What happens in between?

Considering that we only go up to the lot a few times a year, you may wonder what do I do for the other 11 months of the year?  Well, partly David and I go and visit other gardens for inspiration (and that's another blog post in itself), but when I'm at home in our little apartment, I look after my house plants.
I've given up counting them all, and I must admit they are worrisome when it's time for me to go to the lot and visit their brothers and sisters who live outside, but on the whole they don't ask for much and they give a lot in return.

Here are a few of the more unusual beauties:

This is a Walking Iris (Nerine). The flowers bloom for a day and are lightly scented.
It flowers in February, which is very welcome in that dour month.

Stapelia Variegata in bloom. This succulent attracts pollinators by giving off the scent of rotting meat.  Actually it doesn't really smell at all. Thank goodness!

Strawberry Guava fruit. They are tiny and smell like strawberries.
They have lots of little tiny seeds and not much flesh.
The plant has lovely peeling bark on the trunk.

Hibiscus are very common as houseplants. The flowers only last for a day.
In Bermuda they grow them outdoors and prune them as hedges.
This is a white hibiscus grown from a cutting. I love the red whorls in the centre.

Be patient, it gets better

Looking at the pictures of those early plantings (which were done in August 2007) from my last posting, I wouldn't be surprised if you (the audience) weren't very impressed.

What were we thinking?  Looking back, I now see our efforts as heartfelt, but the results were a little pathetic. (I think David will probably admonish me for saying that).  Rest assured, it does get better, and to give you a taste of what's to come, I wanted to show you some pictures of that same area where the first picture was taken in my previous post (in which you can see the cabin) over the course of a year.

This photo was taken on September 13, 2010. As you can see the Sempervivum is no more. The spot with the bare earth is where we had started work on the 2010 bed in the Lake Lookout Garden. The firepit is behind the wheelbarrow, and the pile of brush is still there.

September 17, 2010. One week later. You can see we had been hard at work. Looks more like a garden doesn't it! Firepit is still there, but I worked really hard to get rid of the huge pile of brush.

August 22, 2011. One year later. We were busy extending the 2010 bed. I guess we could call it the 2011 bed! You can certainly see how the garden is beginning to develop here. David is taking a well-deserved rest surrounded by all the rocks he's dug out!

Finally, August 25, 2011. We had finished the 2011 bed. Not bad work for a fortnight's hard labour!

So, stick with me. It will be worth it I promise. In the future, I'll be showing more detailed photos of how we sweated to make these quite lovely (in my opinion) gardens a reality.

Early Plantings

David wants to know when I’m going to stop philosophizing and actually talk about the garden, so here we go.

Our lot is a vacation property, and as long time gardeners we were savvy enough to realize that we had to choose a plant that, once put into the ground, would have to hold its own.  In our area that means, drought tolerance, unappetizing to deer and other critters, and can survive against the natives.

Hmmm, what would fit the bill?  Our first thoughts turned to the Sempervivum family – commonly known as “Chickens and Hens” or "House leeks".  Cold hardy succulents, we thought they might be perfect for our first foray into gardening.  And they weren't a bad choice, by all means. At our local botanical greenhouse our favourite area is the cactus house. It is always fascinating to see the incredible array of weird and wonderful plants that nature has created to survive different environments.

Next step where to plant them?  We still had the problem of not having actual beds, and perhaps this shows how obsessive our need to make a garden was.  We were forced to find a hollow in the rocks that was filled with a thin soil (produced naturally over many years) and some grass or sedge growing in it, dig that out and plant something else there. And that’s what we did. 

I'm not sure you can even see where we planted. It's in the foreground. The cabin is in the background and you can see the firepit is the dark area on the right hand side and the pile of brush collected for the fire is on the left hand side.

Whilst the boys finished the cabins (I have to tell that story one day) I had the task of planting 4 semperviviums that we had purchased.  I don’t remember it taking long. I sort of surveyed the area, tried to find a place where I could dig out the soil with my trowel; pulled out all the grass, and mixed up a little potting soil with the existing soil (it didn’t need much) and bob’s your uncle.

This gives you some idea of what we are digging in to create our garden. The sempervivum is in that outcropping at the top.

 

These sempervivums were unnamed and we not such experts that we could say what they are, except the arachnodium.

Here at the base of the railway tie staircase, I dug out a small cavity between the rocks and planted. This one has survived over the years, mostly because it is sheltered I think.

And the fate of these chicks and hens?  Well, of course the day after, something had dug them up. And next year when we came up to visit, they were completely overgrown with native flora. In fact we had a hard time finding some of them.

Lesson # 6 Actually a bunch of lessons. Firstly, that in order to prevent a critter digging up your newly planted baby, you have to leave the area looking undisturbed. Secondly, that native soil contains a lot of seeds, that can stay viable for many years. Disturbing the soil seems to encourage propogation. So, if you use the native soil, be prepared for lots of weeds.  This is a lesson hard learned.

Out of the ashes a phoenix may arise

I am saddened to note the demise of Harrowsmith Country Life Magazine.  Of all the magazines that grace the newstands, it is one I have subscribed to for many years now. Ironically, I had just renewed my subscription for 2 years at Christmas. Only one issue was published this year in March and I was just remarking to David that I hadn't received another in the mail yet.  In August the publisher announced it would cease publication just short of its 35th Anniversary.

Originally called Harrowsmith, it was founded in the small village of Camden East Ontario (which we often passed through en route to our lot) in 1976 as a back-to-the-land and environmental magazine.  In recent years its focus shifted and some complained that it seemed more for retiring boomers than serious back-to-the-landers, but I really enjoyed it none-the-less.

Where one magazine dies, another is born. Well it certainly felt that way (and I'm using a bit of poetic license here).  We are most fortunately to have one of the most outstanding gardening magazines published North America - Garden Making - come on the scene in the Spring of 2010.  While it is still in its infancy, it is nevertheless a mature and very professional publication, and that's not surprising, considering that Beckie Fox (the editor-in-chief) was also on the editorial team of Canadian Gardening. It is a garden magazine that is not just about pretty pictures, but is full of interesting and informative articles that are useful to the avid gardener.  It is published quarterly by Inspiring Media Inc. which is co-owned by Beckie and Michael Fox. This bodes well for its survival.

I have a subscription. I suggest if you love to garden you might like to support our Canadian Economy, and get one too.

The Right Tool for the job.

Another lesson learnt from that first planting was how useless normal garden tools are when you are facing a landscape of rocks. You can have the fanciest spade (have you seen the beautiful, shiny tools from Britain in the Lee Valley catalogue?   I don’t know if I’d be able to them to use. Every little scratch would make me cringe), but they’re not much use when there isn’t anywhere you can actually dig.

 

Aren't these beautiful. They wouldn't look out of place in your cutlery draw.

In the beginning we used hand tools to break the ground and extract the many rocks that seemed to form the landscape.  Larger rocks were pried out with the shovel, a real no-no. You can void your warranty if you use a shovel to pry rocks, though how they know that’s how the handle broke is beyond me.  Early on we realized the value of tools that workers on a chain gang would use, pick-axe, mattock, crow bar, and industrial sized shovel. 

Well, we don’t have a pick-axe, but it’s on our list. We do have a really good mattock though. 

This picture makes me laugh. Why on earth would you need to use a mattock here!

And the piece de resistance is this pair of gorgeous tools from Japan. They are strong, refined, and elegant. And most important, they are very, very useful.

These are beautiful. And they don't look like they belong in the cutlery drawer!

 Lesson # 5. Buy the best tools you can afford. They will make your life easier, last longer, and give you the greatest pleasure.  Cheap tools are really not worth the "savings"

Note:  Thank you Lee Valley Tools for the loan of the photos. We have purchased most of our tools from them. The staff are delightful, the selection incredible and we love to get the catalogue in the mail.

A momentous discovery

One of the first things that we planted in our new garden was a gift from a friend. She had a pink rose bush that was far too rampant for her tiny back yard, so she dug it up and presented it to us. It was hard to say no. Perhaps that’s why we end up with plants from other gardeners … we can’t say no.

The poor rose bush was not destined to survive. It spent a week out of the ground waiting for a ride up to our place, and by the time it arrived it had lost most of its leaves. Then we didn’t know where to plant it. Ironic isn’t it?  Almost 5 acres of land and we didn’t know where to plant our first plant.

I must admit that I never thought to question what drives one’s choices in creating a garden.  We have a lovely blank canvas. How do we decide what to plant and where?  Are we driven by location, or plant material, or perhaps a bit of both.  In this case, the plant came first.  We had a rose bush and we had to find a place to plant it.  And this is where we made a momentous discovery. There wasn’t anywhere you could put a spade and find enough earth to plant a rose.  In fact, there was hardly anywhere you could insert a shovel and go deeper than a hand’s breadth before hitting rock.  Oh dear.  We were really unprepared for this.  We didn’t have any soil to make a raised bed (and where would we have put it), and we were in the middle of raising a cabin - which is like raising a barn in miniature - and had more pressing things to think about.

We ended up planting the rose in the first spot that we found (next to a juniper bush) which had enough soil to dig out a hole large enough to plant the rose.  We didn’t have that much hope for the poor thing and we were right to be concerned. When we came back the following morning, some creature had visited in the night and dug it up. It was destined for a woeful end.

Lesson #4 On the Canadian Shield, you have to bring your own soil if you want to make a garden. Oh and be prepared to plant twice.

Note:  In contradiction to my previous post, this was a lovely gift and I would have been very pleased to see it survive in my garden. As it is now deceased and long gone, here's a picture of a rose as it might have been.

Taken at the Toronto Botanical Gardens.