"I am out of the country until the snow disappears and will have no access to my emails or phone during that time."
It's a message that resonates at this time of year as wanderlust fuels the desire to travel. What exotic locales enticed you to escape, if only for a short while, from our Manitoba winter? Was it the chance to indulge in an overseas tour of remote villages and vineyards or a trek along wild flower walks to discover rare and spectacular flora in a mountainous region? Or are you the intrepid urban adventurer?
Whether a select number of your nights have been spent in a secluded villa in a quaint European village or a week's worth of halcyon days found you cycling through the warmest states south of the U.S. border, your mind's eye will likely have captured images that will inspire your garden design.
But can Eden be recreated in our cold, short-season climate? Or in a tiny, suburban landscape surrounded by modern, box-like houses clad in stucco or vinyl siding? Yes, to both questions.
Let restraint and subtlety, though, serve as your guide. Translating fresh inspiration, whether it is experienced by transplanting yourself to a foreign setting or via armchairtourist.com, into a blueprint for your entire garden isn't necessary or even advised. Introducing even a hint of the mood and magic from another locale can have a dramatic impact on your surroundings.
Shelley Walker's St. Vital garden shows the influence of her travels through the skilful use of textures and colours inspired by the geological richness of other regions, near and far. Rocks, in particular small, rounded ones, have proven to be an irresistible drawing card wherever she goes. There are rocks in her garden from the Bay of Fundy, New Zealand, Australia, England, and many parts of the United States and Canada, including the Arctic.
When Walker visited Germany, she was captivated by a fan-shaped pattern used in ancient cobblestone streets and alleyways. Upon her return home, she and her husband researched available paving materials, then laid out a sidewalk design that mimicked the same Old World pattern.
The sight of a gorgeous climbing rose on the grounds of romantic Jardin de Bagatelle in Paris inspired Walker to plant a climbing rose against an obelisk in her backyard. She chose John Davis from the Canadian Explorer series, a hardy climbing rose with double pink blooms that was specially developed at the Morden Arboretum Research Station, so it is well-suited to survive our Manitoba winters.
"There are many other inspirations from our travels," says Walker, "that are not in my garden but perhaps someday." Most notably, Walker recalls the pebble mosaics in the Chinese garden courtyards at the Sun Yat Sen garden in Vancouver and at the Floriade, an international horticulture expo held every 10 years in the Netherlands.
Spring in the Netherlands attracts visitors from around the world. Irene Friesen travelled from her home in Pinawa in March of 2012 so she could catch the first colourful expression of masses of flowering bulbs in vivid bloom at Keukenhof near Amsterdam. Her trip of a lifetime included visits to Malta, Germany and Switzerland.
Keukenhof, known as the Garden of Europe, stirred her senses. "If you travel to see only one garden," says Friesen, "Keukenhof will exceed your expectations."
Friesen says there are three garden attributes that linger with her. First, sculpture and gardens are partners, she says. "In Europe," describes Friesen, "there has been a major philosophical shift away from romanticism. The contemporary garden is an unusual synthesis of satirical, futuristic, urbane and joyous expression."
When Friesen, who has created her own designs as a potter, stepped into a small, treed garden room dominated by a dragon sculpture, her inspiration was not to mimic the design, but rather she viewed it as a whimsical reminder all of us have the capacity to breathe fire about the issues we are passionate about. And to also be the friendly dragon that plays with the children who enjoy our gardens.
Friesen was struck by the functionality of the gardens she visited. Beehives in city gardens are a common sight. Herbs and vegetables grown in public gardens are used by chefs in recipes at garden restaurants. Friesen took special note of the rows of trimmed boxwood used to separate square plantings of herbs as a tool to control cross-pollination.
Some gardeners will space their plants such as French thyme a distance away from another herb such as Italian thyme to avoid spreading dominant flavours. Friesen plans to borrow from the idea of creating borders of small clipped hedges for her own herb garden, but instead of boxwood, which is not reliable in our climate, she will substitute a variety of barberry, a dense, small-leaved ornamental shrub with an added bonus -- deer resistance. Cherry Bomb barberry, a new listing for 2015, for example, is a low-growing shrub with crimson foliage and bright red berries in fall and winter.
Friesen is introducing herself to the ecological design principles that form the basis of permaculture, a sustainable practice that has a presence in most of the European gardens she visited. She observed that not only is close attention paid in European gardens to companion planting as a non-chemical means to reduce the use of pesticides, but also there is often the close proximity of wetlands to formal gardens.
To North Americans, a wetland may seem a strange bedfellow to a beautiful formal garden, but Friesen says a wetland invites biodiversity so is viewed as an essential partner rather than an ugly slough with tall reeds. Of course, in a European setting, wetlands are less likely to be home to hordes of mosquitoes, adds Friesen.
Last fall Friesen, who is completing a master of arts in integrated studies, returned to Malta to make a presentation at an academic conference. Malta is home to some of the oldest free-standing structures on Earth, which have been designated as UNESCO World Heritage sites. Drawn to visit on numerous occasions, Friesen hopes to create her own outdoor garden room that is oriented to align with the rising sun during the equinoxes and solstices.
Key to this unusual project will be a specially crafted natural doorway that will direct light to a specific spot in her garden room. It will take some doing to get it right, but the mere thought of achieving it is a tantalizing one.
Keith Lemkey's travels have taken him to almost every corner of the world. A landscape designer and owner of Lemkey Landscape Design, he has taken thousands of photos that have served as inspiration to draw upon when he is designing a landscape.
Architectural elements such as a beautiful doorway spotted in a Barcelona neighbourhood, the magnificent, mind-boggling scale of Versailles with its knot gardens, parterres and topiaries, a boulevard planting in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a Japanese garden showcased at the Epcot Walt Disney World Resort in Florida -- these are some of the sights he recalls again and again. What play in his mind most are the different textures and balance, flow and continuity of how things repeat themselves in a landscape while adhering to the principles of good design.
Replicating something can be based on the same principle but may depend on the use of a different mass and scale without sacrificing functionality and practicality. How you interact with your space and how one aspect lends itself to another, says Lemkey, is important so they complement one another.
In our globalized plant world, very little is inaccessible. Desire something in your garden from a faraway place? Barbara Jean Jackson, a Brandon master gardener, will introduce a different gene pool into her hybridizing efforts this year with a 2011 miniature tall bearded iris variety called Thruppence by well-known English hybridizer Olga Wells. Ordered from the British Iris Society, Jackson has already given the seeds their cold-water soak. She will plant the germinated seeds into her garden by early June for an interesting, new addition to her garden.
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Notice:
Pembina Active Living's (55+) Still Bloomin' gardening club welcomes Len Giesbrecht on Thursday, Feb. 26, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Topic: Irises and Daylilies. Grace Christian Church, 50 Barnes St. For more information email info@pal55plus.com or call 204-946-0839.
colleenizacharias@gmail.com
