FEAST YOUR EYES
It seems like yesterday, but it was 36 years ago that a garden writer by the name of Rosalind Creasy revolutionized how gardeners thought of their gardens, with “The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping.” She gave gardeners permission — encouragement — to do more than plant pretty flowers. She urged her readers to mix carrots with the coral bells, lettuce with the lobelia, tomatoes with the thyme.
The flowering (no pun intended) of Creasy’s ideas is in the garden of Eleanor and Ron Steepe, a lovely couple who opened their space for the first time to the Waterdown Garden Walk this summer. Eleanor’s garden, with much assistance from Ron, combines the edible and the ornamental in a designed, stylish way that I’ve not seen before and want to emulate in my own garden.
Eleanor was inspired by two books: “Tottering in My Garden” by Midge Ellis Keeble (one of my very favourites) and “The Art of the Kitchen Garden” by Jan Gertley. But neither of the Steepes is a newcomer to gardening. They’re both “farm kids” from Huron County, and the lessons learned and the love of gardening discovered there are still strong.
“In the morning, I’d be sent out to hoe in the vegetable garden,” Eleanor says. “That was the vegetables for canning. The kitchen garden was close to the house.”
But now, around their home of close to 30 years, is a garden where the bright red flowers of Scarlet Runner beans twine above a braid of alyssum, where
carefully placed and spaced Brussels sprouts grow beneath of a terrace of zucchini, kale, lettuce and nasturtiums and above another bed of parsley, marigolds and tomatoes. Beside a long bed of autumn-bearing raspberries, a morning glory climbs a fallen tree limb stuck upright into the dirt. It attracts a hummingbird as Eleanor and a visitor talk just a metre away.
Here’s a garden where, tucked in among the flowers or in their own containers, there are chicory and okra, lettuce and watercress, bok choy and peas, Jerusalem artichokes and a dozen other herbs and kitchen-garden staples.
But this garden is not all given over to vegetables. Eleanor tracked down her favourite rose — Joseph’s Coat, which flowers in red, orange and yellow against glossy green foliage — and it has pride of place at the foot of their deck. Rose mallow, a type of hardy hibiscus, is in deep pink flower now. Clematis climbs the fence. And in the back, “unorganized” part of the garden, hydrangeas, heuchera, Jack-in-the-Pulpit and gold Japanese forest grass make a sweet picture under the trees.
Ron built a stunning water feature, with a multi-stepped waterfall that delivers its stream into a rock bed. There’s no pond, just the sparkle and sound of running water.
Near the waterfall, a dear friend’s old wheelbarrow has been painted and kept as a memento; next to it, two scarecrows do more for the grandchildren’s amusement than anything practical. An unnamed Japanese maple, dazzling in bright red foliage in the fall, has grown from a dollar-priced runt to make a spectacular picture from their living room.
None of this came easy: the back garden is partly shady and cool and wet (sometimes still snowy) late into the spring. The roots of surrounding trees are so close to the surface that Ron had to build raised beds in which most of the edibles and ornamentals grow. Eleanor grows most of her garden close to the back of the house, where it is a little sunnier, drier and warmer, and she uses trellises and tall tripods to get her plants “up into the sunlight.”
The bane of their garden’s existence is the wildlife: squirrels, chipmunks (hordes of them) and raccoons. “I do a lot of whining about these animals,” Eleanor says with a laugh. “I can’t seem to grow anything. The seedlings just get torn apart.”
The front of their home is especially lovely. The house has a low wall in front that creates a courtyard below the front steps. A daughter’s wedding and the accompanying photo opportunities led to a redo of the steps and redesign of the courtyard area into a circular space ringed by lush planting of hostas, ferns and other foliage plants. Two mandevillas in decorative containers bracket the front door; others grow up a handsome iron-look trellis against the garage wall. Their bright, tropical flowers perfectly complement the mainly green effect of the perennial plantings.
Between the low wall and the street is one of my favourite trees — a “Forest Pansy” eastern redbud. I’m to blame for it.
Eleanor heard me talking about the tree on the radio several years ago and decided that’s what she wanted to anchor the front. Two were planted and failed; a “driveway guy” doing some work for them said he would get one and returned with “scrawny little stick” of a tree. Seven, perhaps eight years later, it is a wonderful, spreading mature tree with great shape, lovely bark and, in the spring, deep magenta-violet leaves that look splendid against the grey stone of the house.
Ron and Eleanor spent 25 years in an apartment (although she gardened madly in two other spots) before they settled in this home. They love it and they love their garden, and it shows.