Over the past few years, I’ve been too busy making new gardens to actually find the time to write about them. We’re only now at a point where I can sit down to share something of the bigger picture.
The unspoken reality is we’ve been immersed in making a series of garden spaces from scratch, diverse in both scale and habitat, but all linked by this idea of wildscaping. Up till now, only friends and visitors have seen fragments of the work in progress.
Word got out to a local magazine named In the Hills who asked me to write about our story for their spring issue and I’m sharing that with you now in expanded form. Like any good story, it helps to rewind to the beginning to see how it all came to be.
One of the few upsides of an otherwise catastrophic pandemic year, is how so many more people are re/discovering the joys of making a garden. I hope our continuing story can inspire both newbies and plant phreaks alike to explore further along the wild garden path.
There’s so much to learn in the making.
Needles in haystacks
Tracing back our steps, we spent two years searching for a place in the country. Dreams of an old stone farmhouse with wild-ish gardens and a pond where my near amphibious wife Troy could swim.
She and I looked everywhere – high, low, online and off, at every point of the compass, and it nearly drove us out of our minds. We finally gave up, exhausted by the endless stream of generic bungalows and funky basements. That is until a horse-loving friend alerted us to something special up in a place called Mono.
Troy and I drove together up a long winding gravel lane through a leafy tunnel of birch and cedar wetland before crossing a bridge and then climbing ever higher until, there nestled at the top of the hill was an old log cabin with stately trees on either side. The surrounding glacial terrain rolled down the hill to a sun-flecked one-acre pond at the bottom. On the near bank, a tiny guest cabin bunkie looked out across the water to a towering curtain of conifers on the far side of the pond.
There were scant signs of any actual garden. It was more like a park-sized expanse of manicured lawn with a sprinkling of grand old trees fringed by forest beyond and wetland below. Not a neighbour in sight.
This is the land that found us. Far bigger than anything we’d imagined.
Troy who’d been the toughest of critics for everything we’d seen, melted at first sight of the pond, and once I saw all the hiking trails leading out to the nearby hills, I too was convinced. We clinched the cabin and all its contents before anyone else could.
The Dutch master’s apprentice
A bit of background for those new to my blog. I’m a writer by trade who has gardened all my life. Twenty years ago, my passion ran deeper as I discovered for myself the world of naturalistic planting design through the life work of Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf.
What was once relatively obscure, is now a global movement.
Still a creative force in his mid-70s, Oudolf envisions his gardens as living art forms designed to evolve in time and space. He does it all with trees, perennials and grasses, meticulously orchestrated to evoke the illusion of wildness, exemplified by signature projects like the High Line in NYC. His gardens are charged with a sense of atmosphere where people can transcend the everyday to reconnect to nature lost within.
I was determined to try and translate his approach to a smaller-scale garden. I spent years experimenting at our old family cottage garden in the Kawarthas, teaching myself the new language of designing with plants.
In 2013, I went next level and travelled to the Netherlands to study New Perennial planting design with Oudolf himself (and writer Nöel Kingsbury) at his garden home in Hummelo. It was a transformative experience where we became friends and he kindly introduced me to a whole circle of designers exploring the naturalistic frontiers in Europe, the UK, South America, the US, and beyond.
Here in Mono, I’ve started to make these kinds of garden a reality with my own northern twist.
Big picture thinking
Year one at the cabin, Troy and I decided to simply live there without changing a thing. We quietly observed the land and sky, hiked in the hills, and let the manicured grass grow into a fuzz of natural meadow.Mounting worries about the cabin’s rotting cedar shake roof and derelict furnace foreshadowed an unexpected leap into a massive two-year renovation to restore the original cabin and expand it with a new addition. Best thing we ever did.
We worked closely on the cabin project from concept through execution with Andrew Jones, a brilliant architect and furniture designer based in Toronto, for whom big picture is second nature. We paired Andrew up with dream contractor Scott Murray of Thistlewood Homes in Markdale, who brought hard-earned experience and a way with wood to lead the intensive reconstruction.
Meanwhile, Troy and I camped out in the tiny bunkie by the pond, quite enamoured by the charms of micro-living while the hammers, drills, and tablesaws buzzed away up the hill.
Pond Life
I began my first solo garden design project in earnest on the western bank of the pond. I poured all my learning into the planning and plant lists, all to create a supercharged slice of woodland garden plugged into the existing ecosystem.
The project started in my imagination – I wanted something wild-ish, otherworldly, unexpected: a hidden place with a charged atmosphere connected to the greater scale of pond, forest, sky.
On a parallel track, I conducted a site analysis to better understand the local ecology and conditions – a critical step at the outset of any project.
The garden took over two full seasons to fully design and plant – with the benefit of stellar advice from Piet Oudolf himself during the initial design phase. Now maturing into its fourth year, the pond garden has come to embody my vision for Wildscaping and you can read the full story of its making here.
It’s not just for show. The garden is a conversation with nature offering the structural complexity and species diversity (i.e., food and shelter) to help the pond attract and support a growing population of insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and small mammals.
What makes this garden interesting?
- It is a full-blown naturalistic garden with aesthetics inspired by naturally occurring plant communities.
- This is a garden for plants and people. For plants to thrive and for people to experience.
- The pond is a living mirror. A source of life and reflection.
- Anything but flat, the undulating natural landform creates different levels and microhabitats.
- Designed to be viewed from above, up close, and far away.
- All individual species of plants, grasses and ferns are intermingled within plant communities.
- Plants are selected primarily for structure vs. flower colour; while blooms come and go, the essential structure remains.
- Freely combines regionally native, near-native, and introduced plant species for the best of all worlds. No invasives.
- Designed to capture light and movement from the wind.
- Not fussy. It leaves messy areas and room for nature to happen.
Hardscape design: Tabula rasa
Post construction, all that was left of the landscape around the cabin was glacial sand and our two massive trees, a black cherry and sugar maple (Prunus serotina and Acer saccharum), their rootzones carefully protected during the building process.
This gave architect Andrew Jones and I the freedom of a blank slate to reimagine the hardscape both from a functional and aesthetic perspective. Our challenge was to reintegrate the newly renovated cabin within the total landscape and relate the indoor and outdoor spaces. We decided on a curvilinear approach to the hardscape because it reflects the natural roll of the escarpment land and the country feel of the cabin.
We found just the right touch of inspiration in the serpentine curves of a rustic dry-stack retaining wall built right outside our bedroom window by local Mono stonemason Brian Wood. He and I drew out the original line by simply dragging a shovel along the ground.
Our hardscape plans checked off a wish list of major elements including all paths and walkways, entertainment areas, stairways, fire pit, and a long sinuous bioswale designed to capture stormwater runoff from the cabin and slopes.
From my own perspective in terms of planting design, this also meant creating strategic space for a series of significant plantings around the cabin, all designed to capture sightlines from multiple viewpoints, especially from inside the cabin and our screened-in porch.
With Andrew’s plan ready to go by early 2017, we chose Genus Loci, an ecological landscape design/build company from King City as partners to construct the actual hardscape. They brought a strong background in sustainable design practices and ecological sensitivity to the project along with particular flair for the regrading and stonework.
We chose all local materials for the hardscape with massive limestone and granite boulders, super-sized slabs, and pink and grey sandstone, sourced from an old-time quarry along the escarpment in Credit Valley. Foot traffic areas were finished with either pea gravel or mulch.
I looked after all aspects of the planting design, with invaluable guidance from 81-year old Swiss-trained Master Gardener, Paul Ehnes from Erin in the selection and planting of trees and shrubs. This provided the structural framework we needed to gradually bring the landscape back to life with a series of naturalistic plantings created in a variety of contexts and scales.
Here’s a walking tour of work to date.
Northern Sand Garden
Sand. Sun. Heat. Evil storms. Angelic light. The polar opposite of the pond garden and larger, this bone-dry xeriscape required a functional strategy to create habitat tough enough to handle extreme conditions but peppered with unexpected bursts of beauty.
Hardscape
After regrading the land to sculpt more natural slopes and drainage patterns, Genus Loci built the wide slab and flagstone entry walk leading to the back porch. The slopes create a natural amphitheatre for the plantings, complete with a hollow cedar stump rescued from the wetlands to conceal the well.
Trees and woodies
To create year-round structure and fall glory, we framed the area with Serbian Spruce (Picea omorika), stands of native Sumac (Rhus typhina, R. laciniata, and R. aromatica ‘Gro-Low’), and River Birch (Betula nigra ‘Cully’) to hold the slopes and connect with the forest beyond . Closer to the cabin, there is Sassafras albidum and a gnarled specimen of ‘Horstmann’s Recurved’ Larch (Larix decidua).
Planting design
I wanted the garden to feel at once both magical and bewitching, choosing a stark palette of spiky and twisted plants, ecologically adapted to the harsh setting. The space is designed as a grass matrix planting on sloping ground using primarily Prairie Dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) and Autumn moor grass (Sesleria autumnalis) in drifts around the edges. The Sporobolus is slow to mature bu this will eventually feel more like meadow with taller perennials poking up through the airy sweeps of grass. There are mosaic clusters of seasonal accent perennials scattered throughout to benefit a non-stop jet stream of pollinators and other beneficial insects.
The Bioswale
Hardscape
We also carved out a long serpentine bioswale reinforced with dams of boulder, river stone and coir logs to capture and absorb stormwater runoff from the cabin roof and slopes. The downspouts and rain chains connect to buried PVC pipe that runs underground to the swale at different points along the channel. This bioswale runs like a river of stone, plants, and sometimes water – all set off by a handcrafted wooden bridge discreetly illuminated at night. The bridge was inspired by a visit to fabled Chanticleer in Pennsylvania.
Planting design
Little bluestem forms the grass matrix in the bioswale rain garden and is also seeded into the upper slopes. Wildly attractive to beneficial insects, all the selected perennials and grasses grow in pure sand with no amendments – able to survive in both dry and temporarily flooded conditions. A layer of pine mulch keep weeds down to minimize maintenance.
The Fern Pit
There is an almost Japanese aesthetic to the plantings in the courtyard – overlooked by our screened-in porch with chiselled beams and red lacquer trim. It’s an unexpected change of atmosphere and exercise in understatement, wabi-sabi style.
Hardscape
We carved out slopes on both sides to enclose the inner courtyard and set large rough limestone steps leading down to the stone-circled fire pit. Fieldstone retaining walls and stonework on the house are the expert work of Brian Wood.
Trees
A few specimen trees provide multi-seasonal interest and match the aesthetic : Multi-stemmed Stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamillia) renowned for its peeling bark and fall colour, a hardy cultivar of Korean maple (Acer x pseudosieboldianum ‘First Flame’). The northern slope repeats the native Sumac found elsewhere and a single Weeping European Larix (Larix decidua ‘Pendula’) graces the steps on the opposite side.
Planting design
Captivated by how native sedges (Carex species), ferns and mosses grow along the trails of the nearby Niagara escarpment, I created a mixed sedge and fern matrix on the steep north-facing slope under our majestic Sugar maple. The zen plantings accentuate the nubbled limestone surfaces with a minimalist focus on form and texture. The only flower that blooms is Epimedium ‘Amber Queen’ in spring. Sometimes, simple is best.
The Ungarden
Everywhere else on the property, I am busy ungardening. That means not doing much at all and letting nature have its way. The former lawn has grown into meadow to create wildlife habitat on a massive scale. It gets mown once a year in late spring to create walking paths and then gets left alone. This is something anyone can do (or not do) to help attract and support the web of life in this fantastical place we now call home.
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Next time: The last part of Wildscaping: The Home Edition is a focus on smaller-scale perennial plantings with a look at my lockdown project from last summer. Complete with something of a DIY guide to inspire your own explorations.
I didn’t realize you were Canadian, and specifically from Ontario, until I saw the reference to a “bunkie.” I think it’s a term unique to Ontario cottage country; certainly, no one we’ve talked to on Vancouver Island, where we live now, had ever heard it before.
The planting is exquisite.
Ha. Yes, perhaps “bunkie” is an Ontario thing. It was new to us too, until we came to the property. It was built by our predecessors with old timber from the Ottawa River Valley left over from making the garage. We absolutely loved living in it during the renovation. Thanks for your comments about the planting.
What a wonderfully naturalistic garden you’ve created! I loved reading about it and seeing the photos.
Wonderful to hear. Thanks, Lisa.
Excited and looking forward to “The Home Edition”. I have an inner city garden with a small attempt at a naturalistic plot. I’m sure your generous sharing of knowledge will take it to another level. Many thanks – more gardens, more gardeners, please.
Thanks, Patrick. The next part of the series is designed to take it down to basics, but then also show how to add the layers in a small space that build both visual complexity and ecological value to the planting.
I loved reading about your wildscaping journey, Tony. As always, your words convey so much. Thank you for sharing with us.
Great to hear from you, Shannon. It’s also about my fascination with the world of grasses and sedges, which play a key role in every planting.
Incredibly beautiful. A realization of what a lot of us dream about: a perfect lonely log cabin in perfect wilding landscape. My hope is that you are writing a book about it now.
Naturalistic planting guide and inspiration from the Canadian perspective is badly missing.
I do hope that someday it will be possible to visit and learn…
Such kinds words. And yes, it was special here when we found it, but the renovation and new wildscapes have taken it even further. The book is something still in the back of my mind, I’m realizing the material for it is growing as we speak!
Hi Tony, thank you for sharing your journey. It was breathtaking. The information reminded me of when my sister bought her log cabin. The learning curve to restore and update the original log cabin was a joy. Your article made everything sound as if it was just a matter of planning. Please provide writings, details, of the hardscaping, the work, photos, the plantings, the process of the transformation. I could not get enough. Thoroughly enjoyed the whole article. I want to know details of where is the septic tank? What was planted on top? Are you using electricity, what is your heat source? What equipment was used to move the large rocks or moving of large structures. What type of pond do you have, what feeds it? Love the snake photo, it would be wonderful to see photos of all the creatures that benefit from the new landscaping, frogs, dragonflies, salamanders, fungi. Looking forward to future The New Perennialist.
Love to hear this from a kindred log person. There is indeed an even richer inside story with another level of detail, both for the renovation and additions to the cabin, and the whole process for the design and installation of the hardscape and plantings. I think it’d take a book to do it justice because every one of your points, provokes another story to answer it. There is a previous post focused on just the pond garden and its story, and I’m building up a catalogue of wildlife shots of all the creatures who are showing up to live there.
I’ve loved reading your posts over the years and am so happy you’re back. Thanks for sharing your beautiful home and garden.
Tony, it has been so exciting to follow your gardening journey at your beautiful new home! Thank you so much for documenting and sharing. The design and plantings are stunning! Over the next few years, we will be transitioning from upstate NY to the dry Southern California mountains. We are looking forward to applying the New Perennialist principles to this very different biome!
Thanks Sandy. What an interesting move to Southern California. I’ve been sharing images from that biome on my Dutch Dreams Facebook group, and find it highly intriguing. Great inspiration from SoCal landscape designer and grass/man John Greenlee, amongst others.
Welcome back, Tony. Thanks so much for catching us up. I love your undogmatic approach to mixing natives, near-natives and exotics. Sounds like you are giving the wildlife and especially the beneficial insects plenty of food and habitat.
Ditto, Linda. Yes, that’s more my groove to diversify and create spatial complexity in layers. The insect ecology books I’ve been reading confirm this is the way to create friendly habitat and food sources for many types of insects, beyond the usual focus on pollinators.
What an absolutely fabulous property. It’s a great privilege to see what you’ve done and are doing to make it a home for yourselves and all the creatures you can encourage to live there with you.
I look forward to more. It’s all so inspiring.
What a beautiful and wildly informative update all the way down to the cute snake! 🐍 A great guide for those creating naturalistic gardens.
Tony, such a beautiful libretto to your journey up there. It seems like yesterday that you found the property, then began the Oudolfian transformation, got married to Troy by the pond, and now have this beautiful garden with all your passion and detail poured into it. Well done. Say hello to Paul Ehnes. He likely won’t remember me from Graphics Design night classes at Ryerson, but he might remember me interviewing him back in the 90s about his landscape for Husky Injection Moldings. Here’s to the world opening up to ‘garden visitors’!
It’s only by occasionally looking back, that we realize just how far we’ve come. Already, as you point out, our own histories are woven into the gardens. I will indeed say hello to Paul on your behest, he’s coming by tomorrow for the annual spring pruning and to take a wander around. I’ve learned so much in his fine company, a natural born teacher about all things trees.
What a wonderful garden.
We are looking for a new property, too. But it is so hard to find something with a decent garden.
In the south-west of Germany next to the Rhine on my sandy soil the coneflowers don’t grow at all. Not even the wild variations.
Good luck in your search for a new home. There are many different species of coneflowers, the ones I’ve found that are best adapted to my own sand garden are Echinacea pallida for full sun and then Rudbeckia fulgida var.deammii. The Echinacea purpurea also grows well, a cultivar called ‘Prairie Splendor’.
Oh, my, I love, love, love the cabin interior! And the outdoors as well.
The cabin itself is a whole other story, and it turned out amazingly well.
Really REALLY beautiful. If I were in my last days on earth, there is no place I can imagine that would bring me peace and calm more than your wildscaped paradise — in any season. It is truly an inspiration. Some day, I would love to visit it if you ever would allow it and our schedules would make it possible. Well done. Keep on keeping on.
Wow. Thanks Beth. That comment will keep me glowing all day. I really do hope to be able to arrange outdoor visits later this summer, so keep that in mind.
When travel between Canada and the US open back up, I too, would relish a visit to view the transformation that you have shepherded over the last several years. It is an inspiration to me as I (more slowly) transform my own landscape from the “dirt hole” left from building our home 3 years ago. Your work gives me (hope and) inspiration! Thank you for sharing and I look forward to your coming posts.
What a brilliant account of the creation of this space – thank you. Generously informative and written with great style. Many thanks.
I also took a course with Piet and Nöel, on-line though because of the pandemic and learned an incredible amount about planting and garden design. I am trying to do something similar here on our place in Wisconsin – neighbors are a bit closer though. What you’ve accomplished gives me hope that I will someday (!) realize what I see in my mind’s eye. 🙂
Thank you! I am looking forward to more posts.
Sounds like you’re on a great path. Yes, I think my example shows it’s more than possible when you’re planting on the shoulders of giants (if that makes any sense at all;-)
How beautiful and inspirational! After a winter of watching British gardening show on tv I’ve been dreaming of a trip to the UK to see some of the wonderful occasionally-open-to-the-public gardens that seem to abound there. Looking at your stunning creation I’m now hoping to make a trip closer to home some day 🙂
Thanks Sue. The UK is amazing for gardens but yes, rather nice to have options closer to home. Stay tuned for the concept of garden visits.
Thanks for sharing such an intimate experience! What is the difference, if there is, between your concept of Wildscaping and Piet’s naturalistic approach? You inspire me to do better. Thanks.
Interesting question. My concept is certainly profoundly inspired by Piet and a few other landscape and planting designers although I felt that the term ‘naturalistic’ was somewhat static and obtuse. IMO, the term Wildscaping brings new energy to the equation with perhaps a touch more focus on the ecological aspects of how plantings can influence biodiversity. That’s something I continue to explore.
I need help with my little (very little) inner city “naturalistic” garden of grasses and a couple of specimen trees. I’m trying to sort out some of the mish mash of different plants in the west garden patch. I somehow stumbled upon your blog when through the references to Piet Oudolf, who has been an inspiration for me. You’re my new and somewhat local garden design inspiration.
Great to hear. Stumbling is good, it can lead you to some interesting places. There is plenty written about Piet in the archives here, to help set you on your way.
So beautiful. I’m not a designer or plant expert by any means–I only know enough to realize how little I know!
I have a much smaller piece of land to work with but I’m losing hope. I can’t seem to find any horticulturalists/landscape designers who understand what I’m looking for (drought-tolerant, naturalistic planting) in my area of Ontario. One even used to teach at a local college but came out and told me I shouldn’t get rid of too much grass and suggested hydrangeas, irises and daylilies…
Do you know any designers in Canada you’d recommend? I’d be willing to provide them with a scale site drawing to work from remotely.
Hi Naomi,
It shouldn’t be so hard to find a naturalistic planting designer, but that’s where we’re at in Ontario. It’s still such a new vocation that few are practising, and even fewer practising well. What part of Ontario do you live in? Maybe there’s someone I could think of… failing that, you can DIY with the help of Roy Diblik’s helpful book ‘The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden’.
What a wonderful and inspiring story! I am in the same situation as Naomi, I live in Niagara and would love advice from someone to help transform and rewild my property. I will start with the book you recommended and look forward to more posts! If you can refer anyone please let me know 🙂
Will do. It’s a tough nut to crack but you’re also within hailing distance of the Niagara School of Horticulture. They might have some clues.
Happy to have found your blog. I’ve been dreaming of a wild city garden but didn’t quite know how to explain it. Your pond garden and the rest of the garden is wild! Thanks for all the info and great pictures! I live in Northern Sask 🥶. I am wondering if you plant from seed at all? Where do you get all these great unique zone hardy perennials?
Good things come to those who search;-) I definitely plant from seed in larger areas of the landscape, for example with grasses like Little bluestem (Schizachryium scoparium) and I intentionally pick a few specific perennials that I know will seed about the garden. Have to be careful though with them not getting out of hand. For the pond garden, that’s where species like Lobelia siphilitica are very useful and will form large colonies. I source from all over and some places have by now disappeared. I recently spoke virtually to the Alberta Horticultural Association and they might have more of an idea of where to source for your neck of the woods. I also have a grower friend who I ask nicely to propagate certain special plants from seed so I can have them in mass quantities.
This is such an amazing area to be living and gardening in and I could just sit in a hammock and stare at it all day. I’ve been working on my tiny 1/3 acre yard in Atlanta, GA using matrix style plantings of native grasses, vines, shrubs, and perennial flowers. I have lots of trees, so letting the leaves and pine straw and compost work into the clay soil is helping to keep the plants happy. I really love how your meadow glows in the sun and the flowers intersperse with the tall seed heads and reflect into the pond. Not something one gets to see everyday and it feels so magical. Mt. Cuba in Delaware has been extremely helpful for their plant trial research, as well as the Lady bird Johnson garden in TX. I can’t wait to see what you do next.
Thanks so much Christine. Sounds like you’re up to interesting things in Texas and you have found excellent resources with Mt. Cuba and the LBJ garden. Follow me on Instagram if you wish to see more current images of my own gardens here.