Garden tours

They're interesting and inspiring but mostly fun.


Last Sunday, we went on the tour organized by the Parkdale and Toronto Horticultural Society. Almost all the houses were on High Park Ave., extending from Bloor St., just north of the park itself. up to Dundas. This is an old area of Toronto and as one of the Master Gardeners in one garden remarked, this was once "Millionaire's Row". The houses must all date from the mid 19th century and are mostly huge. A lot have been broken up into several flats, because who could afford to maintain a house like this these days - well, actally, the people who can now live in Rosedale and Forest Hill.


But getting back to High Park Ave: the diversity of the houses and gardens was amazing. Some gardens were dominated by huge trees. We saw a deck at the back of a house built around an oak tree that was probably 4 feet in diameter at the base. That same garden had the most amazing tree house I have ever seen. Apparently the children who grew up in the house are now all adults but the parents remain and the kids come back to do the upkeep on the tree house. Smart parents.


I was quite amused by the story behind a front rock garden on Humberside Ave., just west of High Park Ave. It was described in the brochure as "supposedly a low maintenance endeavour" that turned out to be quite the project. The whole front yard ( it's a B&B, actually) is on a steep slope and the woman owner said she got tired of the perilous job of trying to cut the grass. The landscaper she hired advised her to put in a rock garden, because rock gardens are low maintenance. Anyone who has a rock garden would raise their eyebrows at this! The owner is definitely a gardening neophyte and she went along with it - and cursed him daily for about 3 years she told me. But, after a this initial painful period, she found as everything filled in, with groundcovers and low evergreens, it has become fairly low maintenance. But she had a narrow escape, when someone gave her some goutweed. She was going to plant some in that rock garden (let us all give a collective shudder), but fortunately, she had an experienced gardener staying in her B&B that week who advised her not to do it - for God's sake, don't do that, lady, I would have said. So, she put it instead in the bed that runs along the other side of the driveway and now understands it's one of those plants with a bad Napoleon complex - I will take over the world!


You pick up bits of local history on these tours. One big house originally belonged to Daniel Webster Clendenan, who was the first mayor of the village called The Junction. He owned most of the land around there and he was the reason the area still know as the Junction was dry until well into the 20th century. And of course Clendenan Ave., which runs parallel to High Park Ave., was named after him.


I'm not saying much about plants, am I? So now I will. I saw so many kousa dogwoods in bloom on this tour. I fell in love with this plant about 15 years ago, when I first saw a very large specimen in bloom in James Gardens. I have spoken to various horticulturalists about this shrub/tree over the years and often have been told I would have to protect it if I planted one in my garden. And I don't plant things I need to protect. Maybe the proximity of these yards to the lake helps? Or maybe the fact that most of the houses are so close together creates sheltered areas? Anyway, they were gorgeous.


Garden tours - a good thing. (Pace, Martha, I just couldn't resist)