A walk in the garden: Finding inspiration in public gardens
Rock steps take visitors down into the former quarry at the Royal Botanical’s rock garden providing inspiration and ideas for gardeners.
Three tips to inspire creativity in your home garden
A light rain kept the the public away and left me alone in a spectacular sunken rock garden to explore its magnificent beauty and draw inspiration from the plants and garden design.
The result was not only inspirational, at times it was almost spiritual. The spiritual component was, at least in part, due to the intense feelings I was experiencing from having to say goodbye to my 16-year-old dog, Holly, just a day earlier. The solitude was the perfect escape from the overwhelming grief I was experiencing.
In three hours in the garden, I saw only one other guest. The rest of the time, the garden could have been my own.
Although native plants were few and far between, the garden design and natural planting designs growing along the edges and down into the heart of a sunken quarry, reminded me of the importance of using boulders as a backdrop for flowers, shrubs and grasses. The quarry lent itself to dramatic vignettes with flowers and ferns growing out between the massive rocks and stepping stones that led you deeper into the former quarry.
Exploring the garden also enabled me to see what plants were in bloom or coming into bloom at this particular time of year in my growing zone. It showed me plants growing in a natural environment, from the conditions it was growing to the amounts of sun and shade it was exposed to. It showed me how the garden experts here used companion planting to bring out the best in the plants. Years of testing proved helpful for the finished products.
Too often we are enticed to buy plants from nurseries because they are in bloom at the front of the store. At the nurseries we don’t get the opportunity to see the plants growing in their natural environment. In addition, most of the nursery plants are grown in greenhouses and so are often far ahead on their actual bloom time creating a false sense of when the plants will bloom in our own gardens.
I was particularly interested in the plants that trailed over the rock ledges.
(For more on exploring public gardens, check out my earlier posts on the best woodland gardens to visit in the United States, and some of the best public gardens in Canada.)
Use trailing plants over large rocks
Tip one: Use plants that spill over the top of boulders or trail down slopes. The inset image below shows large boulders in our front yard that hold back the main garden. In one area, we have creeping phlox spilling over boulders onto the front of the driveway. I love the look it gives but seeing what the public garden was doing showed me that there are many more possibilities that could be implemented in our garden.
Basket of Gold and creeping phlox combine for a sensational scene at the public garden.
Creeping phlox spills over boulders along our driveway.
The combination of the yellow, basket of gold, perennial alyssum (Aurinia saxatilis) with the creeping phlox is a combination I’ll be adding to our front boulder wall. Up in the top right of the above picture are the remains of Hakonechloa or Japanese Forest Grass also spilling down the rocky cliff.
Japanese Forest grass, especially “All Gold,” would be a beautiful addition spilling over our front boulders. I have several clumps in the front that could find a new home beside the boulders.
Aurinia saxatilis more commonly called “basket-of-gold” is the dominant flower in the image above. It is a low-growing, spreading perennial that produces a profuse spring bloom of bright yellow flowers. It’s easy to see from the images that the flowers are extremely attractive in rock gardens, sprawling over rocks or cascading down rock walls. Following the colourful bloom, it can be left as an attractive ground cover. It’s unfortunate the plant is a non-native (central Europe to Turkey) because I would use it everywhere in the garden as a spring ground cover. It is a mat-forming perennial with woody roots that grows to 6-12 inches tall and features spatulate basal leaves (to 5 inches long) and smaller linear-oblanceolate stem leaves. Leaves are gray-green. Bright yellow flowers in corymbose panicles bloom in spring. Additional common names include yellow alyssum, madwort, goldentuft and gold-dust.
Walking down into the quarry from high above was a constant reminder of the possibilities of working with steep inclines, especially if large boulders are added. The walls of the rock quarry created lovely dark backdrops to show off the flowers, shrubs and trees to their fullest. In our gardens, unless we are blessed with an old rock quarry, we cannot duplicate this effect, but we can plant evergreens to form a dark background.
A beautiful magnolia comes into bloom surrounded by evergreens in the public garden.
Create dark backgrounds to highlight flowering trees, shrubs and plants
Tip two: Consider planting a wall of cedar, spruce or native white pine along one side of the garden to create a lovely dark backdrop to plant light-coloured flowers, flowering shrubs and trees in front of to show them off in their best light. A clump of birch trees, for example, would be a standout in front of a tall wall of black cedars or Green Giant cedars. In one area of the garden, the blooms of a mature magnolia tree (see above image) sparkled beneath a wall of dark rocks and evergreens.
A bridge leads to a walkway and a lovely saucer magnolia coming into bloom amidst a background of evergreens.
So many of us plant flowering trees such as magnolias, serviceberries and dogwoods that look great in the garden. But imagine them with a wall of dark evergreens behind them. Proper pruning would make them standout year round, but imagine the show in spring when they are blooming lovely shades of white and pink upon a dark background of evergreens.
Throughout the sunken gardens, I was stopped in my tracks at vignettes that captured a particular part of the garden. Some of them were small vignettes highlighting a tree or shrub, others were large views that still captured the intimacy of a much smaller garden.
A beautiful weeping willow surrounded by daffodils stands out against an evergreen backdrop in the public garden.
Create garden vignettes and a sitting area to experience them
Tip three: Look for big or small garden vignettes where you can turn the focus on a particularly impressive specimen tree, shrub or drift of flowers. This helps you turn the focus on certain areas of the garden.
In the rock garden, a spectacular weeping willow takes the spotlight surrounded by drifts of daffodils. The fresh green leaves of the willow against the dark background created magic in the soft misty rain. At the same time, the garden designers made sure that visitors had several vantage points to view the tree in all its glory.
These red Adirondack chairs are placed perfectly on the upper level overlooking a beautiful sunken public garden. They are a good reminder of the importance of creating garden vignettes.
Public gardens concentrate on providing spectacular views for its visitors. But those views fall a little short if there are not comfortable places to take in this impressive views. Garden benches, large flat boulders that can act as seating areas, and comfortable garden chairs invite visitors to rest and take in the scene.
There was no better example of this than the two bright red Adirondack chairs on the upper level of the rock gardens looking out over the sunken garden. The chairs almost beg visitors to sit down and take in the scene that spreads out before them.
They are a reminder for this gardener to ensure there are many places to take a seat, relax and take in the beauty of the garden.
Author Profile: Vic MacBournie is a former journalist and author/owner of the award-winning website and newsletter Ferns & Feathers. He writes about his woodland wildlife garden that he has created over the past 25 years and enjoys sharing his garden photography with readers.