At last, on Wednesday, November 18th our magnolia tree was planted. Purchased months earlier - she remained at Kimoff Nursery for safekeeping until transplanting day. The day kept being pushed back as the build kept getting longer. And so the presence of the tree brings joy and melancholy.
A local bole recalled to me the W. B Yeats poem “Among Schoolchildren”
To me the planting of the tree represents truly putting down roots - at the house and in Canada. Our little city became the first in North America to sign on to a United Nations pact to plant trees to mitigate climate change. In response to this pact, we plan to add five to our site - while protecting the old-timers (garry oak, dogwood and fir). Looking out on the tree I am reminded of my father. He told me a story about how nervous he had been to recite the Joyce Kilmer poem, Trees, committed to memory for a primary school recital. I suppose the story was told to make me less apprehensive about some task I had taken on. I was immensely lucky to have had such a father. Are you the leaf, the blossom, or the bole?
Now the age my mother was when my father became seriously ill, I am resolved to cherish the remaining years of wellbeing. I doubly feel the sting of not being with my family as the tree is installed. We were all meant to be together here for the holidays. Ah Covid. Were I to leave for the holidays, it would mean not seeing this build to completion which is anathema to me. Until certificate of occupancy is obtained, here I remain. Who knows when Don and I can jointly take up residence - when the border guards will permit us entry, when it will be safe? Contemplating travel makes me very apprehensive. Yard work is a good distraction. Having already good friends in this new home is a balm and a blessing.
The ground around the house has been compacted from a year of disturbance….multiple deliveries of lumber, insulation, shingles, solar panels and drywall, as well as placement of heavy or sharp equipment upon it. Just the 20 by 20 foot space that would host the tree had been home to the contractor’s tool shed, a port a potty, scaffolding, footings for brick walls, stump removers & ladders. Some of the ground that would be wildflower garden surrounding the magnolia had to be excavated to pry away asphalt. Anyway, as directed by my tree and wildflowers experts, I undertook to aerate, irrigate and amend the soil (multiple times as it would turn out) since contractor work continued above and around this soon to be hallowed landscape. Passersby became familiar with the sight of me - spade, aerator or rake in hand. They shouted encouragement and paid compliments for our efforts. Yards of beautiful fresh new soil was delivered from Peninsula Landscape Supplies but remained in a mound under a tarp for a month. My friend Kate helped me spread the fresh earth. We worked round the mason’s workbench/scaffold so as to be ready for the wildflower scatter. The following day more friends - Lita (this was her mom and dad’s house), Stacey (Kings Road neighbor), and Moira (landscape planner and muse of garden scheme) mixed a handful of custom mix of wildflower seeds from Saanich Native Plants with forty cups of play sand, strategically distributed and lightly raked it into the ground as a rare pale November sun shone down on the proceedings. We await spring to see what blooms. Our house was put on the site 108 years ago. A garden and trees have ever since been a part of the landscape. Our latest solution is but one of many beautiful and varied responses to the personal exigencies of the families who live on this hill, in this neighborhood, in the capital city, on this the largest island off the coast of North America. The garry oak meadow that marches up and over our ridge line to Cadboro Bay is a ever a reminder that long before Fernwood was “settled” in the Gold Rush era, it was home to the Lekwungen people who tended gardens. It is their native plants whose seeds make up the wildflower mix we plant.
The gardener in Me.
I was raised in NYC in an apartment. Central Park was my playground - No botanist I, but surely I absorbed the aesthetic of Vaux & Olmstead. Our family would go on outings to the New York Botanic Garden in the Bronx and to Inwood Park to collect Indian arrowheads in the last of the primeval forests on the island. At college Vincent Scully made me appreciate the profound significance of architecture in site and the work of landscape architects like Vauban and LeNotre. In the years Don & I spent in Belgium and then further afield in our beery explorations we took in many beautiful gardens. Belgians spend more on landscaping as a percentage of total building costs than any other Europeans. When our kids were very young, we moved to Cooperstown, NY - home to the Farmers’ Museum and a Cornell Cooperative Extension office. Early on, I enrolled in the Cornell Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners’ Program, co-founded a farmers’ market, and befriended those farmers, Annie Farrell chief among them, and Pat Thorpe, a genuinely gifted gardener and writer who maintained the gardens of Brookwood, a land trust for which I was a trustee. Brookwood’s magic secret garden was the creation of one of the early graduates of Harvard’s Landscape Architecture program. Then a decade ago came the move to Chicago - whose motto is “Urbs in Hortus” or “City in a Garden. I joined the Chicago Botanic Garden Docent’s Program - and learned about Chicago’s remarkable parks and their makers. I had the great fortune to meet and become friends with Julia Bachrach then the historian of the Chicago Parks District. Thanks to her guidance, the shadow of Jens Jensen looms large in my imaginary garden. Vancouver Island, with its stunning combination of maritime rainforest and Mediterranean climate enthralled. Before we started work on the house, I volunteered at The Horticulture Center of The Pacific (HCP). My role was to interview the founding trustees about what motivated their early efforts. Ever the eager student, never have I lived in one place long enough or had the free time enough to establish a proper garden - the kind that will endure a generation. Here’s hoping this is the time and the place. Good gardens take time. Step one is the magnolia and the wildflower meadow.
I want to acknowledge help and inspiration from Marion Cumming (guiding spirit of all that is good here), Louise Goulet (native plant protector par excellence) & Margaret Lidkea (Friends of Uplands maven), Barb Gergel garden designer at Demitasse (who graciously accepted the postponement of any grand schemes in light of our situation). Thanks, of course, to David & Susan Scott for their artful master plan, and to Taylor McCarthy who cheerfully undertook to help with the heavy lifting to get the landscape in shape even though it was not in his original scope of work. Yet to come - the finishing the brick work by Jim Meunier of Sunburst Stoneworks, the laying of the porous paving system from CORE and the spreading of pea gravel thereupon. With luck in 2021 we will begin to tackle of the backyard - home to one mighty Garry Oak round which all else will gyre.
Plants native to the Garry Oak Meadow include - Common Snowberries, Tall Oregon Grape, Red-Flowering Currant, Baldhip Rose, Indian Plum, Hairy Honeysuckle, Trailing Blackberry, Oceanspray, Orange Honeysuckle, Seablush, Broadleafed Shootingstar, Satinflower, Small-flowered Woodland Star, Small-leafed Montia, Nodding Onion, Fern-leafed Desert Parsley, Chocolate Lily, Licorice Fern, Indian Consumption Plant, Broad-leafed Stonecrop, Pacific Sanicle, Tiger Lily, Chickweed Monkey-flower, Spring Gold, Woolly Sunflower, Yellow Monkey Flower, Common Camas, Great Camas, Menzie’s Larkspur, Harvest Brodiaea, Hooker’s Onion, Large-flowered Blue-eyed Mary, Two-colored Lupine, White Fawn Lily, Fool’d Onion, Woodland Strawberry, Grassland Saxifrage. Rein Orchid, Field Chickweed, Meadow Death-Camas, Yarrow, Miner’s Lettuce, Field Chickweed (list from Garry Oak Ecosystems brochure).
As you research your garden here are some resources you may find helpful. Consider volunteering if you can.
Na’tsa’maht Indigenous Plant Garden at Camosun College. Here is a simply beautiful site that helps you identify native plants and learn of their traditional uses. Names are listed in SENĆOŦEN, English, and Latin. Check with the college about the suitability off visiting. This past winter I attended a ceremony at U Vic - called Rising Tides on food security among indigenous community. There I was served a delicious tea from a native plant in the celery family called KEXMIN. I will be planting this. See box below for an intriguing detail on the manifold health benefits of Kexmin.
“Wildflowers and and other native plants of Garry Oak Ecosystems” is a brochure put out by the Garry Oaks Ecosystems Recovery Team at www.goert.ca and Saanich’s Garry Oak Restoration Project at www.gorpsaanich.com It shows the plants by color way. Check out Goert’s great Garry Oak Gardening Handbook. A good summary of organizations devoted to this cause by community here.
Friends of Uplands Park - founded by the redoubtable Margaret Lidkea. Learn by doing as you help rid the park of invasive species and restore the native landscape. Frequent outings organized (except during Covid restrictions)
Garry Oak Meadow Preservation Society was formed in 1992 by local citizens concerned that Garry Oak meadows and woodlands were rapidly disappearing as a result of development in the Capital Region District. Helpful brochure of action steps you can take to protect Garry Oak Ecosystems. See Goert.ca for more information. Sites about to be cleared for development often permit harvesting of indigenous plants.
Pollination Canada - People protecting pollinators www.pollinationcanada.ca & island pollinator initiative
Saanich Native plants and Nursery - part of the Halliburton organic farms growing locally and helpful staff. We got our wildflower mix from them. It was custom blended to the conditions of our site. They have a consulting service for this.
Seeds of Diversity www.seeds.ca - People protecting People’s seeds
The Victoria Horticultural Society - Victoria’s oldies and largest gardening association (founded in 1921)
The City of Victoria Rewards Rainwater Runoff Reducers! Native plants require less water and hold water well. Learn about the benefits of rain water management, earn rebates. Did you know you can earn rebates for installing rain barrels ($35-100), cisterns ($180-600), Rain gardens ($375-1000), pInfiltration chambers ($375-1000), permeable paving ($200-1,500), bioswales ($375-1,000).
Horticulture Center of the Pacific - A beautiful living landscape showing that almost anything can grow in this clement climate. I volunteered here and love the place.
Seth and Eli making sure the magnolia will be at home in its new setting.
“KEXMIN —- Wild Celery/ Lomatium nudicaule
The dried seeds of the plant can be boiled into a tea to assist with sore throats, coughs and other bronchial ailments. The seeds may also be chewed, plant fibre discarded, to achieve the same effect. The inhaled smoke of the burning seeds as medicine is said to treat headaches, as is the inhaled aroma of compressed seeds or seeds added to a poultice and placed on the forehead.
When burned as medicine, KEXMIN seeds provide both a cleansing and protection from negativity, and harmful spirits.
The Washoe people of Nevada use the root of this plant to make tea to treat bronchial ailments. It is of note that not one Washoe person who had access to this plant died during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, while other tribes in Nevada suffered losses.
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