The Flowers Garden, Oakville Ontario

This week I am celebrating the first anniversary of my garden blog. I want to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to all those kind people who allowed me to photograph and share their private gardens. 

Today, I would like to show you another garden we photographed on last year's Water Garden Tour.

The Flowers family of Oakville, Ontario had not one, but two ponds in their small suburban garden. The first, a more formal pond, had a square shape framed by paving stones and was filled with white water lilies, when we visited (shown above). 

The second water feature, a more casual design, was constructed at the bottom of an old, unused swimming pool. At one end of the old pool, the Flower's created a cascading waterfall, which tumbled down several feet to a small pond, which they installed at the bottom of the former pool. Opposite the waterfall, a short flight of stone steps was built to lead visitors down to pond level.

The second pond in the backyard is fed by a cascading waterfall. 

If last summer's Greater Toronto Water Garden Tour was any indication, there seems to be a bit of a trend to turn under used, high maintenance backyard swimming pools into garden ponds. 

The pond at the bottom of the old swimming pool.

The plantings at the edge of the pond included a ferny astilbe that was about to flower.

The garden had a number of inspirational ideas. Above, a light weight bamboo screen was used to disguise a standard back yard fence.

A set of wooden chimes added to the Japanese theme and was a nice reminder to layer sound into a garden's array of sensory pleasures.

Here is another rather fun idea. Standard copper pipe was used to construct the arbor which framed the entrance to the back garden.

A daylily from the front garden.

A canopy of mature trees somewhat limited the plantings in the back garden to shade loving perennials like hosta and ferns. The front yard, on the other hand, enjoyed all the advantages of full sun and was planted with a wide range of flowering plants.

There are so many different varieties of clematis available these days, aren't there? I thought this one was quite striking.

A birdbath vignette from the front garden.

We weren't the only visitors to the garden that day.

Isn't this lovely? I don't know why you don't see white echinacea in gardens. 

I also think white phlox is underused in preference to more popular pink varieties. 

Again, my thanks to the Flowers of Oakville and to all the other gardeners who were generous enough to allow me to share their private gardens through this blog.