Montréal! Ooh la la. Cultured, sophisticated, and yes, a little bit seedy. With a history of bootlegging, speakeasies, jazz clubs, hockey dynasties, and organized crime.
But also seedy in a good way as the home to the Montréal Botanical Garden.
Truth be told, Le Jardin Botanique Montréal is my horticultural mistress par excellence.
I’ve visited her many times over the past decade – and she never disappoints with exceptional perennial gardens, a seductive scent garden, poison garden, alpine and water gardens, a First Nations forest, Japanese and Chinese gardens, full-blown potagers, plus an insectarium for the kid folk.
Each has their fascination but for me, the crown jewel is Le Jardin D’Ombre or Shade Garden, a woodland cathedral of mythic proportions with around 2,800 species of herbaceous plants.
Enter the Dark Side
Their plant palette encompasses everything from spring ephemerals to a galaxy of native and rare exotic perennials, ferns, grasses, carex, climbers, and mosses.
Even with such a hyper-concentration of diverse species, the overall effect feels quite au naturel making it a serene place to wander and learn at different points throughout the year.
Much credit must go to the unnamed designer who created its first incarnation as The Fern Garden in 1964. And to a major refresh in the mid-80s when the original avenue of elm trees succumbed to Dutch elm disease, to be replaced by maple, linden and ash trees.
The garden may be grand in scope but it possesses many intimate corners with winding paths laid out with wood chips that allow you to get deep into the plantings themselves.
Imbued with a powerful sense of place, the Shade Garden literally grows on you over time. The overall design is woven together by structure, shape and texture as much as anything to do with colour.
Next Steps at Mono
For my first project at our log cabin in the hills of Mono, I’m looking to capture some magic of my own by creating an extensive woodland garden down by our one acre pond.
It’s a phenomenal site and with forest encircling the pond on three sides, I need not look far for inspiration. (Click to expand the panorama of the site below.)
Right now, my partner Troy and I are working with architect/furniture designer Andrew Jones to map out a master plan and imagine possibilities for the future garden experience.
I’m also researching a dream plant list of woodland plants able to thrive in my native terroir.
Plant Hunter Retail Therapy
What better excuse than plants to pay a visit to Montréal Botanical Garden for Le Rendezvous Horticole?
Held at the end of May, this spring event attracts plant lovers, nursery growers and vendors from all over Québec.
Le Rendezvous is a spectacle unto itself offering everything under the sun from urban potager workshops to aquatic plant specialists, native growers, nut growers, bonzai, even some moss specialists called Bryophyta who grow luxuriant carpets of moss in long rolls, which can be cut and shaped to order.
From the moment I arrived on a blustery Friday morning, I switched into sidewalk-plant-hunter-mode.
Even under the threat of rain, the local planterati buzzed in and around the procession of peaked white tents along the boulevard – like bees in search of nectar.
It was also a true cornucopia of perennial temptation. And with connoisseur Québec growers like Les jardins Osiris and New Brunswick’s Les Jardins de Balmoral displaying esoteric woodland plants in prime condition, I was definitely a plantsman in the right place.
What to get? Rare Ariseamas, Cypripedium, Veratrums, Anemonopsis. Heck, I even spotted some Chaerophyllum hirsutum roseum, a holy grail umbellifer I’d only ever read about. Same for a desert island grass called Achnatherum calamogrostis. Um… picked up three of each please.
And so it continued. Plant nerdvana.
My faithful partner, Troy proved harder to impress. No fan of subtle gems like Epimedium (although partial to Actaea), she spent her time frowning at my basket of newfound plants while sketching the local Montréalers as they pulled along their wagons filled with leafy purchases.
With the morning gone and baskets full – it was time to explore the gardens proper.
Shadow Dancing
Before long, I left the crowds behind to find myself virtually alone in the Shade Garden.
The garden itself, holds up a mirror to nature – cascading in a series of layers – starting with the tall tree canopy moving on down to the understory trees and finally down to the forest floor scattered with shrubs, woodland perennials, ferns and sedges.
In late spring at the time of my visit, the early flowering plants race into bloom to beat the canopy overhead before it steals all the light.
At whatever time, the garden offers an ideal way to see how plants perform in context and how they play with others.
The deeper you look, the more you see. This time out, I went back twice in the same week.
While wandering, I was curious about a small-leaved foliage plant, which ran through much of the garden and seemed to connect all the different parts of the planting.
Such essential design details really intrigue me.
Sylvain, the monk-like gardener on staff identified it as Ranunculus ficaria or Lesser Celandine a.k.a. a notorious thug plant that spreads everywhere. In this case, he surmised that it’d snuck into the garden through some other plants.
I’d never, ever plant it myself but could not help but admire the matrix-like effect.
Sylvain and I fell into a longer conversation – a perfect opportunity to get his take on exceptional performers within his shady domain.
He dropped his rake and led me hither and thither, jumping into the beds to show me various plants in context.
The challenge of shade is to do more with less: A focus on form and foliage versus flowers. Patterns and texture over colour.
From a design perspective, the challenge of shade is to orchestrate plant relationships that feel natural and expressive with a narrative journey unfolding through the the entire season.
Le Jardin Ombre nails it with élan and grace.
My fellow Toronto blogger, Janet Davis created a superb photo essay of the Shade Garden in its spring majesty, which is too good not to share.
And so my grand passion deepens with each return to Montreal.
The next chapter will be what happens next as I get deeper into shade of my own in the enigmatic hills of Mono.
Delightful post, Tony. I enjoy watching your plans emerge. I actually seek out “exuberant” groundcovers like Ranunculus ficaria, but it failed me. Wouldn’t even grow, much less thrive, in my wet clay.
Cheers, James. Yes, one garden’s thug is another one’s groundcover. I was quite admiring the Ranunculus for its carpet effect and yet… perhaps something like Asarum canadensis is a friendlier alternative. As we speak, I’m researching matrix combinations for my future woodland to be the great inbetween.
Dan Hinkley mentions in “The Explorer’s Garden” Ranunculus ficaria subsp. chrysophalus as being the more robust form of this plant. Knowing of several thuggish colonies in the Toronto area, my theory is that it was brought to the JBM by Leslie Hancock when he supplied plants for the Rhodo garden in 1976. Otherwise I’ve found the many named varieties of R. Ficaria quite well behaved and a great pleasure in early Spring.
Good sleuthing on the Ranunculus and even better to know, some other forms are better behaved. It seems like an incredibly useful filler plant.
Good to hear from you again Tony. I can see why you adore your ‘shady lady’! And what a treat to visit the shade garden at Le Jardin Botanique Montreal, (courtesy of Tony) in your high summer – a place I will probably never get to see in reality. As you are in high summer, we are in deep winter, with lots of frost and snow this year, so all my gardening is done by the fireside just now. But I must tell you of the wonderful botanical treat I came across in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens only a month ago before the frosts – the amazing ‘Dahlia imperialis’ – about 20 feet tall towering over a high Yew hedge and looking like pink doves suspended in the sky. Native to Central America, it flowers in early winter taking all summer to grow it’s tall, bamboo-like multi-stems and tropical looking foliage. So it is a small window of opportunity which demands a warm autumn and frost free early winter. The next week after frost, when I went back to check it out, the pink dove-like flowers were limp greyish-brown looking things hanging sadly from the bamboo like stems.
It is indeed fascinating to hear what’s going on the other side of the world. And vice versa.
Tony, you and Janet are inspiring me to return this week to the Botanical Garden to spend serious amounts of time in the shade garden. I was at the Botanical Garden a week or so ago with my granddaughter and a friend of hers, and we had a wonderful time, but we missed the shade garden entirely. And since my main garden area is partial to full shade, I need all the inspiration I can get. But how can I bear to tear myself away from my own garden at this time of year? Oh, the difficult choices we have to make!
Well worth returning for the Shade Garden right into the fall. Deep deep source of inspiration on a monumental scale.
If only they’d not plant those dreadful annual begonias and fuschias to brighten it up.
Hope we get to see your grand garden in early August and congrats again on the GWA win – we’re in pretty good company n’est-ce pas?