Through the Garden Gate: North Rosedale and Moore Park

I love writing this blog, but there aren't a lot of perks to the job. Perhaps that is why I look forward to the annual media preview for this garden tour.

Members of the local mixed media are chauffeured around Toronto in the plush comfort of a luxury, air conditioned bus for a preview of a few of the best gardens on this year's tour.

On the way, we enjoy fresh sandwiches and drinks. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, when it usually gets hot, there are cool icy treats with exotic flavours like kiwi & cucumber. At the end of the day, you feel exhausted, but pampered and inspired by all the amazing gardens you've seen.

This year is the thirtieth anniversary for Through the Garden Gate. To mark the occasion there will be thirty gardens on this year's tour (If you are doing the math that is fifteen gardens for each day of the two-day-long tour– which is a lot of ground to cover. Thank goodness the gardens are located fairly close together and there are shuttle buses to cover longer distances).

Every year, Through the Garden Gate explores a different Toronto neighbourhood. On the occasion of this significant milestone, the tour returns to one of the most popular locations: North Rosedale and Moore Park. There is always a great curiosity in seeing the gardens of some of the city's finest homes. And from what I have seen on this year's media preview, good taste and a team of professionals adds up to create some amazing gardens.

As I said, I look forward to this annual event. You can imagine my disappointment to find that, on the day of the preview it was not only raining, it was pouring! I thought that I dressed for the weather, but even with my umbrella, I was soaked through before we had made it through the first few gardens.

Imagine trying to focus a camera while juggling an umbrella. If my pictures are a bit blurry, you'll know why.

"It's an Edwardian house," says the homeowner," and we've tried to reflect that in the garden. You see it in the wire planters; the Alice in Wonderland figures in the round garden behind the garage, the gazebo made from an early elevator cage, which we found in architectural salvage; and some of the old-fashioned plants – peonies, daisies, delphiniums, columbines, roses, lavender, iris, violets, ivy topiaries. We hope the plantings evoke the period of the house."

"Most of the garden is in partial shade, so you'll find various shade-loving plants. Marjorie Harris (well-known Canadian gardening writer) thinks we have far too many hostas, and she's probably right, but they come in such variety and are so easy to grow, one has to love them...We try to keep the colours to green, white and blue, but you'll find the occasional pink and mauve, and we've planted forsythia for colour in spring."

That's the old elevator cage the homeowner spoke of in the middle foreground.

Too many hostas or not, I think this garden is stunning. 

There was only one problem with walking around to take photographs. With all the rain, the gorgeous green lawn was saturated in water. Stepping onto the grass was like walking on a wet sponge!

And of course I wore completely inappropriate footwear! I managed to venture as far as the gazebo when cold, wet feet prevented me from exploring further.

The lines of the garden are straight giving it a pleasing formality. 

 I do hope to return to see this charming part of the garden when it isn't under several inches of water.

The next property was a shade garden on a corner lot. 

The rain was pouring down and despite all the defensive maneuvers with my umbrella, my camera lens was foggy and wet. My overall shots of the garden were so blurry I am relying on a couple of images the Botanical Gardens provided.

Thanks to the Toronto Botanical Gardens for the two images above. 

The shade plantings in this garden were very creative. 

Often I see Japanese Painted Ferns on clearance at garden centres. I don't think people know what to do with them. Here they look very striking massed with Sweet Woodruff in the foreground.

1. Large Hosta 2. Mayapple, Podophyllum 3. Japanese Painted Fern, Athyrium 4. Japanese Ghost Painted Fern, Athyrium X 'Ghost' 5. Epimedium 6. Bugleweed, Ajuga 7. Coral Bells, Heuchera

Japanese Forest Grass, Hakonechloa macra in the foreground.

Because this was a house on a corner lot, the landscape designer had to deal with issues of privacy. Rather than building a fence, he opted to plant shrubs along the side of the house. In the backyard, a large screen was installed (below). 

The combination of the screen and hydrangea vine give the outdoor dining table, and the adjacent seating area, that much needed privacy.

To make the garage, which is located at the very back of the property, less obtrusive and more interesting, a green roof was installed.

The day's final destination had a formal front garden that suited the house perfectly.

 The garden is divided into four quadrants defined by clipped boxwood hedges. Inside each quadrant are ball-shaped yews and a single standard hydrangea. It's too bad the purple alliums weren't open in time for this picture. 

The backyard was a tiny jewel. Again, I am going to have to rely on some images that the Toronto Botanical Garden provided to give you an overall sense of the garden.

This is n outdoor made for entertaining with a large dining table and a garden house with lovely arched windows and a peaked roof.

Here we all are – members of the media cowering under our umbrellas.

Deep waters prevented me from getting closer, but under the Japanese Maple there is a small waterfall and pond.

A charming wall fountain.

 Bird feeder with a copper roof. 

That's the intrepid Ken Brown, garden writer and national director for the Garden Writers Association, braving the several inches of water to get a picture of the garden. Myself, I was not nearly so daring!

The kind homeowner had homemade sushi, cheese trays and glasses of bubbly Prosecco waiting for us in the shelter of the garden house.

This pink tree peony was just gorgeous (Read more about growing tree peonies here).

I arrived home cold and soaked through. Two days later and my shoes still haven't completely have dried out. 

Even though it wasn't quite the day I had hoped for, I wouldn't have missed it for the world!

Through the Garden Gate: North Rosedale and Moore Park

Saturday and Sunday, June 10th and 11th, 2017

10 am to 4 pm

Order tickets and find out more information about the 30th Anniversary 

Through the Garden Gate Tour here.

How the Other Half Garden

"It's hopeless," I thought to myself as I fished a dollar store umbrella out of my purse, "There is no way I am ever going to blend in to my posh surroundings."

A light rain had begun to fall as I stood in line for the shuttle bus to take me from the subway station to garden tour headquarters at Rosedale Junior Public School. This was not just any old garden tour I was about to embark on. The forty dollar admission price made that clear enough. No, my red discount store umbrella and I were about to get a peak into the private gardens of multi-million dollar homes in a very prestigious area in the heart of downtown Toronto.

At tour headquarters I was given a paper wrist band, rather like the ones that are issued to hospital patients, and a little paper gift bag containing a few hand cream samples, a tour guide and a free magazine issue. I should have been grateful for the giveaways, but instead I grumbled inwardly about having to carry my gifts around with me all day when I was already burdened with a purse, umbrella and camera.

The tour promised twenty-one gardens of the fabulously wealthy. I prepared myself to be impressed, a bit intimidated and yes, maybe even a little envious.

I started to wonder, "If I won the lottery or came into money (sadly both are about as likely as being struck by lightening), how would that effect the way I garden? Would I still want to go out there and muck about in the dirt or would I have people to do that for me?"

At first I scoffed at the idea that money could influence something I felt so passionate about, but then, I wondered if it would really be so bad to hire someone to take care of that horrible patch of goutweed that I have been avoiding all spring. I think that I could easily give that hard work up to someone else.

Perhaps it was the ice cream vendor's cart, but it struck me that there was something downright theatrical about the whole event as I stepped to the end of the fifty person queue at the second garden on my tour. It was like we were standing in line to see a show, or worse yet, preparing to see the habitats of some exotic animal in a natural history museum. Certainly some tour patrons took liberties. I saw a few people gawking rudely into open windows; their noses pressed to the glass.

At the front of the line, we received the first of strict instructions, "Do not step on the grass." Even without this edict one intuitively sensed there was something precious and very expensive involved. The lawn was so finely manicured it would put the average golf course to shame. One could almost imagine trip wires and alarms that would sound if an errant foot happened to stray from the path.

Lawns were not the only things out of bounds. When later in the day my foot wandered onto some pea gravel, I was immediately corrected. I would not have normally thought that pea gravel could be harmed, but it seems that in high-end neighbourhoods it acquires unique characteristics.

The garden that I am about to show you was probably the most grand of the ones I managed to visit that day. Two long rectangular ponds stretched out on either side of the front entrance like a pair of wings. My photograph does not do justice to the effect of the massed blue-grey stones at the bottom of the shallow pools. There was just enough water movement on the glassy surface to prevent the ponds from becoming mosquito breeding ponds. It was so elegant and restrained that it was quite breathtaking.

My first thought was that anyone could replicate this, but then it dawned on me what makes this water feature high-end. It is not the pool, but rather the upkeep. You'll note that there is not even the tiniest bit of debris at the bottom. I bet those stones must be lifted and the pools thoroughly cleaned on a regular basis. This upkeep must cost the homeowner a pretty penny.

If you pass the blue-grey ponds and turn to the left a pathway leads you to a small courtyard and then down a long garden allee.

This is the garden equivalent of the little black dress: classic and stylish.

I wonder if there might be drifts of daffodils here in the spring? 

If we head back to the front of the house and then to our right, we pass through a wrought iron gate and find ourselves in a small courtyard. 

 A pathway leads you to the large courtyard you see in the next image.

Stretching out from the back of the house is a large swimming pool.

Each of the two pool houses had more square feet than an entire floor of my house.

It is interesting that this area is half grass and half pea gravel.

On either side of the courtyard there were lovely beds of roses.

So what about you? If you won the lottery or came into money, how would that effect the way you garden? 

P.S. As a counterpoint to all this opulence, I have put a humble wildflower in my header today.