Victoria Homes & Living Fall 2011

Page 161

Garden Splendour |

Treat marginals as “garden chocolates”delicious, but fleeting pleasures

For this fall, Tice suggests plants with interesting bark, like the paperbark maple (acer grissum), or for colour, the Flame Dogwoods and Kramer’s red heather. “Many ornamental grasses can take us through the fall,” adds Tice. Oakleaf hydrangeas turn bronze, witch hazel glows scarlet, and garden mums and asters provide soft yellow, pink and purple accents in the fall garden. Then there are those boundary pushing plants like bananas and phormiums, proof of Vancouver Island garden power to the prairie relatives, but not great at coping with cool weather. According to Tice and Bodley, these marginal plants are on their way “out”, while native plants are definitely ‘in’. Tice says you should treat marginals as “garden chocolates”delicious, but fleeting, pleasures. It’s definitely okay to savour the feeling of Canadian green thumb superiority they engender, the essence of gardening magic here on Vancouver Island.

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FALL 2011

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