Gardening is about bringing chaos into order and order is important to Candace.


“When I was first getting into gardening,


I went to Artistic Landscape Design and spoke with Jason Smalley.” The company is one of many she works with in the Ot- tawa area. “He gave me an hour and a half consultation, walking around my yard and giving me feedback, good and bad.” At the end of the tour, she had discovered a road to independence and to a career where she felt free and in control. “That’s when I knew what I wanted to do.” Candace said as she suddenly realized here was a way to create a business doing something she loved. Taking courses at Guelph University


taught Candace the importance of hard fea- tures in garden design and she has a talent for creating viewing points, patios and walk ways that become special features in her gar- dens, adding depth and mystery and desti- nation points. Of course, Candace uses no pesticides


and she has learned the value of repetition in plants when designing a garden. She ac- cepts the rabbits as an annual scourge but recognizes that this is a seasonal issue. She chooses thickly ribbed hostas that are slug resistant, such as Francis Williams, and she believes that simplicity gives the most im- pact. Still, she wants certain plants in her garden to have character, to be unique. She does not want a cookie cutter rendition of her neighbour’s yard. Peonies, like ‘Bowl of Beauty’ and es-


pecially those that don’t flop, along with ‘Dragon’s Blood’ sedum and old standbys such as black-eyed Susans and ‘Snow Lady”


Above right: structure, form and colour are among the secrets Candace brings to her designs. Below, the lovely pasque flower, one of the harbingers of spring.


Shasta daisies are part of her arsenal of weap- ons in attacking and taming ugly spaces. Gardening is about bringing chaos into order and order is important to Candace. “I get really annoyed when people don’t


bother to read tags on trees and shrubs and then go and plant them too close together, so they either have to be removed of pruned into some unnatural shape,” she says. On her wish list in her own garden is a ‘Golden Shadows’ dogwood with its beauti- ful pagoda form and its gold and green var- iegated foliage and because it will be “bright in the shade” alongside a Japanese maple. She also dreams of a fireplace to extend the day.


For Candace, the garden is her life, her


peace and her consolation. When her broth- er passed away last summer, the garden gave her solace. “I knew I’d find you here,” said a friend. Where else would she be? It’s where her heart is.


28 • Early Spring 2011 www.localgardener.net


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