This is a beautiful half-acre urban garden created by a dynamic lady who is an active member of Victoria's gardening community. She has designed and maintains this constantly evolving garden (selected as Canadian Gardening's 1999 Garden of the Year). Mixed borders filled with perennials, ornamental grasses, bulbs, interesting shrubs and trees curve around a sloping lawn.
The plantings have been designed for four-season interest and each border has its own distinct flavour ranging from a woodland section to a Mediterranean planting and a rockery in full sun. Throughout she has designed in richly interwoven layers playing off shapes, form, textures and colours of each plant in the style of American Mixed Boarders as described by Ann Lovejoy in Naturalistic Gardening.
In order to fully appreciate the plant combinations there are paths into and through the garden. This is important since ”…these nonsymmetrical plantings create an interior rise and fall of shape, an ebb and flow of form and habit that results in dramatically changing views, depending on the angle from which the borders are examined… there is always more to be discovered, since each fresh viewpoint discloses previously unseen plants and juxtapositions… “
Everywhere there are harmonious colour combinations which take into consideration each plant's seasonal characteristics. This gardener paints with her ever-increasing pallet of newly introduced plants and subtly combines with her other perennials an extensive ornamental grass collection, which provides additional form, texture, light and movement to this delightful garden.
See trends to find out more about the hellebore collection that is part of this garden.