July 21, 2012 : on tour day
We’ve walked through the front garden on Peninsula garden tour day and now have come to the rebar arbour through which we will enter the back yard. This arbour holds memories as it was built by my former partner, Robert Sullivan, who created much beautiful garden art during the couple of years that he focused on welding.
To our right: the patio where Randy Browns plays his guitar. Through the arbour and left: the greenhouse.
Again, in the back garden we had painted gardening quotations right on the house because one cannot “puncture the seal” of an older manufactured home. Tour guests particular liked the one by the cat door: “A garden without cats can scarcely by called a garden at all”, by beloved garden writer Beverley Nichols.
The slanted window by the cat door solved the winter problem of fierce storm winds blowing the door open. It turned out that even in summer, a cat likes to sit in the sun behind the window shelter. There is often a bit of a kerfuffle as they jockey for position, or a series of catcalls as an aggressive neighbour cat decides to lurk right outside the door.
The mirror is attached, but to the metal door that provides access to the water heater.
Because “our” musician Randy Brown had the patio for his stage, we set up our usual patio sit spots on the lawn.
I named our garden boat for my favourite garden writer, Ann Lovejoy. The mermaid stakes were original markers for vendors’ spots at the Ilwaco Saturday Market. The bird bath is from Joy Creek Nursery.
The middle of the back garden is divided into three big beds, with lawn paths in between, and two narrow beds along the east and west side fences.
It truly was a pleasure watching the guests choose which path to wander. I wish I had not been so overwhelmed and that I had followed some to see what they liked best.
By the west side path, a quotation written on a broken pot piece, next to a rambling rose:
“Thriving on salt and sand and storms, the rosebushes behind the house climbed all over the paling fence and shot up long autumn sprays, disheveled and magnifecent.”
(Ursula Le Guin, The Sea Road
Halfway down the fence, another quotation on some old wood: “Drinking the cold soup made from the chrysanthemums of dreams…”
All the beds in the backyard were made with the method shown above, by dumping soil on top of layered newspaper.
On the old clotheline I hung an embroidered workshirt and some pillow cases tatted and embroidered by my grandmother. This proved to be a great hit and I saw many the tour guest photographing them.
Underneath: raspberries from my mom’s old garden.
My mother had died in 2010 just before we bought this land; one her best days ever had been when her own garden was on tour. I put out a photo given to her by her neighbours of her standing with a shovel in her own garden.
I loved having achieved the river of Geranium ‘Rozanne’ running down the center bed (above, viewed from the side), blooming from June through October…inspired by a lecture by Adrian Bloom of Blooms of Bressingham.
After walking from the patio to the south on four choices of path, one ends up at the fire circle and shade gardens. At the end of the west bed, guests took great pleasure in the purple painted remains of a sickly camellia bush. I had told it two weeks before the tour that it had to shape up or say goodbye. It continued to look sickly, so down came the foliage. The painting was inspired by Ann Lovejoy; once upon a time I had toured her garden and found a dead shrub painted silver.
Allan’s mother, Ruth, had a presence in the garden, too. She had been a talented craftsperson and decorator and this lantern, made by her, had come out of her old garden in Seattle and now sits near the purple camellia trunk.
Between my grandmother and my mother and Allan’s mother we had a long tradition of gardening.
While the center beds are in full sun most of the time, I had had to make shade beds around the alder trees on either side of the fire circle. Most of my plants brought from our old house liked shade.
The shade bed, below, was new the previous autumn and is just south of the purple camellia trunk.
Now we have come to the last flower bed before the bogsy woods, so I will stop here and give the woodsy alder grove an entry of their own.
[…] « Our garden on tour: back garden […]
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