From artists’ eyes to a garden palette
There is a whole bunch of ways I could start this column: that this garden began with a shed; that this is Brigitte Gerle’s first garden; that Otto Gerle has mastered the art of using trees, shrubs and other woody plants in the garden; that this is a garden of big plants (and ideas) in a small space.
I’ll work through them all. It did start with a shed. When Brigitte and Otto moved into their Stoney Creek Mountain home, in the neighbourhood known as Heritage Green, there was nothing in the backyard except scrubby grass and a few cedars drooping to the ground. That was August 2008.
Otto knew he needed a garden shed. But “a box in a corner never looks right,” he says. So he found plans online for a fivesided model and created a handsome, well-proportioned structure that enhances the garden. It holds their tools, a lawn mower and, in the winter, Otto’s snow blower. Just outside it, an old but rewired lamppost provides soft illumination in the evenings.
Beds, borders, containers and hanging baskets followed.
Fast forward 11 years and there is now a garden overflowing with colour, texture and shape. It’s a small area, about eight metres deep and about 15 metres across at its widest point, but I’m not sure I’ve seen a garden that makes better use of limited space.
For Brigitte, this was something but that she’s taken to in (pardon the pun) spades. She and Otto knew each other as children in Canada (they’re both of Austrian heritage) but she had lived in Vienna for much of her adult life. They reconnected when she returned to Canada and they bought the house when they got married. In Vienna, she says, she always lived in a condominium.
“She’s out here in the garden every day,” Otto says.
They both bring an artist’s eye to their garden: Brigitte is a skilled amateur photographer and Otto loved sketching and drawing from an early age.
They’ve used a lot of tall, thin trees and bushes to give the garden its structure — a kind of architecture. Two columnar oaks are planted side-by-side at the back fence, in a nod to the name of the street — Twinoaks Crescent — they live on. There’s a pyramidal beech, a gingko tree, Korean lilac, a lovely weeping beech, burning bush, lilac and a barberry with wonderful scarlet-and-pink variegated leaves that look almost hand-painted.
A maple tree along the side fence is not popular with a neighbour who has a pool, but Brigitte says it’s not going anywhere. “I want the tree. This is Canada and it’s a maple.”
Weigela and boxwood, Chinese cherry and cotoneaster are part of the mid-height layer of woody plants.
All these are underplanted with a wide range of perennials; clematis adorns the fence. Hydrangea and sedums have latesummer colour and a sort-ofkidney-shaped bed in the middle of the garden shows off Russian sage and purple coneflowers at this time of year.
There are four entrances to the garden: through the house, a gate on either side of the
house and a third gate in the back fence that gives them easy access to the local community mailbox. They’ve planted a few things on the “outside” of the back fence — among them are a barberry, and a deep purple coleus that keeps coming back year after year — and Otto maintains the grass along the city boulevard strip and behind another neighbour.
Brigitte and Otto have done two things in their garden that a visitor could learn from. First, there are two mirrors, one a multi-paned window style mirror and the other a larger display mirror, mounted on the side fences. Attractive in their own right, they also reflect light into the garden and fool the eye into seeing space where none exists.
Second, the couple has gardened the space on either side of the house, connecting the front and rear gardens. On one side, there’s a hosta border and potted plants along the fence and vines atop an arbour. On the other, Otto has built large, deep containers from paving stones and a connector kit. They hold enough soil that perennials and woody plants overwinter in them. Those side gardens make pathways that lead the eye into the garden.
The front garden is less striking but still lovingly planted and maintained. Two massive geraniums plants in pots bracket the front steps, and Brigitte and Otto have planted a miniature crabapple and a beautiful tricolour beech (one of my favourite trees).
About those geraniums: Brigitte doesn’t do small pots of annuals in the spring. She buys the most robust hanging basket she can find and transplants them into containers. The geraniums are simply huge; massive coleus in front and in back are the largest (and healthiest) I’ve seen in a garden this year.
“It’s been a good year for plants,” Brigitte says modestly.
Why does she garden?
“I like everything,” she says. “I like the early mornings. I like the spring, in May when everything is so green, all the shades of green. It takes my mind off problems. It’s stress-relieving.”
Otto is the tinkerer. “I’m always looking to see what I can change, moving things around, building structures, altering beds. But Brigitte has a good instinct for it.”
To suggest Brigitte and Otto are natural gardeners diminishes the effort they’ve put in. This has been a learning experience for Brigitte in particular. But they have a great eye for design, they share their vision of the garden between them, and they have worked hard. The result is truly impressive. Rob Howard is a garden writer, speaker and garden coach who lives and gardens in Hamilton. Find him on Facebook at Rob Howard: Garden Writer, or email him at gardenwriter@bell.net