Flora & Friendship at Seattle’s Soest Garden

Posted on September 26, 2018 by Janet

What a pleasure it was for me to visit the University of Washington Botanic Garden’s (UWBG) Center for Urban Horticulture and the Soest Herbaceous Display Garden in Seattle earlier this month! Part of the fun was that I was meeting a little group of Facebook friends for a picnic – a bring-what-you-wish buffet among people who’ve “known” each other online for years, but answered my invite to meet “in the flesh” on the first leg of a 2-1/2 week circular driving vacation my husband and I embarked on from Vancouver throughout Washington and Oregon. (More on that later.) But much of the pleasure came from exploring a garden where the fullness of late summer was on show everywhere, including these spectacular swamp hibiscus (Hibiscus moscheutos) adjacent to the parking area.

We wound our way past an impressive Hydrangea integrifolia (a new species for me) blanketing a building wall…..

…. down a path beside the library…..

…and arrived in a courtyard outside the NHS Hall. Here were colourful container displays of annuals and tropicals…..

…. and a lovely combination of ‘Rustic Orange’ coleus (Plectranthus scuttelarioides) with Begonia boliviensis.

I was drawn by the sound of water through the arches in the little Fragrance Garden (where we’d have our picnic later)…..

….toward the charming fountain at the center of the Soest Garden.

The Soest Garden is designed with eight beds radiating out from the central fountain and all divided by paths. This is what it looks like standing at the fountain and turning slowly to view the garden.

At the beginning of September, the garden was resplendent with ornamental grasses and late-flowering perennials. Here are some of the spectacular plants and combinations, beginning with beautiful ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ pineapple lily (Eucomis comosa) combined with Antonow’s honey bush (Melianthus major ‘Antonow’s Blue’).

The foliage on the honey bush is entrancing, isn’t it?

It was fun to see azure-blue Agapanthus inapertus.

I liked the dark-red colour echo going on with the Potentilla thurberi and the ‘Cheyenne’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum).

The beds have useful signs to identify some (not all) of the plants.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen largest masterwort (Astrantia maxima) before.

Northern sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) was one of several native grasses putting on a late-summer show..

Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) is always among the most graceful of edgers in any design.

In a garden full of often-rare plants, there were some familiar favourites, like Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’.

Persicaria ‘Painter’s Palette’ was paired with Phlox paniculata ‘Nora Leigh’.

Long-blooming Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’ peeked out from a cloud of fall asters still in bud.

Here’s a fabulous Spanish grass I wish was hardy for us, giant feather grass (Stipa gigantea).

And here it is as background for hemp-agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum) and the newish white-flowered coreopsis Star Cluster, at front.

I’ve always liked the romantic late-summer combination of pink-flowered border sedums like ‘Autumn Joy’ with the soft blue flowers of Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Little Spire’).

The shape of this bed is enhanced by the chartreuse foliage of Sedum ruprestre ‘Angelina’, which is itself enhanced by the soft shield fern (Polystichum setiferum ‘Divisilobum’) behind it.

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At the opposite end of the garden to that which I entered is the public entrance from the parking lot. Here visitors can see the donors who made this wondrous garden possible, the late Orin Soest and his wife Althea Soest. As the obituary for Orin Soest stated: “In 1990, he began a relationship that continues in perpetuity with the University of Washington and the Center for Urban Horticulture. In 1998, The Orin and Althea Soest Herbaceous Garden was dedicated and has been a cherished gift to the University and the community of Seattle for its educational and healing purposes.”

And here we see the overall layout of the Center for Urban Horticulture and the context of the display garden within it.

Grasses like variegated purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea ‘Variegata’) are airy enough to act as scrims or screens for plants behind them. I liked how the little flame lilies (Hesperantha coccinea) sparkle behind the molinia.

Here’s the purple moor grass from the far side of the bed.

And this fabulous big shrub is Himalayan honeysuckle (Leycesteria formosa).

Although the flowers had withered, angel’s fishing rod (Dierama pulcherrimum) still created an interesting effect in this bed.

One of my favourite images of the Soest garden was this luscious pairing of globe thistle (Echinops ritro) and ‘Gateway’ Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium maculatum). Even in the northeast, this is one combination we can carry off!

This is the view from the far end of the garden. What a lovely place for strolling slowly, absorbing the plant combinations and taking in details large and small.

I think this is a dry streambed in the South Slope below the garden, with a variety of heaths, heathers and drought-tolerant sedges like Carex buchananii.

The beautiful begonia (B. grandis ‘Heron’s Pirouette’) was collected in Japan in 1997 by Dan Hinkley (Heronswood) and is hardy to USDA Zone 6.

Circling around the garden, I came to some benches framed with ornamental grasses and containers of succulents.

I loved the way this tree aeonium (Aeonium arboreum var. atropurpureum) – in the container with blue chalk sticks (Senecio serpens) – echoed the flowers of the fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides). Behind is tall toe toe grass (Cortaderia richardii) and yellow-flowered shrubby hare’s ear (Bupleurum fruticosum).

Finally I came to a generous stand of Fuchsia magellanica …..

….being explored for nectar by a honey bee. It seemed like the perfect time to stop for lunch.

***************

For it was now time to meet my friends: Seattle photographer-writer-philosopher David Perry and his partner, UW School of Medicine Administrator Mary Pyper, (me in the centre), the Center for Urban Horticulture Elisabeth C. Miller Library’s librarian-poet Rebecca Alexander, and Sue Nevler, who has been trustee or board member for some of Seattle’s finest gardens, including this one.

We tucked into our picnic, made special with freshly-smoked salmon and all the trimmings from David and Mary…..

…… and an apple cake made by Rebecca’s partner, Carlo, from their own Akane apples.

There was a gift of dahlias from Sue’s garden, with a special ‘pollinator nosegay’ to honour my love of bees.

We took our plates to the Fragrance Garden, where scented lilies…..

…. and white summer phlox (P. paniculata ‘David’)…..

… and English roses perfumed the air.

It was a day for exploring a most charming garden – and bringing friendships made in cyberspace down to fruitful, late-summer earth.

November Work: Cutting Down the Meadows

Posted on November 20, 2017 by Janet

Last week, I performed what has become for me a ‘rite of November’: cutting down the meadows at our cottage on Lake Muskoka, a few hours north of Toronto. I have to admit, it isn’t my favourite chore of the year, though I acknowledge I don’t actually have a lot of “chores” up there, given the naturalistic way I garden. But it’s definitely the most labour-intensive – amidst the least pleasant weather conditions of autumn, as it usually turns out. This year it was blowing a gale as I assembled my wardrobe and tools: hedge shears, rake, cart, bundling cloth and ropes, rubber boots, extra layers under my waterproof jacket and fleece band to keep my ears warm. I started out with the big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), the tallest of my prairie grasses, at 7 feet with its turkey-foot flowers. Considering it’s growing in shallow soil atop the ancient rock of the Canadian Precambrian shield, rather than the deep loam of the tallgrass prairie where its roots can extend far down, I think it’s rather happy at the cottage, and I took a selfie of us together before I chopped off its head!

Since my meadows and beds likely measure only about 1600 square feet or so, it’s not a lot to hand-cut with the hedge shears. People wonder why I don’t use a string trimmer, but I find that holding the weight of a trimmer just above ground is harder on my back than bending over and chopping the stems manually. I understand you can buy a harness for the trimmer, so that might be an improvement – but there’s something hypnotically satisfying about working with the shears.

As I work, I rake and pile the stems into windrows near the cart where I’ll eventually pack them up into bundles to carry by hand up the hill behind the cottage to a place out of sight where they can break down. It’s important to leave some strong stems standing up to 12-18 inches (30-45 cm) so native ‘pith-nesting’ bees find them in order to lay their eggs.

If I don’t cut the meadows, the heavy snows of winter will soon bend down the grasses and forb stems, but the thatch that accumulates makes it less attractive for self-seeding wildflowers and daffodils emerging in spring. So if I want the scene below in mid-summer, it pays to prepare for it by cutting old growth.

And if I leave the switch grass (Panicum virgatum) standing after it turns colour in fall….

…. it will look like this in May.

So I remove all the above ground growth in November.

And if I’m travelling during this late autumn window (as we have on a few occasions), the daffodils will still come up in the meadow the following spring, but it’s a bit of a struggle.

In short, if I want this…..

…I have to do this.

And if I want this…..

….I have to do this.

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I could hold off on the cutting until late winter or very early spring, when the ground is still frozen (as I do in my city meadow), but timing doesn’t always work that well up here and a fast thaw means I’m cutting on mucky soil. And since most of the seed-eating birds have flown south and those that remain seem adept at picking up seed from the ground, I’m happy to clear out this…..

…. in order to enjoy this next summer.

Beyond the chores of this month, I love the varied browns of November. I’ve even blogged about Beguiling Brown in the Garden. And I enjoy inspecting all the seedheads as the plants complete their life cycles. Plants like showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa), its white panicled seedheads shown below alongside the charcoal autumn foliage of false indigo (Baptisia australis). (Incidentally, though these plants flower at the opposite ends of summer, they’re among the best for bumble bee foraging.)

Here is the candelabra-like seedhead of culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) with the ubiquitous button-like seedheads of wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa).

Those seedheads above, of course, are proof that the attractive summer flowers, shown below, attracted the pollination services of the appropriate wild bees.

And the late summer-autumn season has also allowed the various grasses to shine, below, including – apart from the big bluestem – Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) and switch grass (Panicum virgatum).

November is the perfect time for dormant seeding native wildflowers, so as I’m chopping the stems, I also do some fast sowing into the meadows, using my boot toe to kick little bare spots into the soil, then grinding some of the seeds just below the surface, while leaving others exposed. I do this with New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis), below.

Chopping, raking, piling, carrying. Chopping, raking, piling, carrying. After a good day-and-a-half in blustery wind and intermittent cold rain, I manage to take 8 tied bundles of stems up the back hill to a spot on top of the pile of blast rock that was cleared when we built our home here on this waterbound peninsula 16 years ago. In time, the vegetation will decompose amidst the staghorn sumac pioneers and create a more complex meadow planting here.

Finally, as I finish washing out the cart, coiling the garden hoses, cleaning my tools, bringing everything indoors and preparing to drive back to the city in the waning light of the third day, I gather up a handful of the stems I’ve put aside in my cutting. Because apart from enjoying vases filled with summer flowers in July…..

….. it feels virtuous, somehow, to accord these plants the same respect in November.

To capture a little of the atmosphere of what it’s like to perform this task in November, I’ve made a short video to enjoy here. (Please excuse the wind – it was impossible to find quiet moments.) The good news? My back and I are still on speaking terms!

Hiking With Friends

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Janet

I’m heading off the beaten path in this blog with a personal memoir, a little gift to good friends – but you can come along too, if you like. A few weeks ago, we hiked at a favourite location, the Torrance Barrens in the Lake Muskoka region. It’s a place I visit regularly and blog about, too – and indeed, it’s a spot my hiking gang has visited a few times before, using our cottage as lodging. What’s significant, for me, is that this year’s walk represented the 25^th year my husband and I set aside a weekend in autumn to hike with the group. For it was October 1993 when we were invited “in” and posed, below, near the famous Bruce Trail in Beaver Valley, Ontario – a suitable christening for a pair of novice hikers (I’m in the hat, he’s in the yellow jacket) as we slogged through forest and field in cold, pouring rain.

The Bruce Trail has been our favourite hiking venue, and we’ve slowly bitten off chunks of its 890 kilometre (553 mile) length,

… all the way from the spectacular Lion’s Head Provincial Park up on the Bruce Peninsula overlooking Georgian Bay way back in 1994….

….where we took turns posing on the rugged Amabel dolostone (limestone) cliffs high above the water – capstone that was the bottom of a shallow limestone sea some 420 million years ago…

…..and ate our picnic lunch, as was our custom, on the rocks overlooking the water……

…. to the Niagara Gorge at its south end, in 1995.

In 1996, we ventured off the Bruce Trail and headed to Pelee Island for the weekend. Later, as Lake Erie waves crashed onto shore, we strolled the sand at Point Pelee, Canada’s most southerly point of land.

1998 saw us head east to ‘the County’, i.e. Prince Edward County and Picton, Ontario – just emerging then as the choice destination it has become since then. There we found a particularly picturesque bed & breakfast called The Apple Basket Inn (sadly no longer there)….

…. and lovely scenery nearby, including actual apple baskets at Hughes’ Orchards!

2004 was a special year, when we hiked the tropical hills of Mustique in the Caribbean, courtesy of John & Anne. This is the view of Britannia Bay.

In 2006, we were back on the Bruce Trail over the forks of the Credit River in Caledon….

…. where the group posed for my camera.

The year 2007 saw us beginning our Saturday hike under a rainbow in Collingwood…..

….before hiking the Bruce Trail in the Owen Sound area. It rained that year, as we slogged our way through a carpet of sugar maple leaves in Sydenham Forest.

The glacial potholes in the Sydenham forest were so fascinating, created from the action of glacial melt-water roughly 12,000 years ago, their damp walls home to maidenhair and provincially rare hart’s tongue ferns.

The most spectacular sight was Inglis Falls, which was the site of an 1840s grist mill.

Looking back at our picnic lunch in the rain that day, I recall that we were not going to let the rigors of the hike derail our South Beach diet!

In 2008, we again hosted the hikers at Lake Muskoka where I’d asked Orillia naturalist and mycologist Bob Bowles (navy cap) to give us a walking seminar on mushrooms.

Though the forest floor on our peninsula was laden with maple and beech leaves by that point in October, we were able to key 29 species of mushrooms.

We also hiked the Torrance Barrens that year, where the blueberry bushes were bright red and the paper birch skeletons shimmering white.

We eased into our 2009 hiking weekend in Prince Edward County with a wine-tasting personally conducted by Norman Hardie at his renowned vineyard.

We all enjoyed a sip — best be prepared ahead of a hiking trip!

The next day, when we hiked the soaring dunes of Sandbanks Provincial Park….

….. where some found time to wade in the waters of Lake Ontario…..

… I did a little botanizing, and was thrilled to see fringed gentians (Gentianopsis crinita) in flower.

In 2010, we headed back to Niagara, but this time we walked about 10 kilometres (6 miles) of the Niagara River Parkway…..

….where the view of the river was spectacular…..

….before getting into our cars (ah, the magic of the pre-parked cars!) and driving to Ravine Vineyard for lunch.

In 2012, we hiked near Susan’s beautiful farm…..

….. where we sat for a group photo (again, of most of us, but not quite all).
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As with many of our hikes, we enjoyed brilliant fall colour – here of Susan’s gorgeous paper birch…..

In 2014, we bunked in at Anne and Bob’s in Collingwood, and headed out on the Kolapore trail, which Bob helps maintain.

Though it sometimes feels like a dark cathedral of trees as we hike amidst thousands of slender trunks of sugar maple, beech and birch….

…. it’s good to look up occasionally, and see fall-coloured leaves fluttering against the autumn sky.

The trail that year was muddy in places – there was the odd little spill…..

The vegetation was wonderful: here are hart’s tongue ferns (Asplenium scolapendrium), quite rare in the region.

Though non-native, it’s always a treat to see watercress (Nasturtium officinale) in a clean, moving stream.

In 2015, eight of us decided to pack our bags and head to a different kind of forest for our autumn hike: a rain forest. In Costa Rica!

And do you know how mother nature makes a rain forest? That’s right…….

Let’s just say our hiking attire was a little lighter than normal, given the almost total humidity and warm temperatures.

Five of us did the zip-line through the jungle. I chickened out but served as the documentary photographer.

(I wrote a special blog about El Remanso Lodge on the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, if you want to read a little more.)

In 2016, we hiked the Mad River Side Trail near Glen Huron, Ontario. The colours were spectacular.

Here’s a video I made of that lovely hike along the Mad River.

When we arrived at the base of the Devil’s Glen Ski Club to have lunch, I made a group shot, (well, most of us and one guest – a few had wandered away) and just managed to get myself back into the frame before the shutter clicked.

Heading back to our lodging, we stopped at an apple stand and stocked up on Northern Spy apples, my favourite for pies and crisps.

Which brings me to this year, the 25^thedition of our hike, when we once again met in Muskoka and walked the beautiful Torrance Barrens. We marvelled at the fluffy white clouds reflected in Highland Pond….

…and noted the tamaracks (Larix laricina) at the water’s edge.

Bob pointed out aspects of geology, as in ‘this is gneiss, not pure granite’.

We walked past my favourite paper birch….

…..and saw the fluffy cotton grass (Eriophorum vaginatum) flanking the bog.

The little bridge over the small pond is sinking in the middle and necessitated a ‘one-at-a-time’ rule.

It’s always fun to stop and look at the erratic boulder left behind when the ice retreated, and it appears that Alex Tilley, founder of Tilley Hats, agreed. This little interpretive sign was paid for by Tilley, whom I’ve seen hiking the Barrens.

With so much rain this summer and autumn, many parts of the path were waterlogged and Bob (the veteran trail groomer) pointed out drier spots to navigate.

We crossed Southwood Road and finished our hike in the deeper soil of a forest….

….featuring bracken ferns and beautiful red oaks.

A tiny red-bellied snake (Storeria occipitomaculata) was on the path (it’s only my lens that makes it look huge) – one of many reptiles I’ve photographed in the Barrens over the years.

And at the end of the trail, we posed for our traditional photo (minus four who couldn’t be with us this year). Over a quarter-century, we’ve seen our children grow up, marry, change jobs, and have their own kids. We’ve talked about books, theatre, food, health and travel to faraway places. We’ve lost spouses or partners, and felt the comfort of the friends who knew them well. And we’ve welcomed new partners to the group and made them feel welcome and loved. It is a simple thing to do, walking a trail, and it reminds us that we need nature – and the company of friends – to live full lives.

*****

In memory of Murray, Tim and Jim.

Monkshood & Snakeroot for a Fall Finale

Posted on October 21, 2017 by Janet

What a luscious October afternoon! I looked out my back window and was drawn, as I always am this time in autumn, to the furthest corner of the garden, where a little fall scene unfolds that I treasure more because it’s a secret. Want to see it? Let’s take a little stroll past the messy pots on the deck with their various sedums and swishing sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula) out into the garden past the table and chairs that haven’t been used since… when? August?

Keep going to where the lovely chartreuse Tiger Eyes sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) is currently doing its Hollywood star thing in brilliant apricot…..

But what’s this scene, just behind it?

Yes, two stalwarts of the autumn garden – and I mean autumn, fall, October! Autumn monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’) and autumn snakeroot (Actaea simplex), aka fall bugbane. Each year, they flower at the same time, and enjoy identical conditions in my garden, i.e. the most moisture-retentive soil (lowest corner of the garden by a few inches), with reasonable midday sunshine but dappled shade a good portion of the day. The fragrance of the snakeroot is fabulous, something a little soft and incense-like, or reminiscent of talcum powder (in the nicest way). Colour-wise, I love blue and white, from the earliest anemones-with-scilla in April to this shimmering, assertive finale.

And did I mention pollinators? As in bumble bees of different species, honey bees……

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(WHO has the beehives near my house? I’d love to know)…..

……hover flies…..

….and paper wasps, below, as well as ants and cucumber beetles.

Monkshood is deadly poisonous, but its pollen seems to be an attraction for bumble bees and honey bees once the asters have finished up.

Finally, do note that the snakeroot is not any of those fancy-schmancy dark-leaved cultivars like ‘Brunette’, but the straight species with plain-Jane-green-foliage,. And that it used to be called Cimicifuga, but the gene sequencers have now moved it into Actaea. It is a lovely plant and should be used much, much more.

Festival Theatre Garden – Stratford

Posted on September 29, 2017 by Janet

For the first time in more than 20 years, I spent a few days this month at Ontario’s venerable Stratford Festival. (For the record, we saw Guys & Dolls – highly recommended; HMS Pinafore – fun Gilbert & Sullivan; and The Changeling – read a story précis before seeing!). We walked along the Avon River on our way to the first play, and I thought for the thousandth time how lovely our native wildflowers look in early autumn. This is heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides) with lots of bees!

The entire countryside around Stratford is gorgeous in September, with rows of tall corn and nearly-ripe pumpkins filling the fields near Highway 7 as you drive in. In fact, it’s one of the beautiful farms in the area that renowned singer Loreena McKennitt calls home. I interviewed her in Stratford for a story I proposed and wrote for Chatelaine Gardens! magazine some 21 years ago.

A few summers later, I visited Stratford to photograph the new garden at the Festival Theatre for a story I proposed and wrote for Landscape Trades Magazine. Having opened in 1997, it was under the expert care of Stratford Festival head gardener Harry Jongerden, who is now Executive Director of the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Returning to Stratford this month, I was excited to see how the garden had weathered over the past few decades and, especially, to see what was in bloom in the first week of autumn. Since my magazine story was published such a long time ago, I’ll take the liberty of quoting it from time to time here, as we tour the plants – like this lovely Japanese anemone (Anemone x hybrida ‘Whirlwind’).

***********

Two hours west of Toronto, on a hill overlooking the Avon River, sits the Festival Theatre, main stage and head office for Canada’s renowned Stratford Festival. Since its first production in 1953, a play directed by Tyrone Guthrie, starting Alec Guinness and mounted under a canvas tent, the Festival has enjoyed wide critical acclaim, and Stratford has become a mecca for theatre lovers — and garden lovers. Isn’t this swamp hibiscus (H. moscheutos) spectacular?

In 1997, the Festival Theatre (one of three in Stratford used by the festival) underwent a major renewal under the direction of Toronto architect Thomas Payne, then of KPMB Architects, now with Thomas Payne Architect. Trained at Yale and Princeton and one-time protégé of Barton Myers, Payne’s work includes the ethereal Fields Institute for Mathematics at the University of Toronto, a new home for the National Ballet of Canada, the much celebrated Tanenbaum Sculpture Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), the restoration of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the Young Theatre for the Performing Arts (Soulpepper). His work at Stratford involved indoor renovations such as changing the rake of the theatre floor to create more spacious seating; adding technical gutters and an acoustical canopy; and renovating the lobby. And with the collaboration of Toronto landscape designer Neil Turnbull, Payne created The Arthur Meighen Gardens, named for Canada’s ninth prime minister and funded, in large part, by the Meighen family foundation. It was a new garden that was as rich in theatrical allusion as it was in stone and plants.

A horseshoe-shaped entrance driveway lined with concrete arbor columns, each one draped with a clematis in early summer – or morning glories in late summer — encircles the garden. “At night,” Payne told me then, they look like Noguchi lamps.”

The columns, each dedicated to a local benefactor, are clothed in a sock of inexpensive, water-repellent canvas symbolizing the canvas roof of the first performance tent.

The garden is a fragrant, romantic tumble of perennials, designed to be in bloom as the curtain rises in mid-April, and still have something in flower for October’s final curtain call. In late September, ligularia and blackeyed susans (Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’) are still providing colour as the ornamental grasses begin to flower.

Of the garden’s hard structure, Thom Payne said: “We wanted a great stone wall with greenery growing on it. The concept is quite mathematical. It’s a cribbage – a series of limestone terraces – that fall away on a grid toward the lowest point.” Typical of Mr. Payne’s tendency to use the landscape to hint at what can be found indoors, the main path travels through the garden and over the bridge above the formal lily pond – all on the axis of Aisle 2 Entrance Lobby. “It plays a prominent role in delivering people to the front door.”

In creating the cribbing for the terraces, Payne was mindful of his budget but still wanted the natural appearance of stone. He used pigmented, specially-finished, architectural concrete as an inexpensive foundation for the walls. He then capped it with 6-inch split-faced Eramosa limestone from local quarries. “There are a lot of things,” he says, “that are extremely cost-effective, yet I think the overall effect is one of richness, theatricality and permanence.” Below is a sturdy, gold yarrow (Achillea filipendulina) with a deep red swamp hibiscus.

When it came time to plan the 32 terrace beds, Neil Turnbull drew on a long career as one of the country’s most inspired plantsmen and landscape designers. In seeking a theme, he hit upon another powerful symbol of early Shakespeare theatre, its festival banners and ribbons. “I decided to create three ribbons of thyme that flow like curving rivers through the beds,” he explained. (The thyme is evident in the magazine cover above but I suspect other perennials have overwhelmed it somewhat over the years.) Below is Japanese anemone with blue leadwort (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides).

Known for solving geometry on the drafting table but aesthetics on-site, Turnbull reasoned that the garden’s strength would be in the sheer massiveness of its plantings. He had 21,000 plants expressly grown, and then placed them in recurring combinations throughout the beds. In late summer, some of our wonderful natives provide spectacular colour, like goldenrod (Solidago sp.) and magenta-purple New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) below.

Lots of fall asters have been used at the theatre, like ‘Andenken an Alma Pötschke’, below, with a honey bee nectaring….
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…. and a dwarf lavender-purple aster paired with ‘Rosy Jane’ gaura (Oenothera lindheimerii), below.

This summer has seen an extraordinary amount of rain and below-average temperatures until September, when we had a heat wave. So some plants had already begun to undergo a foliage change, like spring-flowering Euphorbia griffithi ‘Fireglow’, below.

As visitors reach the top of the planting beds on their way into the theatre, they cross a bridge over a formal rectangular pool…

…..featuring the splash of a steel fountain.

The pool spans nearly the width of the garden….

….and features aquatic plants like canna lily…..

……water lilies,….

…. and unusual aquatics like rain lily (Zephyranthes candida).

As I left the garden, I noted all kind of pollinators flitting about. I saw bumble bees foraging deep in the yellow wax bells (Kirengeshoma palmata)…..

….a carpenter bee nectar-robbing on obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana)….

….and a hover-fly getting lost in the throat of a morning glory (Ipomoea tricolor).

Almost twenty years after my first visit, it was good to see the garden still looking gorgeous and being enjoyed by thousands of theatre-goers annually — plus untold numbers of tiny buzzing and fluttering visitors, too.

The Festival Theatre gardens are located at 55 Queen Street, Stratford, Ontario. The Festival is open from mid-April to the end of October; for more information visit the Stratford Festival website.

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

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Festival Theatre Garden – Stratford

Adapted from an article that appeared originally in Landscape Trades magazine

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Adapted from an article that appeared originally in Landscape Trades magazine

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