Columbine
"You should come and see this garden on my postal route", my hubby said to me one day when we met for lunch, "I think you'd like it." I thought of the neighbourhood of primarily small, post-war houses that I had only ever seen in the depth of winter and tried to imagine which house he could possibly mean.
Though I didn't recall a place with anything more than a rudimentary garden, hubby seemed so confident I agreed to let him take me there when he finished his afternoon's work.
The gardener was not home when we showed up completely unannounced. Just her husband was there to give me permission to take pictures.
Red Coral Bells
It is interesting that you can get an immediate sense of a person you have never had the chance to meet when you wander through their garden. Right away, I could tell that this was a person who really knew something about plants and had a knack for mixing colors and textures. I wasn't surprised when her husband told us that she had studied horticulture at Humber College and had graduated with honours. "She laid most of the stonework herself.", he told us proudly.
Sandria and I caught up a few days later by phone. Sandria brought her love of flowers to Canada with her from her native Barbados. Though she works as a nurse by day, gardening is one of her true passions.
Let's take a wonder through Sandria's little gem of a garden.
This is the planting along the front of the property leading into the back gate.
(That's a tricolor Beech on the right, a Japanese Maple in the middle and a Viburnum trilobum by the back gate. Below the trees and shrubs are Lady's Mantle in the centre and a few patches of Creeping Jenny.)
The gate opens to a pathway that leads into the back garden.
Just inside the gate.
A small island obstructs your view of the main part of the garden
making what comes next a bit of a surprise.
This is the garden in a nutshell. To the left behind the hedge there is a swimming pool. Though my picture makes it look vast, the garden is really quite modest in size.
Columbine
Geranium cantabrigiense 'Biockovo'
Viburnum trilobum has lovely red berries as a bonus after the flowers are finished.
Sandria has a really nice assortment of Japanese Maples throughout her garden. She named Vineland Nurseries as one of her sources.
Cinnamon Fern, Osmunda cinnamomea
A big thank you to my husband for spotting this pretty little garden and to
Sandria and her husband for allowing me to photograph it.
