A gathering of gardeners

I've got a Kansas City headache. When I was a kid we used to visit my grandparents in Kansas City, Kansas in the fat part of the summer. It was always 100 degrees and bloody humid. But we'd play hide 'n seek and kick the can until it felt like our heads would explode. I'm feeling the same right now.

I've spent the day filling gaps in the garden. I reckon it's about 34C and I've been hammering plants into containers, hauling compost and mulch, and planting stuff to hide grim stretches of garden failures.

Learned company is coming in a few days to tour (or is it "inspect") the garden, and I am trying to disguise the image that my garden is looking like an Ontario hydro regeneration project.

Of all the garden tasks, I've decided I loathe planting the most. The shovel keeps hitting stalagmites, old plant tags and odd bits of highway remnants. I think I'd rather spend the day straightening railroad track.

But the garden needs some sort of dermabrasion, maybe even thermal deburring. So, for inspiration, I decided to get "off the tools" as they say in the construction trades, and seek some genteel advice.

I headed off to Rochester, New York, with two colleagues to A Gathering of Gardeners conference.

After stumbling through U.S. customs - "Are you friends or co-workers? Why are you driving a rental van? Where's Hammond? Have you been anywhere fun lately like Iran or Iraq?" - we carried on our merry journey to the George Eastman House (of Kodak fame) site of the "gathering."

We set up in the East garden to interview two of the luminaries of horticulture, Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery, and Dan Hinkley of Heronswood Nursery.

Hinkley is the millennium's version of Lewis and Clark. He travels the world to discover new plants, runs the nursery in Oregon and writes like a poet.

In his book The Explorer's Garden he writes of the "sorrowful charm" of the double bloodroot, and the "post mortem stress" suffered by ornamental rhubarb after flowering.

As we sit glistening in the 99-degree heat of Rochester we talk first not of plants, but of Martha Stewart. In the June issue of Martha Stewart Living, she declares she loves Dan Hinkley. He makes regular appearances on her show, and recently was invited to dinner at one of the Stewart estates where, "Liza Minelli greeted me at the door," says Hinkley in an aw-shucks manner.

"That's really a different world," Hinkley says with mid-western understatement (he's from Michigan). Still in a world populated with stamens and pistols, bud counts, and reproduction, horticulture can cast a powerful spell. So Hinkley admits that Stewart will join him on a plant-hunting expedition to Nepal later this year. And that's all he will say about that.

We move on to less sweaty territory and talk of plants we love. Thalictrums anyone? The meadow-rues get their own chapter in Hinkley's book. They can be Tom Thumb tiny, or willowy and graceful.

"Thalictrum delavayi 'Hewitts Double' is exceptional. It can easily bloom for eight weeks," says Hinkley. "It looks elegant planted with Hydrangea macrophylla."

I tell him about a planting of Thalictrum rochebrunianum 'Lavender Mist' I saw weaving with great delicacy through a shaded setting at the Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens in Niagara Falls.

"They're so useful and so undemanding; they add a quality of lightness to the garden." Hinkley is content to talk about more plants, but just as happy to give up the hot seat to Tony Avent. Avent does his growing in Raleigh, North Carolina, and found the 99-degree weather in Rochester, "quite pleasant."

Avent's Plant Delights Nursery specializes in the "newest, strangest, fun and garden-worthy perennials." He is famous for his hosta breeding program which produced 'Elvis Lives', 'White Wall Tires', and 'Outhouse Delight'.

We talked about a mutual acquaintance, shall we call him "John Doe". I met Mr. Doe in his hosta dell- somewhere in Ontario, where he whispered the price of various hostas to me, whenever his wife was out of earshot. He bought many of them on yearly pilgrimages to Avent's nursery.

Yes, people are still going berserk over hostas, but the tide may be turning.

"I've detected hosta hostility,"says Avent. "But it's just like the stock market - there's a big run, and then when you start seeing hostas sold everywhere, there's a crash."

Avent's catalogue is cherished for its refreshing descriptions and "absurd content," as he calls it. But behind the humour is a solid dedication to growing plants well, describing them accurately and discovering their true hardiness.

Not all new plants are better than their predecessors are, but when they are, Avent cheers loudly. We discuss Brunnera macrophylla 'Variegata' versus Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost'. In my garden testing ground, 'Variegata' is a wimp, producing skimpy leaves, with edges that turn brown and get ravished by spineless insects. 'Jack Frost' on the other hand produces layer upon layer of icy-coloured leaves, etched with veins, and hairy as a cat's tongue. It's still looking cool and robust in the August heat.

With all these marvelous plants, how does one choose the best?

"Grow everything," urges Avent. Create microclimates, embrace diversity. You can always refine the design by repeating not the same plant material, but the same colour. Be adventurous, have fun and try as many plants as you can."

So, these informed critics coming to tour our garden will find a space short on refinement, but bloated with diversity.

But, just in case - I've been practicing my opening line, "There's nothing in bloom. You should have been here in June. See the management for a full refund."

Luckily, because our garden is surrounded by "attractions", there will be diversions. A Caribana festival will be setting up in the waterfront park, and from the marina below us will be the agitating sound of a man in love with his router. I think he's restoring a Chinese junk. I think he needs Tool Girl, Mag Ruffman's help.

Anyway, I'll be all ears at the tour and will report back with any pithy comments, or scathing insights on how our garden grows.