I had plans to write a post to unveil my new two-year old garden. It was going to be whimsical, poetic yet measured, with a splash of horticultural detail to bring life to the inner story.
Well, scrap all that.
Instead, I woke this morning and walked down to the pond to find that my garden had been transported to another dimension.
Suspended in a halo of fog, the plants beckoned forth in perfect stillness, and I stood there, spellbound.
I pursed my lips in quiet victory. At the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. on a Friday morning in April, my trowel and I glided through U.S. Customs to dig into my New Perennial opportunity of the year: a chance to help plant out a Piet Oudolf-designed botanic garden in Delaware.
One week later standing in his future meadow, I had the chance to ask Piet Oudolf himself that most basic of questions: “So Piet, how do you like to plant?”
Here at the cabin, rumours of spring are still buried arctic deep in the frozen ground.
I spy distant traces of the season to come: the rust-tipped tendrils of green moss backlit by the setting sun on forest trails; the first blades of exploratory growth in the native Seersucker sedges (Carex plantaginea); Marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) shyly poking their heads above the muck in the wetlands.
Thankfully, there are bright spots of human warmth amidst the chill. I recently caught up with mid-western prairie whisperer and great garden friend, Roy Diblik who returned to Toronto in March to speak at two local botanical gardens.
In travel and gardens alike, I live for the unexpected. That mysterious bend in the path leading to a whole other something you could never imagine in advance.
Like a portal to another world.
My latest trip to Europe was filled with twists and turns in a month-long journey that skipped through seven different countries.
Well, I was definitely out there.
It took me over half a lifetime to return to the supersized environs of British Columbia. And while off exploring the massive old growth coastal forests of Tofino surrounding the westernmost edge of Vancouver Island, I couldn’t help but wonder aloud to the sky-capped cedars… What took me so long?
I was lured out to the West Coast by an invite to speak in Victoria as part of The Hardy Plant Study Weekend – a grand annual convergence of hort societies in the Pacific Northwest. The event is truly pan-American, rotating between Portland, Seattle, and Victoria – routinely selling out to a crowd of over 400 serious gardeners and plantophiles.
