CABIN ROCKERY INSPIRED THIS QUEENSLAND GARDEN
“My father’s love of nature inspired us to garden” says Jerry Cvach. And inspire it did, as is evident from Jerry and his wife Judy’s amazing landscape in Queensland. Both Jerry and Judy were born in Brno, Moravia, the second-largest city in the Czech Republic. Cvach’s family would spend summers at a cabin, 60 kilometres from Brno, which took several hours and multiple train transfers to get to.
Often, villages in the area would own a clay pit for the benefit of the villagers. As houses were made of brick, residents would make their own bricks from the clay — none of this drywall and pre-fab heresy.
“My father bought the clay pit as the site for our cabin. As you can well imagine, not an ideal site for a garden, so rockery and terracing on clay soil was what we built. I was raised on clay and rockery.”
The Cvachs left Brno as refugees after the Russian invasion and arrived in Calgary on Oct. 10, 1968. As they were both graduates of construction studies, employment was a cinch (Calgary was, in those days, one of the fastest-growing cities in North America). Jerry enjoyed a 23-year career with Jager Homes and Judy was a colleague for many of those years.
No surprise then that, in 1975, a Jager home in the then relatively new community of Queensland would become their first and only house. Landscaping was not deemed all that important for builders at that time and a house on a bare lot was pretty much it. “We used to joke that you could see Saskatchewan from our neighbourhood as there were no trees and the lots were very flat.”
And flat was not compatible with rockery nor terracing, so the new homeowners had many truckloads of loam brought in to create a slope or berm on the east-facing front yard. Rock gardens don’t work unless there is an undulation to the landscape. The Cvachs hand-picked the extensive variety of rocks — three or four at a time — after many hikes in the mountains.
The backyard, which is Judy’s domain, encompasses several levels of terracing.
“Hers looks different than mine. She is very orderly, whereas my front yard is more free-form,” says Jerry.
Perennials, specifically hens and chicks and more than 80 hostas, are the predominant features of the garden. Clipped mugo pines and spruce trees for vertical interest as well as pockets of Siberian iris, primula and phlox add to the harmony and balance.
If a plant does not thrive where it is initially planted, the gardeners will simply move it to another spot and see if that works. Sometimes even moving it less than a metre to another location can make all the difference.
And you’ll not find an annual in sight, other than geraniums as a nod to the couple’s European roots. They winter their geraniums and will propagate more plants in Jerry’s studio in the backyard.
Contrary to some who insist that mulching and fertilizing is key, the Cvachs simply add a compost mixture into the freshly dug hole before a new plant goes in and that is pretty much it. The hens and chicks keep the weeds down and therefore mulch, other than in selected areas, is not needed.
Watering is paramount, however, as a metre or so beneath the soil is all gravel. Good drainage is not a problem, to put it mildly.
Surprisingly, the Cvachs know little about plant names, garden theory and the like, even though their gorgeous garden belies this fact.
But surely, they have made at least one mistake, as we all do in our quest to emulate Monet’s glorious Giverny?
“Biggest mistake ever was at the very beginning. We bought snow on the mountain. I waged a three-year battle to get rid of it.”
HIT OR MYTH?
Peonies will not bloom without ants: Myth. Although the two do seem to go together, ants simply love the sweet ‘sap’ secreted from peony buds. Peonies will bloom just fine with or without ants. You can turn pink hydrangeas blue by adding rusty nails to the soil: Hit. A chelated iron-rich fertilizer will also turn a blue spruce even more blue.
Fertilizing nasturtiums will produce more leaves and fewer flowers: Myth. Rage Plus is an ideal fertilizer for nasturtiums and will ensure a profusion of blooms. Adding coffee grounds to soil will increase acidity: Hit. The slight acidity reduces the pH in the soil. A pH below 6.5 is considered acidic. Epsom salts are a great magnesium boost for soil: Hit. Wet summers cause iron and magnesium to leach out of the soil. Diluting 220g of Epsom salts in 10 litres of water will fix the problem.