Tour de force

It's only for the brave, this idea of opening your garden for a tour. Why someone might trash your well-crafted design ideas, or dispute the labeling of your latest carnivorous plant. But when the visitors are enthused and encouraging and even slightly eccentric, it can be a merry experience.

A group of sharp-eyed gardeners descended on the lovely garden of Yvonne and John Cunnington in Ancaster recently, and were wowed by many things big and small. The Cunningtons have waved in many tour groups, so they know the pattern.

This group was led by the formidable garden giant Allan Armitage, author, teacher, and plant pioneer, from the University of Georgia.

His tour goers are well traveled, and knowledgeable, they have seen many wondrous things, but they still scribbled feverishly about the things they saw at the Cunnington garden.

Many inquired about the obelisks painted a cobalt blue, straight from a Vermeer painting.

"The blue is a custom tint," Yvonne explained, "we took in a grape hyacinth and asked them to colour match it." The Benjamin Moore opaque stain transformed the obelisks, which used to be gray, and "got lost" in the landscape according to Yvonne.

Now those stunning blue pyramids, with a frill of limey green dill at their feet, jolt the senses.

"When the garden was new they added height and a nice element of scale," Yvonne says. "In the outdoors you have to use a scale that is bigger than you might think."

The Cunnningtons took other favorite flowers into the paint shop to be colour matched. "We used the purple of the drumstick allium for furniture colour, and it's the same colour that turns up in some of our other favorite plants like Joe Pye weed and echinacea."

In the billowy mass of the perennial gardens, other flowers with electric colour blossomed, like the Ferrari red crocosmia. Crocosmia is such a perfect red, and it's such a happy occasion when it over winters successfully.

Near the house, tour goers marveled at handsome planters stuffed with succulents such as echeveria. They were positioned against a perfect backdrop of feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora), and beyond, the larger landscape of restful green fields.

In this same area is a new favorite plant of Yvonne's, the ornamental grass called Panicum virgatum 'Northwind'. On her website www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com, Yvonne describes this switch grass cultivar as hardy to Zone 4, drought tolerant, and a strongly upright grower. Blooming in September, "the foliage and flowers become tawny gold in fall, and this color persists through the winter."

What is so alluring about the Cunnington garden is the nice play of the formal against the informal, the plumpness of the perennial borders versus the spare landscape of the rock garden.

It is John Cunnington who plotted out the direction of the rock garden, with its raised beds, alpine plants and gravel mulch. Now according to Yvonne, he has become passionate about carving stone and plans to set up a studio on the ten-acre property.

It is easy to while away an afternoon at s Cunnnington country garden, learning about tough plants for tough places, wise ways to water, and methods to work with nature. One of those methods is to use North American native plants, and the Cunnington's have planted many.

Their garden, and their knowledge has been shared with many tour groups, from enthused plant stalkers from the US to local horticultural societies.

Tours can be booked by calling the Cunningtons at 905-304-0766 or booking on-line at their website www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com.