The Schlosser
garden of Calgary Teeming with life,
brimming with love Story and photos by Dorothy Dobbie
The deck, surrounded by beauty, is an ideal place to relax. Y
ou know a garden has real magic when the potentillas plant them- selves. That’s what happened in
the garden of Cathy and Neil Schlosser of Calgary. It’s been 27 years in the making,
this oasis of colour and calm. It started with a great expanse of gravel,
liter-
ally. The large pie-shaped yard was an old gravel bed. This, the Schlossers say, provided wonderful drainage, but along with some very average topsoil, presented a challenge when it came to growing. Many rocks had to be raked away and removed. Today, you’d never know this is what faced them back then. The garden has a lushness that only appears in places where the soil is as close to perfect as possible. They used plenty of peat moss,
manure and compost to amend the topsoil that was original to the yard, and more recently added B.C. compost, a magic formula of a fish meal bi-prod- uct and waste from the forest indus- try. Called Sea Soil, you can find it at Green Gates Garden Center. Neil does all the hard landscaping.
He does most of the heavy lifting, hauling and heavy digging. He built the pergola and gazebo, framed the garden with landscaping timber and with Cathy’s help, designed the space, which is made intriguing through the use of grand vistas and rooms – a secret garden here, a hidden gazebo there. Cathy is a plant lover who enjoys her
hours in the garden beds. She enjoys the big plants – the ligularias, monks- hood, the large leafed Astilboides, the
16 • Beautiful Gardens 2015
localgardener.net
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