Bay,” Diana explains, “and I wanted a feature, so I put out the word and sure enough, in typical small town fash- ion, someone approached me saying, ‘I hear you’re looking for a harrow’.” She brought it with her to Winnipeg. “I feel its connection to the land,” she says, “and it suits the prairie and the house.” The pond on a patio outside the
breezeway is more formal. Diana chose a spot most conducive to pond success – enough sun, deep enough to over- winter waterlilies (although, even at four feet, no luck so far with fish which, she says, she is resigned to treating as annuals). One corner of the pond houses bulrushes salvaged from the wild. Iris pseudacorus is to be replaced by Iris pseudata, a new cross between the Japanese Iris ensata and I. spicata. I. pseudata is said to be quite hardy, and it has unusual blossoms growing from five-feet-tall stems in water and three- feet-tall stems in gardens. The gleam in Diana’s eye reveals her dream of how this will look. She agrees that much of the fun of
gardening is the dreaming, the plan- ning and imaging that goes into each garden year. Sheltered by the carriage house is the
potager, the kitchen garden, growing in raised beds. This is a lovely spot, sunny and warm and protected by the “moun- tain”, an accidental but useful and strik- ing feature in the garden. “Before we closed in the fence and when we were renovating the garden,” says Diana, “we brought in two truckloads of soil, which we were planning to use against the house. One day, we were sitting in the potager and noticed how the pile of soil blocked the wind.” Her busy mind soon saw a rockery, the mound of earth shored up by carefully placed rocks and planted with plants that enjoy that envi- ronment. They flattened the top and turned it into a viewing place, where sits a bench from which to get a great perspective on the entire garden. “As in life,” Diana laughs her spontaneous laugh, “perspective is what matters.” Her perspective is clearly a well-
balanced one. She has set aside her hectic life as a physician and although she is still terribly busy, much of her activity now comes through her own choice, and she’s chosen to put the garden near the top of the list. As for Diana’s garden, it is much like
Diana: warm and comforting with a style of its own and, like Diana, it makes strong statements where it matters. P The raised beds of the potager are sheltered by the carriage house.
localgardener.net Beautiful Gardens 2014 • 23
A laden wheelbarrow indicates some work has been done.
The harrow moved here with the family.
Carriage house cum potting shed.
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