Film Festival of Garden Tours

The horrid weather didn’t discourage anyone from coming out to the garden tour a couple of days ago. I don’t own an umbrella so I spent a lot of time under the roof of the thyme terrace eating Nanaimo bars, talking to acquaintances I didn’t know gardened or huddled against the eaves of the house chatting to gardening friends or hitching cover under other peoples brollies as they dragged me out into the beautifully arranged garden to identify a plant.

The rain leant an air of understated glory to the formal layout of the garden. The stone paths of the terrace area, planted with various species of thyme were softened and muted by the plants grey leaves and their pink and white flowers. The low stone wall built around the terrace made the sitting area into a room. From here, looking across the garden and along the path cut through the fringe of native trees and shrubs I could glimpse the Nechako river making its swift way to where it converges with the Fraser river and onward to the Pacific ocean. The ubiquitous Prince George rose, its pink flowers and delicious but not overpowering perfume made a natural backdrop for the many Thalictrums, Meadow Rue, allowed to wander, Peonies, Monkshood, Eryngium, Sea Holly, Colchicums, autumn crocus, that I didn’t know you could grow here and many other perennials.

It is the sort of garden I love. Plants are overgrow someone said blowsy, weaving together like a sort of living tapestry. Self-seeders and runners, plants with sideways roots, pop up in unexpected places. Left mostly to its own devices the garden looks better with age.

This garden tour reminded me of the one I used to attend in Dawson Creek. Unlike the garden tour here in Prince George, held every Tuesday evening for six weeks in the summer, the garden tour in Dawson Creek is an event held all on one day organized by the Dawson Creek Horticultural Society. Everyone is encouraged to go. Maps of the tour route and descriptions of the gardens are easily obtained from any downtown business, the art gallery and its even printed in the local Newspaper. If you don’t feel like driving a tour bus is available. Being a farming community many of the gardens are on acreages, sprawling all over the place, and almost everyone grows their own vegetables. There is plenty of room to accommodate everyone for the tea held at the last garden on the tour. Of course if you drive yourself you don’t have to attend the tea or even visit the gardens in the order specified on the map. You can start and end the tour whenever and wherever you want.

I used to really enjoy spending the day with friends, visiting all the gardens, talking to the owners, most of whom I knew anyway, and trying to absorb all the details, the way the gardens were arranged their design features and the plants. I came away with my head full of images and my mind full of ideas I wanted to try in my own garden. I felt the way you feel after spending too much time at a film festival but, that’s the point visit all the gardens and process everything you’ve seen, smelt and felt later.