Sharing vacation gardens
GARDENING
I set out with my camera over my shoulder. I was on a mission. I was looking for ‘words.’
We are on holiday this week on the shores of Lake Huron where pretty lake-side towns, lighthouses, sandy beaches and glorious sunsets abound, but garden words can be somewhat illusive.
My first stop on my quest to find words was High Street in Southampton. It’s a street full of potential: summery shops, pretty front gardens and a vibrant boulevard garden furnished with generous benches overlooking Lake Huron. At the end of High Street, you can catch a waterfront trail that winds along the shoreline to the mouth of the Saugeen River. The trail traces a path through sand dunes, wetland ponds and a flowering dune meadow, punctuated with butterfly way stations. (Butterfly way stations are gardens filled with nectar and host plants that encourage monarch butterflies to visit.)
On this early summer morning, people were jogging, walking and cycling, but no one slowed down to appreciate the community of wildlife that comes to life when you stop and listen: bees, butterflies, dragonflies, frogs, butterflies and songbirds populate this habitat trail. I even a caught sight of a little turtle sunning himself on a piece of driftwood. I saw several monarch butterflies along with pearl crescents and sulphurs flitting above the wildflowers and grasses.
Back on High Street, I took my time getting back to the car. I stopped to appreciate a drift of old fashioned hollyhocks, all dressed in delicate, peach and pink satin petticoats. Welcoming visitors to a century home that now houses a small inn, the hollyhocks seem to dance above a border filled with hydrangeas, daylilies, roses and purple butterfly bush. It’s a pretty border that really sets the tone for an historic building.
Waterfront towns are not only old-time houses, a modern house with a vibrant walled garden invited me to cross the street for a closer look. The waist-high stone wall was softened with citrus-toned nasturtiums. Both ends of the wall were punctuated with arching wands of butterfly bush, their rich scent wafted across the sidewalk and perfumed the air — no wonder the butterflies find them irresistible.
After lunch, I set out once again, this time on foot. Many of the cottages in this area are decorated with pretty summer gardens. Oldfashioned orange daylilies (often called ditch lilies) abound. I like the way they stretch along the moist ditches like a row of cheerful orange flags.
I slowed my stride to enjoy some of my favourite gardens, most are nestled in sunny pockets beneath a towering canopy of maple, birch, black walnut and sadly, ash trees — the emerald ash borer is just starting to rear its destructive face in this area. Along the lake, the back roads are lined with hedgerows populated with cedar, dogwood, daylily, daisy fleabane, dame’s rocket, brown-eyed Susan’s, everlasting pea and Joe-Pye weed. The combinations vary as the conditions change, sun versus shade, moist versus dry. It’s comforting to find my favourite patches of brown-eyed Susan’s or orange daylilies enjoying their mid-summer fling along the roadside.
It was just about time to head back to the cottage when I spied a sparkling white patch of shasta daisies marking the end of driveway. I pulled out my camera to capture a pretty pearl crescent butterfly sunning herself on the cushion-like centre of a daisy. When I looked up, the homeowner waved a cheery hello from her front porch.
“I’m just admiring your beautiful garden,” I said.
“You are welcome to come in and see the rest of the garden,” she said. And so I followed a gravel path into a garden filled with shasta daisies, yellow false sunflowers, fiery-red crocosmia and bee balm, violet trailing bellflowers and hosta. Stepping stones etched with leaf patterns decorated the pathway, a generous bird feeding station anchored the meadow-like garden.
“This garden was my therapy,” she said. “When I came home after my surgery and chemo in 2003, I started this garden as a way of healing.”
I was not surprised, I could feel this love in this sheltered space.
“You are welcome to pick a bouquet of flowers for your cottage,” she said, handing me a pair of secateurs before getting in to her car and pulling out of the driveway.
“I keep the pruner in the mailbox,” she added, “I believe flowers are for sharing.”
And so I found myself cutting a bouquet of flowers in a strangers garden.
On my way home I collected stems of Queen Anne’s lace, ferns and everlasting pea along our driveway to finish the bouquet and suddenly realized that I was given more than a simple floral bouquet. It was also a bouquet of garden words. — Theresa Forte is a local garden writer, photographer and speaker. You can reach her by calling 905-351-7540 or by email at theresa_forte@sympatico.ca.