Gardens of Earthly Delights
ANNUAL TORONTO BOTANICAL GARDENS TOUR ENOUGH TO LEAVE SOME PARTICIPANTS GREEN WITH ENVY
Celebrating 30 years of satisfying t he urge to inspect other people’s gardens — and causing a few cases of severe garden envy along the way — the Toronto Botanical Gardens Through the Garden Gate tour recently offered a peek into 30 of the most spectacular and diverse gardens in the city.
The tour is self- guided — participants picked up a map and wrist band and dipped into a shade- loving, mostly green garden of textures where the play of movement and shadow is the feature; a front garden of classical topiary and neatly trimmed boxwood hedges; and a secret woodland oasis where the outbuildings are alive with green roofs.
Master Gardeners — including the TBG’s own Paul Zammit, director of horticulture — were stationed at each property ready to field the toughest questions. We had one: how do they choose which gardens to put on the tour?
“Once a neighbourhood is selected for the tour,” says Jenny Rhodenizer, TBG’s director of marketing and communication, a scouting team — all volunteers, many of them Toronto Master Gardeners — goes out to look for gardens. This takes place at least one year in advance of the tour. Teams of two to three volunteers will walk or drive the streets and base their initial impression on curb appeal.
Of the eight homes on the Douglas Drive leg of the tour, one boldly featured a vegetable garden in the front, and another, a 1915 home designed by architect Eden Smith in the Arts and Crafts style, surprised with a whimsical Alice in Wonderland themed bed, complete with charming statuettes of Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the White Rabbit standing to attention around an iron urn spilling over with annuals for colour. This quarter-acre property is a beautifully balanced collection of elements: manicured lawn, hard surfaces, and mature perennial beds.
This year’s tour focused on the stately homes in the well- established neighbourhoods of North Rosedale and Moore Park. On Harper Avenue, Zammit says, the owner faced some challenges: “… multiple exposures with varying conditions and the need to create privacy.” The front garden features green- on- green layering — ferns, Solomon’s seal, hostas, coral bells — under a great old ash tree supporting a lichen-covered swing. One of Zammit’s favourite features is a surprising green roof topping the garage.
On Heath Street East, classical elegance out front — quadrants of boxwood hedges, sculpted yews and standard hydrangeas — was balanced in the back, with a welcoming and varied entertaining space for dining and conversation, with a pond, waterfall, and garden house all well- secluded behind a wonderful collection of shrubs, trees, and perennials.
The tour explores a different part of the city every year.