. “So when there’s a tsunami every five or seven hundred years, it’s not a wall of water like Japan (Fukushima), just a rising tide. The water sits for a half hour or so then it all wants to go out at once”, he says. “That’s when all the damage is done, and the trees growing in the gravel are undercut. That explains why these trees are so much older than the surrounding ones.”

Next he pointed out a fallen log acting as a nurse log for a dated 500 year-old cedar.  The log fell because the tree was cut down to make a dugout canoe, evidenced by the missing portion immediately above the stump. The relationship distinguishes it as one of a few sites in North America showing physical evidence of human activity prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

Then we came to the long pergola that Peter built leading to Cougar Annie’s 5-acre garden. He designed it in a manner “to trick the eye”, making it gradually wider in the distance and altering the board size to overcome the effect of diminishing perspective. (The next day, he’d demonstrate that for me.)

When Peter bought the property from Annie, she was 93-years old, nearly blind and had not maintained the garden for a long time. He spent years using a chainsaw to reclaim the various beds and borders — like the garden below, with its driftwood whale sculpture — from the encroaching rainforest, in order to attract visitors to this heritage garden. Six lawn mowers are scattered around….

….  to mow the salal, salmonberries and Annie’s heather that now forms a rampant groundcover.

A wooden wheelbarrow was rotting into the mosses.

And there was the lovely ruin, Annie’s house, where, incredibly, she raised all those children, ran her business, and even found space for the post office counter. We would come back the next day to explore more here.

We stopped at a raised mound of heather where Annie buried three children who died as infants and two of her husbands, Willie Rae-Arthur, who drowned in 1936, and George Campbell, a reportedly abusive man who died in 1944, so the story goes, ‘while cleaning his shotgun’. Peter told us of plans by Annie’s descendants to bring her ashes up to Boat Basin next year for an interment ceremony. So confining was this life that, one by one, her children fled the homestead as soon as they were of age, except for a few sons who stayed to help their mother, one drowning tragically in Hesquiat Harbour in 1947.

Our next stop was a nearby stand of 95-year-old hemlocks. Inspired by Makiko’s tales of Japanese forests where urban people come to sweep the mossy carpets below, Peter is turning this into the Boat Basin version. As he talked, it occurred to me that our stay here in this towering rainforest perfectly embodies the Japanese concept of “forest bathing” or  shinrin-yoku.

And then he smiled as he guided us towards……


Most people are scared to do this but it can save you from spending time and money looking for offline, online virus removal support options. cialis 5 mg pdxcommercial.com You can maintain erection quality for long duration and permit men developing rock-hard erections for more pleasing sexual intimacy. purchase viagra online The number of men that are seen suffering from ED to encounter symptoms of sales uk viagra depression as a result. One in 12 students experience their first sexual intercourse before age 13, and a quarter of all children (24 percent of girls and 27 percent of boys) have had sex by age 15, and many believe these estimates to be low. order cheap viagra my link
…. the Japanese-signed entrance…..

….. to his sushi table. Peter milled this astonishing 4’ wide x 5” thick x 25-foot slab out of a big yellow cedar (Cupressus nootkatensis). Imagine being invited to an omakase feast right here!

Beyond the sushi shelter is a tranquil, moss-carpeted Japanese garden, with Peter’s Shinto gates at the far end. In a 2004 article in Pacific Rim Magazine, the former curator of the David Lam Asian Garden at the University of British Columbia, the late Peter Wharton, said: “There is an Asiatic strand throughout the landscape in terms of geology and vegetation. To me it makes absolute sense both now, and even more so in the future, when I think the cultures of western Canada and the countries of the Pacific Rim will be even closer than they are now.” 

As we walked on, I caught a movement in the trees and pointed my camera up, but the spotted owl had turned his head away from me, then flew quickly off.

Peter looked north to Mount Seghers on Hesquiat Lake, drawing our attention to the logging landslides on its flank. This peak played an interesting role in early exploration of the west coast of Canada, for it was noted and named on August 8, 1773 by the Spanish explorer Juan Pérez, the first European to record a sighting of Vancouver Island. From aboard his frigate Santiago, he called it Loma de San Lorenzo. Had Pérez gone ashore there rather than staying on ship and trading Spanish spoons for sea otter skins and sardines with the local Hesquiat in canoes, or had he gone ashore at Haida Gwai a few days earlier rather than greeting twenty Haida braves who paddled out in their canoes to trade gifts, there might be a very different North America now. But Juan Pérez neglected to declare the formal Act of Possession. Five years later, Captain James Cook, a veteran sea captain arrived nearby on HMS Resolution becoming the first European to sight both the east and west sides of North America. (To read more about the explorers of the west coast, including Quadra and Vancouver, have a look at The Land of Heart’s Delight: Early Maps and Charts of Vancouver Island by Michael Layland.)

Heading up towards the ridge, we stopped at Annie’s museum….

….. containing artifacts from the Boat Basin Post Office……

….. and bulb labels and Annie’s pruning saw.

As we came out into a gravel clearing, I looked down to see black bear scat filled with fruit, possibly native Pacific crabapples (Malus fusca) which turn soft in autumn.

Peter stopped at his Shake Shack to demonstrate the use of his froe or shake axe. I made a video of him making the cedar shakes that are so prevalent on the property.

This might be a good place to include a map of the property, showing where we were at that point(red arrow). Our destination now was the top of the ridge above where we would find our cabin and the central hall.

Then we set out along the boardwalk under mossy, leaning trees…..

…… past the skunk cabbages I remember so vividly from my British Columbia childhood….

…… and drifts of deer fern (Blechnum spicant).

We climbed up, up, up and I looked back down towards three staircase runs flanking a mossy rock outcrop, marvelling that this entire journey – 700 metres (2300 feet) of red cedar boardwalk – was created by one man with a vision as passionate and tenacious as the woman who had lived her for almost 70 years.

I felt small in the midst of these forest giants, standing and fallen.

Natural rises in the land were negotiated via stairways and bridges.

I looked out over the forest here and caught a glimpse of Rae Lake. Alas, I did not make it down to the lake in our time here (blame my aching knee).

I longed to have a rest in the shelter of this cedar, harvested at some point by first nations people for its bark or boards, but kept on climbing.

At one point I turned around to gaze at the miniature ecosystem that takes hold in the slowly-rotting bole of a dead red cedar.

Finally we came out into a clearing and there was the central hall, aka the lodge, aka the Temperate Rainforest Study Centre.

I loved the Boat Basin logo cutout in the heavy yellow cedar door.

And what a clever use for an old power line insulator!

Then we were inside the hall. Measuring 50′ x 50’, it is heated by a wood stove and features a well-supplied kitchen with propane appliances turned on for each visiting group during the time they are there.  Flashlights, battery-powered lights and candles provide illumination.

After leading us to the top, Peter headed back down to the road to drive our supplies up by truck.  We explored the hall and the outer deck and marveled at the spectacular view of the property and Hesquiat Harbour.

From here I could see red cedar, yellow cedar, amabilis fir and lodgepole pine. I’m sure there were more species in this complex forest ecosystem, so different from the monoculture second- and third-growth forests planted by the timber companies to “replace” the old-growth they cut down.

When we had our bags and groceries, Doug made us all a sandwich lunch, then we made our way up the path through the forest to our cabins.  Ours was #6 – the honeymoon cabin!

There was a rusty mirror and I decided a rainforest selfie was in order.

Huckleberries and salal made me feel as if my own little garden was pure west coast!

This was the view from behind our platform bed. Not bad, eh?  I quickly made up the bed with provided sheets and sleeping bag blankets and stowed our clothes on the shelf.

Further up the path from our cabin was our own “outhouse with a view”.

As I wandered back towards the central hall, I heard a familiar tapping from the forest. A hairy woodpecker was working its way up an old hemlock.

As the sky darkened, we chopped vegetables, sautéed mushrooms and barbecued steak. Peter joined us for dinner by candelight.

It had been one of the most magical of days: a very special opportunity to share a little slice of this majestic part of Canada. After washing the dishes in water heated on the woodstove, we said good night and headed up the path toward our cabins. It was time for bed.

Continued in Part Two 

***********

To enquire about booking a trip to Cougar Annie’s Garden and the Temperate Rainforest Study Centre, visit the Boat Basin Foundation Website.

Bringing in the Honey at Lavender Hills Farm

Posted on by
5

For Tom Morrisey and Tina-May Luker, home is Lavender Hills Farm, a 25-acre property near Orillia in central Ontario, Canada.

Here, beautiful gardens….

….. and a custom-designed, bee-friendly, 2-acre tallgrass prairie meadow (seed-drilled ten years ago by their neighbors and friends Paul Jenkins and Miriam Goldberger of Wildflower Farm) supplement the natural softwood and hardwood forests and swamp that surround their farm.

Tom – who’s been a beekeeper for 40 years – tends 20 colonies at the farm, in addition to 110 colonies he manages in outyards in the region, for a total of 130 colonies.  He calls himself a “sideline beekeeper”, but, of course, at one time he was a novice. He started out four decades ago working as part of the interpretive staff at a provincial park where the focus was agriculture and apple orchards. There was also a beehive under glass at the park – an observation hive – but no one on staff knew anything about bees. So Tom took a 5-day course at the University of Guelph (Ontario’s agricultural college) in order to explain to visitors the fine points about apple pollination.  Later, he moved to the Orillia area and started working in adult education at a local college.

As he recalls now, he looked around at all the farms in the area and thought, “I don’t know anything about farming, but I know about beekeeping!” So he bought a couple of colonies and began keeping bees as a hobby. After working for a while in Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, he went travelling internationally. When he returned to Canada, he met Tina-May Luker and told her he wanted a job where he could ride his bicycle to work. He knocked on the door of commercial beekeeper John Van Alten of Dutchman’s Gold Honey (and later president of the Ontario Beekeepers Association) and offered his services. Two days later, he was hired to help manage between 800-1200 hives.

When he and Tina-May moved back to the Orillia area seventeen years ago, they bought their farm and Tom began beekeeping in earnest, with 50 colonies the first year and another 50 a year later. His farm beeyard is adjacent to the tall-grass meadow and surrounded by electric fencing to deter black bears.

The remainder are situated in a half-dozen outyards within an hour’s drive, with between 10-30 hives at each location. The outyards include a commercial cranberry bog, below,……

…..and a wildflower farm.  His honey house at the farm is a converted double garage several hundred feet from the beeyard and close to the driveway so the honey supers can easily be unloaded from his pickup truck after a trip to the outyards.

That brings us to one of Tom’s favorite beekeeping gadgets, and one he devised himself.  “In my pickup I put a piece of plywood with a little bit of a rim around it, sort of like a picture frame, and put some loops of wire into that, and that allowed me to use straps to tie down all my frame. It’s terrific, and only cost fifty bucks for lumber.”

Tom has another favorite piece of equipment, his “Mr. Long Arm”. That’s an extendable painter’s pole at the end of which he has fashioned something like a butterfly net made of fence brace wire threaded through the seamed end of a heavy-duty plastic shopping bag. “When it’s extended its full length of twelve feet,” he says, “I can often retrieve swarms that have settled well above me in the branches near my beeyards. The bees can’t grip the smooth plastic so I just shake them out into a brood box on the ground. No more ladders for me!”

As for those swarms, he says: “You can use that whole impulse to swarm to make more colonies of bees, if you want them. If you don’t want them, then you’ve got to be very diligent to manage your colonies so they don’t get crowded.”

Tom started raising queens a few years ago and finds it an engrossing learning experience.  “It’s not something a beginner usually tackles, but at some point you get enough confidence to try it, and it’s very interesting.  The whole idea is to try to select bees that have the characteristics that I like working with and to give me a supply of queens early in the season when they’re very handy to have.”

In spring, his bees find willows and red maple in the plentiful swamps around one of the outyards, where thawing occurs earlier than other places. At the farm, local basswood trees (Tilia americana), below, provide a good flow and produce excellent honey about three out of five years.

Abundant staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) feeds the bees and the red fruit clusters provide the fuel for Tom’s smoker.

There’s clover and alfalfa in neighboring farm fields and birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) and viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare), below, growing wild along the country roads.

Tina-May’s borders and vegetable garden provide lots of nectar and pollen from plants like Oriental poppy  (Papaver orientale), butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)……

….. motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca), Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), below…..

……thyme (Thymus sp.)….

….. and asparagus that’s gone to flower with its bright orange pollen.

In the designed meadow, masses of coreopsis give way to purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum), blazing-star (Liatris pycnostachya and L. ligulistylis). The final act, lasting from August well into October, stars the goldenrods, and Tom and Tina-May grow four species including stiff goldenrod (Solidago rigida, syn. Oligoneuron rigidum), below,

The grapefruit should be totally avoided while a person is making love. viagra professional canada Such framework gives the effect of the Kamagra, the user should be sexually stimulated to develop an erection. levitra professional samples viagra 25mg online Unless and until you do not have a “can do” attitude bring other employees down. Obesity like issues enhances the risks of vascular disease and the signal that a heart attack is coming in the not so distant future. cheap viagra deeprootsmag.org

…. rough-leaved goldenrod (Solidago rugosa)….

…..and the very late-flowering showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa), below.

Says Tom: “Goldenrod is a good honey, very dark and somewhat strong tasting.  The bees produce a bright yellow wax when they’re collecting goldenrod.”  But this late flowering of the goldenrods and native asters also helps the health of the hive, as Tom explains.  “There’s an expression that it’s really good to have ‘fat bees’ going into winter, meaning bees that are really well-fed. And being stimulated by a good flow of nectar and pollen allows them to make the physiological changes they need for winter. Bees in the summer, they’re flying around, they last six weeks, then they die. But in the winter, they have to sit in a hive, they don’t go out for six months, so their whole body, essentially, has to work in a different fashion.”

Most years, Tom’s colonies winter very well, with his survival rates matching or bettering the provincial average.  “I make sure the bees are well fed, because that stimulates them to keep brooding up later in the season. So I feed them in the fall. And I make sure the mites are under control.”  Here’s a little video* I made of Tom explaining how he checks for varroa mites. (*If you’re reading this on an android phone and cannot see the video, try switching from “mobile” to “desktop”. Not sure why that glitch occurs.)

Honey extraction begins in late July and extends well into October.

From time to time, Tom enlists the help of family members like brother-in-law Paul Campbell, seen assisting him below.

Here’s a video I made of Tom and Paul at this time in late summer moving the honey frames for extraction.

Over the years, Tom has automated his honey harvest to lighten the load, but it’s still hot, sticky, noisy work, with rock music blaring from speakers above the clatter of the hot knives of the decapping machine….

…..and the whirring of the horizontal extractor.

Here’s a video I made of the honey extraction process at Lavender Hills Farm. Because it’s hard to hear Tom over the machinery and the music, I put in a few subtitles.

Tom and Tina-May, below, are regulars at four farmers’ markets in the area….

….selling honey, mustard, honey butter, herbal soap, candles, and treats like honey straws that children love. “Farmers’ markets are a great place to get to know your customers and build a steady market for your product,” says Tom.  “People want to know that you’re the beekeeper, and they want to hear stories about keeping bees, just like I’m telling stories now.”

It’s a demanding occupation with lots of tiring physical work and he gets stung “dozens of times a day, sometimes”. And the challenges are many now. “When I started,” he recalls, “There were no parasitic mites, viruses weren’t an issue, and agri-chemicals didn’t seem to be as big a factor. You could put a box of bees in the back of the farm, they’d winter all right, and you’d get a box of honey. It’s certainly changed in the past twenty years.”

One of the newest factors is small hive beetle, and though it’s been seen in the Niagara region, it hasn’t yet made it this far north.  However he’s heard talk of beekeepers arranging refrigerated storage for their honey frames

But Tom is still enthralled with the whole thing. “Keeping bees is a very elemental occupation. The bees are subject to all the natural forces around them, from the plants to the weather and all the variations in between. It’s one expression of nature that you can roll up your sleeves and get right into. And that’s very enjoyable, because every year is different.”

If there’s one piece of advice he’d give to a new beekeeper, it’s this: “Get two hives, not just one, because of the chance of you either making a mistake or nature dealing you a blow that might take one of your hives, but you’ll always have another one.”

And that could be the beginning of a very long love affair.

***********

This story is a much-expanded version of an article that appeared earlier this year in a beekeeping magazine.  It’s a joy to know both Tom Morrisey and Tina-May Luker, below, with me at the Gravenhurst Farmer’s Market on Lake Muskoka this summer.

Honey bees are favourite photography subjects of mine. To see a large album of my honey bees on flowers, have a look at my stock photo portfolio.

A Denver Floral Extravaganza – The Garden of Rob Proctor and David Macke

Posted on by
12

What a treat I had back in June, along with more than 70 other garden bloggers during our annual “Garden Bloggers’ Fling”, to visit the beautiful garden of Rob Proctor and David Macke in the Highlands district of northwest Denver – and then to visit it again in softer light, the following morning! So in the midst of a very busy summer up here on Lake Muskoka (during which I’ve scarcely had a moment to revisit my photos) I nevertheless wanted to share images from my visit.  If you arrive in June, this is what greets you even before you open the charming front gate.

In front of the house is a “hellstrip” from heaven, below, filled with a drought-tolerant symphony of plants in purples and soft yellows. It’s your first clue that the plantings here have been designed by a master colourist who is also a painter and botanical illustrator. Rob now appears on Denver’s 9NEWS twice weekly as a garden expert, but at one time he was co-director with Angela Overy of the Denver Botanic Gardens School of Botanical Illustration.  He also served as the DBG’s Director of Horticulture from 1998 to 2003.  As his friend and former colleague, DBG Senior Curator and Director of Outreach Panayoti Kelaidis said in an interview once: “He transformed a sleepy, provincial research garden facility and made us one of the great display gardens in America.”

Bloody cranesbill (Geranium sanguineum) creates soft cushions of magenta blossoms in front of lavender-blue meadow sage (Salvia pratensis), middle left. At middle right is purple woodland sage (Salvia nemorosa).

Bees were everywhere, including this honey bee nectaring on the woodland sage.

Two unusual xeric plants are lilac-purple Kashmir sage (Phlomis cashmeriana) and golden drop (Onosma taurica), below.

At the eastern end of the hellstrip, a brighter colour scheme featured….

….. apricot desert mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) with basket-of-gold (Aurinia saxatilis).

A metallic green sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens) was nectaring on the desert mallow, while….

….. nearby,  showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) was awaiting monarch butterflies.

The word “hellstrip” is usually attributed to Colorado garden designer Lauren Springer Ogden, author of the acclaimed book The Undaunted Garden, among others. She and Rob also co-authored Passionate Gardening: Good Advice for Challenging Climates.  In an article she wrote for Horticulture magazine back in 2007, Ogden wrote of the Water Smart Garden she designed for Denver Botanic Gardens, shown in my photo below:  “The Denver Botanic Gardens’ former director of horticulture, Rob Proctor, played a crucial role in developing the full potential of the garden. The first couple of years it floundered—a good number of the called-for plants were not actually put in, and it fell under poorly trained and often careless maintenance. When Rob took over, he made it his priority to support the richness of the planting and the high level of care the garden deserved. He let me shop personally for many of the missing plants and add the beginnings of a collection of fiber plants that now brings so much to the dynamic year-round textures of the garden: nolinas, yuccas, agaves, and dasylirions—plants that just a few years ago were rarely used in Colorado gardens and often thought not to be hardy.”

Though I could have spent an hour exploring the luscious hellstrip, I was ready to find what waited on the other side of the gate in the ebullient gardens that surround the 1905 “Denver square” brick house that Rob and David moved into in May 1993.

I was invited in to look at some of Rob’s art.  I loved this botanical rendering of a passionflower, one of many of his works hanging in the house.

But I was anxious to see what was out back, so I made my way past Stranger, the stray cat that hung around Rob and David’s garden for such a long time that he first got the nickname, then his new home.

Though Stranger elected to stay behind on the sunroom table, Mouse accompanied me out onto the brick-paved patio.

And what a patio it is, nestled into its own little garden spangled with lilac-purple Allium cristophii. Here we see the first wave of hundreds of containers that Rob and David fill with annuals each season, adding to pots containing tropicals, bulbs, succulents or perennials.  Pots with tender plants are lifted outdoors each spring, nurtured and watered all summer, then transported back to the basement in autumn before Denver’s Zone 5 winter winds blow. Cobalt blue – a favourite colour – is the unifying hue here.

Teak benches and comfy cushions abound here and throughout the garden.

Tropical foliage plants mix with colourful annuals and succulents like Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’ pair with potted lilies. Incidentally, Rob is an expert in bulbs in pots, having written The Oudoor Potted Bulb: New Approaches to Container Gardening with Flowering Bulbs way back in 1993, the year they moved here.  It’s one of sixteen books he has authored or co-authored.

Though their property is more than a half-acre with several discrete garden areas, the patio is a lovely intimate extension of the house.

When I visited the first time, Rob, left, in his trademark vest and David, a retired geologist, right, held court out here.

I was impressed that David was able to reach out and pick a succulent pea….

….. from a pot of dwarf ‘Tom Thumb’ peas on the coffee table.

However on my second visit, it was just Mouse and me.

I enjoyed the sound of water from the raised goldfish pond….

….. and the splash of water from a unique watering can fountain set among pots on the stairs to the house.

But I was anxious to head out to explore the garden. When Rob and David moved in 26 years ago, the first thing they did was cut down eight “half-dead Siberian elms”.  Said Rob in a 1995 article for American Horticulturist, he wanted to build perennial borders. “Because of the relatively formal look of the late Victorian Italianate house, I chose a strong, geometric layout of long borders. Occasional half circles soften the straight lines. Within this framework, I indulge in the controlled chaos that we associate with traditional herbaceous borders.”  He carved out two rectangular beds each measuring 16 x 60 feet (4.9 x 18 metres) with an 8-foot wide strip of lawn in between. He then designed a backdrop of 12 brick columns – six per bed – connected by lattice screening and had a mason erect them on deep concrete footings.  That resulted in four 8 x 60 foot perennial beds, two of which are visible below. At the far end on the property’s south boundary line is the gazebo, built atop an old carriage house and featuring a winding staircase to the flat roof and a shady dining area within.  “Climbing the staircase,” wrote Rob, “it’s possible to view much of the garden from above.”

Mouse followed me dutifully out into the garden.

The colours here in June were exquisite, with purple and blue catmints, campanulas, cranesbills, meadowrues, salvias and veronicas enlivened by brilliant chartreuse. “Borders are like paintings,” said Rob. “Each one starts as a blank canvas. Working with a palette of plants, rather than paints, the possible combinations are limitless. The twin borders that cut through the middle of the garden contain the colors that I naturally gravitate towards – the blues, purples, and pinks.”

Each border held dozens of ideas for combinations. When I visited on June 17th, star-of-Persia onion (Allium cristophii) looked perfect with Kashmir sage (Phlomis cashmeriana)…..

….. and softened the flowers of broad-petaled cranesbill (Geranium platypetalum).

By the way, if you ever want to go down into a taxonomic rabbit hole, take a look at my blog on Allium cristophii.

The bold foliage of American cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum), below, offers a strong contrast to the soft colours and shapes of the central border.  Later in summer, the white flower umbels reach up to 8 feet (2.5 metres).  In one of the 2018 video clips from 9NEWS, Rob gives some pithy advice on how to handle this phototoxic native – just don’t!  Clambering over the lattice in the back of this photo is golden hops (Humulus lupulus ‘Aureus’), one of a number of vines that Rob encourages for its lovely effect. As he wrote:  “The golden hops vine needs little encouragement to thread through five or six feet of pink and blue flowers in this border, providing fresh, almost springlike foliage even in midsummer.”

Rob has used the red-leaved rose Rosa glauca as a background feature in one border, less for its single June flowers than for its strong foliage accent in order to enhance the massive beauty bush flowering in the background.

This was the view north along the twin central borders back to the house.

The third long border to the east featured white roses and the tall spires of Verbascum bombyciferum ‘Arctic Summer’….

The positive impacts keep going give or take levitra vs cialis 4 to 6 hours. There are very few that give away purchase tadalafil india the best ever results. The advantages There are numerous advantages of taking Kamagra pills, the first and foremost being that you can achieve and maintain an erection which helps him to perform well in the bedroom, it buy viagra prescription is always important to keep stress away. Impotence is a common condition for men online viagra store of any age.

…… nestled in a snowy cloud of sea kale (Crambe cordifolia).

The fourth long border on the west side is a confection of pinks and burgundies – peonies, roses and cranesbills in June. As it turns west near the immense beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis), Rob gave special consideration to the unique colouration. “The beauty bush, its pale pink blossoms tinged with coral, inspired the color scheme of the surrounding plantings as the border turns to the west”. For the garden nearby, he chose sunset colours in lilies, red valerian, red sunroses, salmon pink nicotine and coral bells mixed with chartreuse and bronze foliage, to name a few.

In fact, he captured all three tints of beauty bush flowers in the cushions on the chairs placed strategically under its flowery boughs. This is colour perfectionism!  Because of its size, Rob estimates the shrub was planted fairly soon after it was introduced to the west via Ernest “China” Wilson, who sent seed to Veitch’s Nursery in England in 1901. Flowers did not appear on the first seedlings for nine more years.  It became very popular in gardens in the mid-20th century but deserves to be planted in gardens where its size can be contained.

This view melted my heart.  And there were bees in that pink rose… scroll down to the video at the end of my blog and you’ll see them.

Clematis recta is a superb June-blooming herbaceous clematis.  I’m not sure how Rob manages to keep his upright, but it does benefit from some kind of support, like a peony ring.

Further along, near the nuts-and-bolts of the garden (compost bins, potting shed, etc.) I noted one of Rob’s favourite strategies to introduce a splash of colour into the borders: a well-positioned pot with a bright red annual coleus.  He does the same thing with red orach (Atriplex hotensis ‘Rubra’).  Later there will be larkspur here.

We’ve arrived at the back where the gazebo is sited on the foundation of an old carriage house.  A spiral staircase climbs to the top; it must be a lovely spot to sip a glass of wine and look back on the borders.

Down below, there was a table and chairs under the roof, providing a nice view and much needed shade in Denver’s notoriously hot summers.

Luscious tuberous begonias thrive here.

What a great spot for al fresco dinners – surrounded by tropicals and foliage plants. I loved the louvered panels at the back.  And what do you suppose lies behind that dark picket fence?

Well, it’s an alley. A place where most gardeners would be content to create a couple of parking spots and leave it at that. But not David and Rob…. all that sunshine!  So they not only reserved places to park their cars, but….

… also designed a potager divided into eight Native-American-inspired “waffle” beds, which are dug down below grade to capture precious rainwater, just as waffles collect syrup.

Bordered in thyme, the beds contain different types of seed-grown vegetables.  At the centre of the potager is an artful cluster of pots.

As with every part of Rob and David’s garden, there is a comfy, colour-coordinated place to sit and relax – even in the alley!

Biennial clary sage (Salvia sclarea) is one of many plants allowed to self-seed here.

I loved this succulent-filled strawberry jar in the midst of the vegetables.

I headed back into the garden and made my way down the east side, where an old driveway has been re-imagined as the “gravel allée”.  It’s a series of tableaux: sitting areas with colour-matched accessories and plants.  Periwinkle blue and rusty-orange… sigh. You can imagine how enchanting this is for someone who called her blog “thepaintboxgarden”!

Such an inviting scene……

Double clematis are often less hardy than small-flowered species and varieties, so Rob pots them up and takes them to a less exposed area for winter.

Speaking of CLEM-a-tis, I liked hearing Rob educate his news colleagues on proper pronunciation of the vine.

Mouse was getting a little impatient for me to leave, so led me down the gravel path….

…. to containers nestled around a birdbath. Have you been counting the pots? I understand there are more than 600!

I’m a big fan of red-with-green in planting design  and this section of the path tickled my fancy.

Under the mature trees here was another semi-shaded sitting area set in amongst shrub roses with yet another bench.  I loved the row of potted aloes!

Now I was gazing at the house through a delightful thyme parterre herb garden.

I walked around to the south to see the view….

…. and then from the corner nearest the house. This is such a classic design – also created in the lowered waffle bed manner – and so lovely when the thyme…..

…. and the rose are in flower together.

I had a plane to catch later that afternoon, so gathered up my things and headed around the house to the front. There on the west side under the shade of the trees was one final treasure in Rob and David’s garden. It was a patio filled with shade-loving plants adjoining their sunken garden (down the stairs and just out of the photo below).   As Rob wrote in 1995: “One weekend, while digging up self-sown tree-of-heaven saplings, we kept hitting brick. We determined that it was the foundation to a building, about 15 by 10 feet. Friends joined us for some urban archeology as we excavated it, finding hundreds of patent medicine bottles, broken china, and a waffle iron designed for the top of a wood stove. The foundation may have supported a summer kitchen or an earlier house, perhaps a farmer’s. We stopped digging at about four feet and, exhausted, decided our sunken garden was deep enough. We mixed in extra-rich compost to nurture the shade-lovers we intended to plant there.”

It was so hot that day in June, I would have loved to settle in the shade on those blue and red cushions and contemplate the lovely caladium. But it was time to go.

So, reluctantly, out I went through the gate entwined with Virginia creeper, to meet my ride.

As a bonus, I created a little musical tour through David and Rob’s enchanting garden, co-starring a selection of the bees that find nectar there:

Rob and David have shared their garden annually for many years now. It’s for a cause near and dear to them – and to Stranger and Mouse, too. And I’m so glad I was able to share their garden with you, too.

Visiting Marjorie’s Garden

Posted on by
16

I have a free summer afternoon in Toronto and call my dear friend, garden writer and designer Marjorie Harris. Could I come to see her and bring my camera?  Of course, says she gracefully. Thus, on a hot afternoon at the very end of July, I walk up her midtown street. It’s never difficult to find Marjorie’s house. It’s the one with the luscious green floral tapestry in front. And it’s the one with the biggest ‘Sun King’ aralia (A. cordata) I’ve ever seen. It seems to extend its golden foliage over most of the frontage, on a narrow city lot that measures 20 x 137 feet (6 x 42 metres).

It’s also the garden with rare Japanese umbrella pines (Sciadopitys verticillata) hiding in the undergrowth, along with hellebores and golden hakone grass…..

….and a tiny, jewelled ‘Hana Matoi’ Japanese maple keeping company with Japanese painted fern.

But seriously…. that aralia! I can’t think of another perennial that creates such an element of privacy as this one. However, as Marjorie reminds me, her garden soil is really rich in compost (“lashes of compost” is a favourite phrase of hers) and she has an irrigation system that targets water on plants that really need it.

Marjorie and I spend a half-hour chewing the fat on the front porch. She and I have known each other for three decades. She is a straight shooter (calls a smart woman a “dame”), well organized, energetic and very involved in the cultural heartbeat of the city. And she is still head-over-heels about the garden she created behind the Annex home she has shared with her husband, novelist Jack Batten, for over 50 years. In it, they raised their children — two each from previous marriages — and enjoy visits from their three grandchldren.

She’s just as beautiful as she was in the mid-90s, when she was the editor of Toronto Life Gardens. I wrote articles and book reviews for her in those days, like the one below on landscape designer Neal Turnbull.  It’s hard to imagine this was 23 years ago! (Click for larger versions of the photos).

Later, she became editor-in-chief of Gardening Life magazine and we worked together then, too. (Interestingly, in her Summer 2005 editorial, below, she talks about Larry Davidson of Lost Horizons Nursery, from whom she acquired many of the choice trees and shrubs in her garden.)  Sadly, most of our beautiful, glossy gardening magazines have since disappeared from the publishing landscape in Canada, which is a crying shame.  But that’s a story for another day.

She’s been an ardent feminist all her life. Once, when I was looking through old magazines in my office, I found a 1973 Vancouver Sun Weekend magazine I had saved because it contained an article on the company I worked for at the time (a jade mine… long story). But as I flipped through the pages, I also found a piece titled The Invisible Women by Marjorie Harris.  The topic was “women’s liberation”. That was the beginning of her freelance career, after time spent on staff at Maclean’s and Chatelaine,

And, of course, she’s written tons of books, including the masterful Botanica North America, (to which I contributed some images). Published in 2003, this heavy tome was a rich, encyclopedic treatment of selected naive plants of the biomes of North America.

She was the Globe & Mail‘s gardening columnist for years and does features for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), among many other gigs. As well, she has her own landscape design business, and designed four gardens on her own block. And she goes to France every winter with Jack and makes us all jealous as we shovel the snow back home!

Ah bien, let’s stop chatting on the front porch and head out to see the back garden. And “seeing the garden” is a brilliant reality at Marjorie’s house, even before you actually go outside, because of the fabulous folding glass doors that span the lowered dining room. Designed as part of a 2005 renovation by Lisa Rapaport of PLANT Architect Inc., the glass expanse opened up the view to Marjorie’s exquisite woodland — a mélange of carefully chosen shrubs and trees, many evergreen, whose architecture creates four seasons of interest.

Now let’s step outside into the garden and look back at the house through the colourful tapestry of trees and shrubs. Beside the urn is a red-leaved Japanese maple (Acer palmatum ‘Dissectum Atropurpureum’).  “It was my first expensive plant,” says Marjorie. “I paid $20 for it at Ron’s Garden Centre in the 1980s. Couldn’t believe I’d spend that much money on one plant at the time. It led to madness of course“.

At first it’s not easy to discern a path forward through the abundance, with interesting plants drawing my eye from ground-level to the leafy canopy above. That’s part of Marjorie’s design strategy. As she says: “I find that too often designers miss out on the mid layers in a garden design:  I think mainly about foliage and how leaf shapes relate to one another and then I think about the height of each plant’s maximum effect and how that relates to the whole garden.”

Fittingly, I have to reach above my head and point my camera down to capture this delicious duo, a fullmoon Japanese maple (Acer shirasawanum ‘Aureum’) with colourful barberries below.

On the fence is Clematis ‘Betty Corning’, a spectacular, easy vine that Marjorie laments as being essentially unavailable in the trade.

There are few annuals allowed out here and those invited to stay must pay their rent, like purple-leaved Strobilanthes dyerianus with chartreuse ‘Margarita’ sweet potato vine.  Behind is a glaucous evergreen Marjorie bought to decorate her Christmas table at the corner jug milk store one autumn, “then out to the garden to see just how big it might get,” she recalls. “I love it“.

It’s the exquisite little touches that draw the eye, like this ‘Geisha Gone Wild’ Japanese maple and gold hosta.


There could be various causes for male impotence including oral drugs like viagra canada , levitra, buy generic levitra, natural remedies, education, hypnosis, injections, urethral suppositories, pumps and many other ways. It’s obvious that you’re not providing any useful content, and only trying to cialis without prescription bring in a bunch of hits from Google. The cause may be of any the main medicine is cheap cialis davidfraymusic.com. Signs Roughly all the shop levitra anxiety symptoms have become quite well known as a result of over time individuals want skilled anxiety.
A few choice conifers lend structure and interest in Toronto’s interminable winter, like ‘Algonquin Pillar’ Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra). “My garden looks good every day of the year except for about 10 days in early spring,” says Marjorie, “when it’s flooded and looking kind of crappy, with all the stuff I haven’t cut down for the winter being brazen enough to be obvious. That I usually clean up myself just because of the shame of it.”

She spends a lot of time looking up at her trees, a remarkable collection, especially given the size of the garden.

There is a beautiful katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) with its heart-shaped leaves and burnt sugar autumn aroma…..

….. and a gorgeous Kentucky coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus), below, with its intricate compound leaves, the largest of any Canadian native tree.

It’s a favourite among her Carolinian forest natives, including tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera), sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus) and ruby-flowered Calycanthus, below.  “Oxydendron croaked on me,” she admits, “as have several others. I keep trying.”  

A pretty pink astilbe purchased from John’s Garden in Uxbridge grows in dappled shade here, too.

Walking towards the back of the garden, I reach an obelisk adorned with clematis and a nicely pruned blue falsecypress (Chamaecyparis), another one of Marjorie’s Christmas decorations.  Back in the 1980s, Marjorie’s garden featured a unique geometric checkerboard design, with half the spaces in flagstones and the other half choice plants.  In 2002, she hired Earth Inc. to design and install pergolas.  “All seemed fine,” recalls Marjorie, “until the dining room was added in 2005 and then the checkerboard just began to look too fussy.”  So a more streamlined path was substituted leading to this series of pergolas, which allowed space for a more interesting mix of woody plants.

The metal grate under the pergola covers the sump pump.  “The property is build on Seaton Pond flood plain, which rises every spring now that there are not enough trees to drain it properly,” Marjorie explains. “There is an underground stream which is an off-shoot of Taddle Creek, which comes through our garden and under the house. Hoses take the excess ground water out to the street storm sewer; and the stream is dealt with by in-house sump pumps and out through the sewage system.”

Marjorie’s pink floss tree (Albizia julibrissin), below, has now survived three winters. It’s the cultivar ‘Ernest Wilson’, purchased from Jim Lounsbery’s Vineland Nurseries and named for the famous plant explorer who found it in a Korean garden in 1918 and brought seed home to Boston’s Arnold Arboretum. He wrote about it in a 1929 bulletin.  “The origin of the plant in the Arboretum affords a good illustration of the importance of obtaining for northern gardens types which grow in the coolest regions they can withstand. The particular tree was raised from seeds collected in the garden of the Chosen Hotel at Seoul, Korea, by E. H. Wilson in 1918. It grows wild in the southern parts of the Korean peninsula but appears quite at home in the more severe climate of the central region. A few seeds only were collected and seedling plants were set out in the Arboretum when about four years old; several were killed the first winter but one came through with but slight injury and since that time has not suffered in the least. From its behavior during the last seven or eight years there seems reason to believe that this Korean type will prove a useful and valuable addition to gardens. It has a long flowering season, continuing in blossom throughout August.  Albizia is a member of a tropical tribe of the great family Leguminosae and it is astonishing that this tree should be able to withstand New England winters. Apparently it is happy in fully exposed situations, where good drainage and a sandy loam prevail.”

Shredded umbrella plant (Syneilesis aconitifolia) comes from one of Marjorie’s favourite wholesalers, Connon Nurseries, and has the most interesting flowers.

Here is a closeup of those unusual flower panicles.

At the back of her garden is a raised planter filled with an eclectic collection of plants. Says Marjorie: “If a plant looks awful in a client’s garden, I will replace it and I usually bring it home and put it in the Jardin de Refusée. If I don’t want it, one of the crew will and we baby these things along and then they become a respected part of our own gardens. I’ve never sold one of these babies back to clients even though they’ve done well in my garden.  In this garden, you have to drop dead to be removed.”

I try not to take that last sentence as a metaphor as I walk back towards the house, past a young striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum), centre, and a ‘Slender Silhouette’ sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua), right. “Getting the right plant in the right place is a whole lot harder than most people understand,” notes Marjorie. “They want copies of stuff they see in magazines and online and most of the time just won’t work in our climate, our neighbourhoods.  Finding the ideal plant is always my goal, and will it work with the ecosystem I’m trying to build up to satisfy both birds and bugs I want to draw into the garden.  I cannot express how boring those so called minimal “modern” plant designs are.  They don’t work ecologically and they require huge amounts of work to keep on looking neat.  Nature is not neat.”

But gazing back past the Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’, left) and the ‘Herman’s Pillar’ barberry (Berberis thunbergii), right, below…

….. I think that this lovely paradise in the Annex represents a leafy manifestation of Marjorie’s life and career: long, rich, full of interesting things acquired with care and intent, and a joy in every season.

Finally, here’s a little taste of a mid-summer day in the garden. The birds and cicadas are a bonus. Thanks for the visit, Marjorie!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oJtmQaZTmk&feature=youtu.be

Visiting Panayoti’s Garden

Posted on by
14

If you’re invited to visit Quince Garden in Denver, Colorado, you could always start your tour along the walkway to the front door. All those tiny plants embracing the risers of the stone steps will delight you….

… and no doubt you’ll admire the well-grown annuals: the ‘Mystic Spires’ salvia, and the blackeyed susan vines (Thunbergia alata) in pots at the front door.

You’ll be intrigued by the planters and troughs lining the walkway, filled with dozens of plants whose identities you can’t begin to guess at.

Your appetite whetted, you’ll surely be tempted to meander down the path of the hillside skirting the house, as we did in June during my Garden Bloggers’ Fling, on our visit to the home and garden of Denver Botanic Garden’s inimitable Senior Curator and Director of Outreach, Panayoti Kelaidis (aka “PK” to his friends.) Over his 30+ years at the garden, he designed the plantings for the amazing Rock Alpine Garden and helped with the design and implementation of Wildflower Treasures, the South African Plaza and the Romantic Gardens, among others.  He is also the recipient of the Award of Excellence from National Garden Clubs and the Liberty Hyde Bailey Award, the highest award from the American Horticultural Society.

Apart from travelling the world collecting and viewing rare plants, as he is doing this very moment in the Tibetan Himalayas, he writes a plant-rich blog called Prairiebreak (currently featuring rare meconopsis species from said trip). He also lectures everywhere (in more than 70 cities so far) mostly on plants that grow in the alpine regions and steppes of the world. Wikipedia defines a steppe as follows: “In physical geography, steppe (Russian: степь, IPA: [stʲepʲ]) is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes. The prairie of North America (especially the shortgrass and mixed prairie) is an example of a steppe, though it is not usually called such. A steppe may be semi-arid or covered with grass or shrubs or both, depending on the season and latitude.”  So passionate is Panayoti about this topic that he recently co-authored a book called Steppes: The Plants and Ecology of the World’s Semi-Arid Regions, along with Michael Bone, Mike Kintgen, Dan Johnson and Larry Vickerman.

We wandered down the hill past the silvery yuccas…….

….. and the statuesque Scotch thistle (Onopordum acanthium).  We could see rain and the odd fork of lightning in the distance, but not one drop fell on the garden.

Flanking the path were little planters filled with cacti and succulents. And there were sentry-like spires of giant silver mullein (Verbascum bombyciferum). Panayoti particularly likes this mullein, and has written with his usual wit about finding it growing on Turkey’s Uludağ.

Look at this! So darling. But the gardener knows the provenance of each of those little treasures.

In the hottest, unirrigated part of PK’s hillside, cacti were in flower, like this pink prickly-pear (Opuntia sp.)

Here it is with Onosma taurica, a European plant – clearly drought-tolerant – that I saw in a few spots in the Denver area.

More giant silver mulleins, and a place to sit and relax as well.

Panayoti’s garden seemed to be a happy marriage of plant-collecting on a refined scale and Gertrude Jekyllesque cottage-gardening.

Desert species were at home among plants with similar cultural needs from the world over.

I loved these table-top displays of special cacti from PK’s 300+ collection.

Brilliant pink desert penstemon (P. pseudospectabilis) added a rosy note to the various cactus species.

Desert penstemon is just one of many native penstemons I coveted on my visits to gardens in Denver, as I wrote in a previous blog. Check out that lovely pea gravel.

Where the soil was a little richer, there was amsonia.

Salvias, too.

Altai onion (Allium altaicum) was in flower, front. Behind were plant stands filled with a pretty collection of cacti and succulents. (Not sure what was happening behind the mesh screen.)

After visiting the botanical garden at Würzburg, Germany in 2016, Panayoti swore he would have his own Asphodeline taurica…. and here it was, looking very fetching with orange rock roses bringing up the rear.

Near the bottom of the hill, there was a starry cloud of crambe and a brilliant yellow mullein (Verbascum olympicum, I’m guessing.)

Everywhere in the cottage garden at the bottom of Panayoti’s hill, brilliant orange horned poppies (originallyGlaucium grandiflorum x flavum hybrids) flung themselves around with abandon. As a lover of colour, I particularly admired this hot pairing of the poppies with a fuchsia-pink rose, cooled ever so slightly by cobalt blue Veronica austriaca.

Amidst all the self-seeding wonderfulness, there were more of the collector’s curio cabinets, this vignette backed by a luscious purple smoke bush.

After a little swing back up the hill towards the rear of the house, all the eclectic xeriscape lollapalooza suddenly became very refined, with a luscious, traditional June border filled with meadow cranesbills, red valerian (Centranthus ruber), pink gas plant (Dictamnus albus var. purpureus), roses and a white-flowered fringe tree (Chionanthus) and dark-leafed ninebark (Physocarpus) in the rear.

This rosy, romantic June confection proved a lovely backdrop….

Children over nine should take one capsule pharmacy australia cialis twice a day. buy levitra This solution is not meant for ladies and children and hence it should be kept away from them. All such ingredients make this pill to be the most effective and popular of all. viagra cheap price is one of the most popular prescription medications used by men who are not too concerned about increasing their penis size. These herbs are processed and tadalafil online cheap made into drinks. …. for a portrait of Panayoti and his partner, Jan Fahs.

And this is Jan’s iris, ‘Afternoon Delight’.

At the back of the house, an alpine garden wall rises from a patio filled with pots of plants and two chairs. Because, of course, there would be lots of time to sit and relax in a garden this easy to care for…….

A sunken pool features yellow flag iris (I. pseudacorus) backed by that beautiful wall….

…. in whose crevices and niches choice alpines thrive.

The brilliant hues of South African ice plants (Delosperma, formerly Mesymbranthemum) brighten up the rocks.

This is Delosperma Fire Spinner®, one of the best plants to come out of the Plant Select® program that Panayoti helped launch through Denver Botanic Gardens.

You can hear Panayoti talk about the ice plants in the Plant Select program here.

I loved the artful way the plants combined with each other in the garden…..

…. though clearly there was careful forethought even in the little informal vignette of Aethionema and Helianthemum nummularium, below, one of thousands and thousands here.

Even though much of Panayoti’s garden bakes in sunshine, there is a shady corner, too. Here there was goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus), heucheras and ferns…..

…. and a shimmering white martagon lily (L. martagon f. album).

Back in the sunshine, sage mixed with centaureas and Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) graced a pot. Unlike many ‘collector’s gardens’, Panayoti loves all plants, common and rare.

A dish of succulents rested in a bed of thyme…..

….. and a white umbellifer (I won’t try a name) consorted with an echium.

Digitalis thapsi looked demure in this setting.

Alas, it was time to return to our tour, and I found my way back to the cottage garden, where larkspur (Consolida ajacis) was in bloom.

Annual white lace flower (Orlaya grandiflora) made a pretty partner to herbaceous Clematis integrifolia.

White lace flower hails from the Mediterranean and is increasingly popular in North American gardens.

When I first started gardening seriously in the 1970s, I cut out photos of English cottage gardens with beautiful flowers falling over each other in an artful tumble.

I was reminded of those first inspirations on Panayoti’s sunny hillside, where cottage gardening mixes with decades of plant collecting and a fondness for containers.  That slender red-leaved plant contrasting so nicely with the horned poppies is red orach (Atriplex hortensis ‘Rubra’).

As PK wrote of it fondly in one of his blogs: “Perhaps that explains my love of marginal weeds, those I can more or less manage. Isn’t it better to have Atriplex hortensis in its furious red manifestation, or red amaranth or Clary sage rampaging on the fringes of your garden. or Verbascums of the bombyciferum persuasion. These suck up space, and self sow, but you can eliminate them. And they give the crabgrasses a run for their money.”

Then it was time to climb the path past the mulleins and head back to the bus. But first, a photo keepsake in front of that gloriously gaudy poppy-rose combination.

And a personal note of thanks to finish up. Thirteen years ago, I visited the Denver Botanic Gardens with my husband and innocently told the young lady at the front desk that I planned to photograph there. Before I could add that I was a garden writer and photographer, she said: “That will be $200 for the photography permit.” I sputtered a little and tried to correct the situation, adding I wasn’t a wedding photographer, but someone who planned to write about the plants and publicize the garden itself. When that didn’t work, I dredged up a name I’d heard or read about and asked: “Is Mr. Kelaidis here?” She phoned his extension and he appeared moments later, waved us in with a flourish, and gave us a private 90-minute walking tour, waxing poetic about the garden and its employees at each and every turn. What an introduction to DBG and its charms! Twelve years later, Panayoti was horticultural guide on an American Horticultural Society tour of New Zealand in which we participated. So I saw a lot of PK over those three weeks and enjoyed watching him thank all our garden hosts profusely, choosing just the right words each time to acknowledge the unique features of their gardens and make them feel special. For example, this was a little thank you he made to owners John and Jo Gow at Connells Bay Sculpture Park on Waiheke Island, near Auckland. (I blogged about this amazing garden last year.)

I followed him with other intrepid botanizers (and my dear, patient husband) up Ben Lomond overlooking Queenstown, where he pointed out tiny dracophyllums and raoullias.

We posed in our life jackets together as we headed out in zodiacs onto tranquil Doubtful Sound.

So it was a distinct pleasure to greet Panayoti and Jan in this amazing garden, and to discover that, despite all those weeks of travel climbing mountains in Tibet, Turkey, South Africa, Kazakhstan, New Zealand and dozens of other plant-rich places in the world, there is still time for the gardener to be at home surrounded by the plants that give him and all of us such deep pleasure and pride.