Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Helen Chesnut: Tidy garden, tidy life — or so the delusion goes

I’m all about magic delusion these days. It stems from the seasonal process of clearing leaves off lawns, cleaning plots of dead matter, and chopping away at the summer’s rampant overgrowth covering outbuildings and closing off pathways.

I’m all about magic delusion these days. It stems from the seasonal process of clearing leaves off lawns, cleaning plots of dead matter, and chopping away at the summer’s rampant overgrowth covering outbuildings and closing off pathways.

The illusion occurs at the end of each tidying session — a path perfectly cleared, a vine neatly trimmed, a clean lawn, a tidy plot. Such are the accomplishments that trick me into the sensation of putting my life in order. Delusion or not, Im clinging to it. The therapeutic effect is too magically delicious.

 

The experimental gardener. There are a few parts of the garden that could easily trigger a fair amount of delusional self-congratulation, while in fact they are simply the result of experimentation.

Two plantings in particular evolved out of much trial and error to produce pleasant, easy-care “hedges.”

One is housed in a long brick planter across the north-facing front of the house. Over the years I planted various flowers in it — nasturtiums, impatiens, fuchsias — but it was always something extra to do in a busy spring planting season.

Then a few lacy corydalis (fumitory) seeds found their way into the planter, and began to spread. As I monitored their soft, ferny foliage and clusters of delicate cream and yellow flowers, I saw that the plants were lovely from spring through to hard frost.

All I do in the spring now is pull out the old plants, drift a little nourishing compost over the soil, and let self-sown seedlings rise and repeat the fine display of previous years. All the planting needs is summer watering. The plants are Corydalis ochroleucha, available from Chiltern Seeds and Plant World Seeds.

 

Flowers, fragrance and flavouring. Looking up the slight slope into the back garden from the house, the left hand side is flanked all along the fence by a forest of gigantic cedar and fir trees whose roots have made it almost impossible to garden on that side. Still, I wanted to keep something of interest growing in a narrow bed alongside a pathway in the area.

I dug out a series of flagging perennials in the bed, plumped the soil with compost and fertilizer, and planted a series of small Arp rosemary plants. Now, several years later, they have formed a robust, 120-cm high fragrant hedge that starts blooming in February, with repeat flowering in the fall. On a sunny day just over a week ago, I watched a few honey and bumble bees still busy among the blooms.

Arp is considered to be the hardiest of all the rosemary varieties. It is also more tolerant of extreme summer heat than most others.

The success and endurance of the herbal hedge has given birth to an idea for another garden experiment in a site with similar hot, sunny and dry conditions complicated further by root invasion from neighbours’ towering trees.

The target area is a portion of a long, narrow bed beside the driveway, where the challenging conditions have defeated a long series of plantings. I’ve become weary and bored with trying various perennials reputed to be drought and heat tolerant. The last lot was a collection of grey-leaved plants that have been markedly unimpressive.

Enter ‘Phenomenal,’ a hybrid lavender said to be hardy, tough, and tolerant to extreme heat. The plants grow 60 to 80 cm high with a bushy mound of silvery foliage and long flower spikes in midsummer, sometimes with repeat bloom in late summer or fall.

This winter I’ll dig up the target site, remove as much root growth as possible, and plump it well with compost before planting a series of Phenomenal lavender plants in the spring, with hope that the plants will form a fragrant, flowering hedge as pleasing as the rosemary planting.

Phenomenal plants should be available locally in the spring. Heritage Perennials, a major supplier to garden centres, has it on its website (perennials.com). The mail order firm Richters Herbs also lists Phenomenal.

And so the adventure continues: Try something out. Observe, and learn.

 

GARDEN EVENTS

HCP courses. The Horticulture Centre of the Pacific, 505 Quayle Rd. in Saanich, is offering the following courses. To register please call 250-479-6162 or email communityed@hcp.ca. Website:hcp.ca

 

* Plant Identification workshops with Diane Pierce on Saturday, Nov. 21 and Dec. 5, 1 to 4 p.m. Cost per session $35 for HCP members, others $45.

 

* Wreath Making with Finlay Nicolson, Saturday, Nov. 28 or Sunday, Nov. 29, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. or 1 to 3 p.m. Cost for members $35, others $45.