OPEN GARDEN WEEK Show off your cultivated sanctuary to the rest of the community between June 24 and July 1 //
And the call to the annual Open Garden Week
I PATRICIA
WALK BY Barton’s garden several times a week; we’re not quite neighbours but close enough to see each other’s front doors if we stretch. I’ve admired her corner property for years: I think of it as the “tiny perfect garden.” But we hadn’t really introduced ourselves to each other until just recently.
What I love about Patricia’s garden is that it is so wholly to scale. Every tree, shrub, flower border and even the stacked-stone wall in front of a terraced bed is in keeping with the small lot and the bungalow on it. This is not a miniature garden. There’s a circular patio and deep, generous flower borders. But when we talk about the space, Patricia volunteers the word “tiny” without prompting.
Originally from Liverpool, England, Patricia came to Canada in 1967. A retired teacher, she spends her days in her garden, hiking the Bruce Trail and other trails in the U.K, and volunteering at the Royal Botanical Gardens (not necessarily in that order). Her RBG friendships (and plant sales) means she has a lovely selection of plants, and knows the proper names and habits of them.
Her front garden peaks very early in the season: a mass planting of snowdrops alerts the neighbourhood that winter is ending; they’re replaced by an equally glorious mass of scilla (a.k.a. squill or bluebells) and grape hyacinths that announces spring. Geraniums and bluish-purple heliotrope are settled in with an oak leaf hydrangea and hens-and-chicks (sempervivum) for the summer.
It’s around the corner — Patricia’s side and back gardens — that really shine. They are on full display to the daily parade of dog owners, sports fans and RBG trail walkers heading for the nearby park. The side garden is anchored by a large lilac bush, now in deeply perfumed bloom. There’s a great old cedar with wonderfully undulating foliage, a colourful barberry shrub, a handsome old flowering crabapple tree, and a big conifer that provides cover for a compost bin and gives Patricia a little privacy when she’s dining al fresco on her small back deck.
More bulbs are planted under the trees, along with rodgersia, a bigleafed, almost primeval-looking plant that grows enormous leaves in the temperate areas of the U.K. and our own West Coast. I didn’t know it would grow in this area and have already begged Patricia for a division at some point.
There was a large Japanese maple marking the entrance to the back garden. It seemed dead, but the man with the saw insisted there was life in it yet. The main branches were removed, and new deep crimson growth has enveloped the stumps, leaving a wonderful compact tree/ bush even more suited to the scale of the garden. On the other side of the garden is an Eastern redbud, now gorgeously blanketed in small mauve blossoms.
The flower borders are a small catalogue of interesting perennials: lupins and iris, jack-in-the-pulpit and Solomon’s seal and lily of the valley. Deep purple alliums look magnificent in the bright, late-spring sun. Peonies and poppies, monkshood and heuchera, painter’s palette (a persicaria or fleeceflower) and plumbago, ferns and bleeding heart, pulmonaria, a magnificent old wisteria vine. Frickart’s aster provides blue, daisylike flowers. There’s a small herb bed by the path, rhubarb in a corner, and garlic grows in a neat line in a rose bed.
Yes, of course, the roses. Patricia says they’re the legacy of the previous owner; I think it’s some of her own English gardening soul showing itself.
She has a couple of hostas, interesting because they are the original “plantain lily” form. Patricia has the British knack for being plain-spoken. “I don’t really like hostas. But they serve their purpose.”
Here’s a garden that so well illustrates it’s not about the space you have, but the way you use it. Patricia quietly but ardently gardens along, and passersby are all the richer for it.
Open Garden Week
TAKE A LOOK at your garden. Really. Step back and look. If it’s anything like other gardens in this area,
it’s never looked better. Spring exploded out of the ground with such force after its cold, wet start that gardens are brimming over with growth and colour.
It’s the perfect year to put your garden into the Hamilton Spectator Open Garden Week.
The concept is breathtakingly simple: open your garden to visitors, who will ooh and ahh over your hard work and creativity and imagination. You feel good about people enjoying your garden; they feel good about you letting them share it.
Here’s how it works: pick a day or days and hours between June 24 and July 1. Send the information to me, to be compiled into easy-to-follow listings. The Spectator publishes those listings, in the paper and online, in the days shortly before Open Garden Week begins. Visitors show up at the posted times.
It’s that simple. No charge, no tickets, no tour schedule to stick to.
To take part, send the following information, in this order, to: gardenwriter@bell.net
• Address
• Nearest intersection or community if it’s a rural address. (Almost everyone has access to GPS or Google maps now.)
• Your name.
• Description of your garden in 25 words or less.
• The dates (from June 24 to July 1 inclusive) and hours you will open your garden.
• A phone number by which the listing can be verified (it will not be published).
Email me the information by
Monday, June 11. This is a firm deadline. The listings will appear in The Spectator shortly before the event begins.
That’s it, folks. Hope to hear from you soon.
Rob Howard is a garden writer, speaker and garden coach living and gardening in Hamilton. You can reach him through Facebook at Rob Howard: garden writer or by email at gardenwriter@bell.net