It's the start of another summer, and already the country garden is a glistening tapestry of colour and texture. Lush bronze and silver grass plumes rustle in the gentle breeze, while robust stands of fragrant flowers draw the eye in every direction, and ultimately, across the way to the invisible line where the cultivated landscape gives way to the natural one.
To Susan Richardson, the instigator of this dynamic beauty (savvy readers will remember we featured Susan's home in our Summer 2006 issue), the garden is an ever-changing work of art. As a retired director of design and development for Toronto Parks and Recreation, Susan has a distinct advantage when it comes to shaping landscapes.
Armed with an innate understanding of the natural environment, Susan set out to create a country garden that pays homage to the relaxed beauty of the natural landscape that surrounds her. Even before she planted the first peony or climbing rose, she erected a rustic split rail fence to provide definition.
Conscious that passersby would be viewing the garden from the road, and visitors would experience it from the house, Susan concocted an "in the round" scheme. She dug up limestones and pressed them into service as weathered pathways that meander through patches of heady thyme and dense stands of vibrant day lilies, sweet joe pye weed, allium, lady's mantle, purple coneflowers, peonies, sedum, yarrow and yellow twig dogwood, as well as the junipers and globe cedars she added for year-round colour and structure. "I also tried to plant things in multiples so that they looked like wildflowers," Susan explains of the natural, unconstrained effect.
She welcomed unannounced visitors, such as goldenrod, wild aster and self-sowing columbines and poppies. Four striking bent-willow structures by the late artist Anne Roberts reference the fact that butterflies are a vital part of the garden's now thriving culture, as are bluebirds, dragonflies, frogs, snakes and crickets.
Having sold this house, Susan is now applying her painterly touch to a new blank canvas in the form of a newly built home on Salt Spring Island, B.C. There, as here, she says, "It's thrilling to be surrounding by blooms and plumes, all dancing and sparkling in the breeze."
Read more in Decorating and Outdoor Decorating
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