GREAT GARDENS
Stunning private oases open their gates for charity.
4th annual Heritage Vancouver Garden Tour
June 27-28 | Various venues
Tickets and info: $35 for a passport to 16 gardens, available at garden centres and online at heritagevancouver.org
Today is the start of Garden Days, a coast-to-coast, weekend celebration across Canada to get us to think about gardens and gardening and the value of stopping to smell the roses.
It is fitting, therefore, that we take time today to look at some of the 16 terrific private gardens that will be open for visiting as part of the fourth annual Heritage Vancouver Garden Tour.
I visited six of the gardens recently and have seen two others in the program before, so I have a fairly good idea of the overall quality of this tour — and it is first class.
You definitely won’t be wasting your time or money if you buy a ticket. And the money raised goes to a good cause: promoting, preserving and protecting aspects of Vancouver heritage.
On the tour, you’ll get to see a diverse assortment of gardens of various styles and sizes: from quaint, small-space, cottagelike gardens to chic, minimalist creations to larger, grander, more elaborate ones, including a lovely English-style garden that looks as if it had been lifted directly from the Cotswolds and a garden inspired by a French château.
Penny Noble, who came up with the idea for the tour and has organized it for the past four years, says a highlight this year is the “seaside cluster” — a group of four townhouse gardens in the Point Grey area, close to the ocean.
Noble also says the tour includes some excellent front yard gardens, created by owners who said how much their gardens boosted “neighbourliness and community, with people stopping to admire the gardens and chat.”
I started my short tour by visiting the seaside cluster in the seven-unit townhouse complex that incorporates the historic Ells House at the corner of Point Grey Road and Stephens Street.
Outside their townhome, Julie and Rick Marzolf have helped established a large Green Streets garden in a traffic island at the junction of the popular bike route leading from Point Grey Road up Stephens and along York.
So, even before you get to the Marzolf’s garden, you’ll want to stop and admire the work done by them and others at this island, which is loaded with bronze and blue ornamental grasses, nepeta and roses and anchored by two red maples.
Entry to the Marzolf’s cosy pocket garden is smaller, lowkey and intimate. A narrow path of Pennsylvania blue stone bends to the left and leads to a raised patio, discreetly tucked out of sight behind a light screen of trees and shrubs. The scale is perfect within the space available.
“We wanted a friendly, hospitable garden,” says Julie. “We didn’t come from a gardening background, but we do come from a background of hospitality, so we wanted this to be a pleasant social space.”
A paperbark maple and contorted hazel flank the entrance where a pot has been filled with black ornamental grass and the bright yellow foliage and blue flowers of Tradescantia blue and gold.
Beside the patio, a well-established Chilean potato tree (Solanum jasminoides ‘Glasnevin’) soars and smothers the porch of the Marzolf home with clusters of blue flowers.
Around the patio with its raised platform centre are all sorts of evergreen shrubs, such as fatsia, spotted laurel, choisya and camellia, all densely underplanted with perennials and grasses, including euphorbias, heuchera and Japanese forest grass.
“This used to be one big grass puddle,” says Rick. “It was a good decision to change everything and build this patio. It was really a no man’s land before; now we have this intimate sitting space.”
Julie says: “I’m a gleaner and a budget gardener. I make use of whatever plants I can get my hands on. I have even learned to propagate heuchera from side shoots.
“But we also like it when people walk by and see the garden and get this goofy smile on their face.”
John Morse and Willa Henry, who moved to B.C. from Ontario four years ago, live next door.
Entry to their pocket-sized garden is through a white picket gate with a vine-covered arch.
The garden is rectangular and meant to be viewed full-length from a sunny wooden deck off the house with steps that stretch the entire width of the yard.
Under the canopy of an old red-leaf Japanese maple, the couple has covered the ground with plants they couldn’t grow when they lived in the east: rhododendron, camellia, fatsia, hydrangea and variegated cornus.
These all share space with astilbes, hostas, hellebores, euphorbias and crocosmia to form a cheerful jumble in a welldefined, sheltered, cottage-style setting.
A path of stepping-stones down the middle leads to where a treasured statue bought on a trip to Cambodia has been placed in the dappled shade of the maple.
The garden gets a restful, seaside feel from the sound of wind chimes hung in a tree and the occasional flutter of birds drawn to a feeder strategically placed for perfect viewing.
On the deck, pots have been stuffed with basil and begonias and calibrachoa for summer interest.
There are two other smallspace gardens to see in this complex. Both are good examples of what can be achieved to create a patio garden, even where space is tight.
I next visited two very different, side-by-side gardens belonging to Marlee Ross and Joost Bakker and Maureen Burke and Collis Wilson, two couples who have been neighbours on West 1st Ave for almost 30 years.
Both houses and gardens share the same entrance from the street.
To the right, Ross and Bakker have an all-white courtyard garden, professionally installed by Liam Robinson of Watermark Design, with some input architecturally from Bakker.
The garden won an Award of Excellence for Watermark Gardens from the B.C. Landscape and Nursery Association in 2006.
Ross, a Buddhist chaplain, says she chose an all-white garden to create a mood of calm, serenity and purity.
“My grandmother had a white rose garden and I always remembered going there and feeling very happy as a child.”
A silver weeping willowleaf pear tree (Pyrus salicifolia) holds a prominent place in the courtyard along with a large white-flowering camellia, scrambling Madame Alfred Carriere rose and towering evergreen southern magnolia.
Other white-flowered plants featured include peonies, sarcococca, campanula, delphiniums, lilies (Casa Blanca and Polar Star) and nicotiana.
A highlight of the garden is a water wall, where water gently streams down a rippled zinc wall.
Even the patio furniture in this garden is white-silver to go with the planting, and Ross and Bakker both turned up wearing white to complete the picture when I visited.
There are no red, orange, yellow, pink or purple flowers, but there are some blue ornamental grasses — a stretch of leymus (dune grass) along the outside wall and blue fescue inside — plus black mondo grass planted in bulk in a trough.
The middle of the garden has been slightly raised into a berm to add height and interest and there is a subtle transition down three circular stepping stones into a more secluded lower patio.
Bakker says he deliberately chose “ordinary stone” for the courtyard’s paving but had stones cut in irregular sizes to create a more interesting pattern.
Gaps between stones have been filled with a mixture of Tofino beach stones and Indonesian river rocks, arranged in calming patterns.
“The challenge here was to create two completely private garden and outdoor dining areas while we share the same entryway,” says Ross.
“We often share the space — joining both our gardens together to create a bigger social space for parties or special celebrations. It works very well.”
Although only a few feet away, the garden of Maureen Burke and Collis Wilson is very different — full of vibrant colour.
The first thing you notice is a row of terracotta pots filled with pelargoniums on a long wooden table. This image is set against the beautiful backdrop of a rose garden.
Burke loves roses — her nickname is Rosebud, so it’s a natural fit. She has collected some choice varieties, including some of David Austen’s best ones, including Marie Pavie, Teasing Georgia, Windermere and Apricot Nectar.
Burke also has a fine specimen of Fantin Latour as well as Shot Silk, Albertine and Frau Dagmar Hastrup.
The couple got some early help from garden designer Nina McCutcheon, but they did all of the planting themselves, including what is now an old gnarly Viburnum bodnantense that has been clipped into an almost bonsai-like form.
The house has a greenhouse/ conservatory attached that contains orchids and tropical plants.
“We are struggling with this. We are not very good at it at the moment,” says Burke.
In a corner of the patio, a small pond provides the soothing sound of water, creating a calm ambience. In another corner, a large pseudocamellia tree contributes white flowers to the white garden next door.
And an old pyracantha hangs on, despite having its roots still trapped in a container.
Two other gardens worth seeing on the heritage tour are the Cotswold-style garden belonging to Claire and Jamie Wright and the pretty garden of Susan Koelink, both in the Point Grey area.
The Wrights’ garden was on the tour a couple of years ago and many people were disappointed to have missed seeing it, so this is a second chance to see what is an impressive work — a beautiful house and garden completed only seven years ago.
Out of their love of the Cotswolds, the Wrights created this storybook garden with all the features they enjoy about the houses and gardens in that part of the world.
There is a potager garden with wattle fencing and neatly espaliered heritage apple trees. The courtyard’s floor is made of large pieces of limestone imported from England while the perimeter walls are built from authentic Cotswold stone.
You’ll see bricks, too, laid in an attractive traditional diagonal herringbone pattern in other areas.
The Koelink garden, designed and built by Vancouver designer Ron Rule, has been a favourite on the tour before. It is still one of the prettiest gardens in Vancouver and well worth seeing.