Photo by Edward Pond
Growing Memories
The wonders of a lively garden where stories and memories are also nurtured (From Backtalk - Winter 2007)
Every part of the garden has value far beyond anything imagined when you first set out to dig in the soil. For me, strolling through the garden is a visual autobiography: plant gifts from friends, plants from the neighbourhood sale, plants whose history has pushed me to an encyclopedia to find out more.
These emotive layers make any garden more personal—and create a richer and more resonant experience. There are days when this makes me incredibly weepy. When I walk through my garden, sniff the air and smell the lilies that the late Val Ward (of the former Buds nursery in Toronto) gave me all those years ago, I am flooded with intense memories of drinking wine with her and our discussions about plants and soil. I will always miss her, but the plants live on: the daylilies, the ghastly mallow that she gave me as a joke (I couldn’t possibly get rid of it now that she’s gone), and the snakeroot called ‘Black Negligee’ that tickled her wicked sense of humour. “Here,” she’d say, pushing a plant my way and brooking no nonsense about taking it. “You have to try this.” And my pleasure rolls on with the years.
There are whole sections in my garden where I silently thank the nursery people—Dugald (Gardenimport), Larry (Lost Horizons), Margaret (Fiesta Gardens) and Tom (Canadale Nursery)—who insist on trying every possible new plant and want to share the news if they survive. Then there are the gifts that come in another way: the plants with mysterious names that make you want to understand them better. Why, I’d ask *Ligularia* ‘Britt-Marie Crawford’, are you called that?
Well, the Internet provided some serendipity with this one. Earlier this year, I received an email from a certain James Crawford in Scotland, responding to an article on my website. He wanted to know if other Canadians loved Britt-Marie’s bold maroon-black leaves as much as I did.
How connected we all are, I thought, when he wrote: “I was fascinated to read your article about my late wife’s Ligularia. We didn’t know that it was available in Canada. My wife gave up practicing medicine about six years before she died and created a garden in the ruins of a 13th-century castle that sits behind our house in North East Fife, on the edge of the River Tay. She was sub-dividing *Ligularia* ‘Othello’ and produced this ‘mutation’, which is now named after her. It’s very popular over here and in Europe, and also in Australia and New Zealand.”
I was completely stunned. Now, whenever I pass ‘Britt-Marie’, I think about its creator and know I would have adored her. Any woman who’d make a garden in the ruins of a castle is after my own heart. Stories like this make great plants even more extraordinary, and entwine with our personal stories to nourish the soul of both garden and gardener.
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