Mr. Hobbs makes a garden

No sooner were extra chairs found than they were snapped up as The Floral Hall at Toronto's Civic Garden Centre filled to more than capacity with gardeners curious to see and hear Vancouver's outrageous, bad boy of gardening, Thomas Hobbs. Shocking Beauty is the title of his lavish coffee table book, and shockingly beautiful were his ideas about plants and gardens.

As slides flashed on-screen, Hobbs urged everyone to slow down and seek the beauty in the details of the natural world around us: in the vibrant colours of a dying leaf; in the patterns in the saw-toothed edges of melianthus major; and in the wildness of a clematis bird's nest perched in the rafters at Great Dixter.

These are the things that inspire Thomas Hobbs, born in Winnipeg, one-time florist, and now co- owner of Southlands Nursery in Vancouver. "Inspiration is only visible in a positive light," affirms Hobbs who clearly enjoys who he is and what he is doing. Positive thinking inspired him to drop a note on the doorstep of a house that he admired. Ten years later, the owner contacted Hobbs and asked him if he wanted to buy the house.

Hobbs restored the Meditteranean-style villa and transformed its gardens into what he describes as "total mental illness." If this is madness, let me lose my sanity. From the rough beauty of the prickly plants in his "burglar-proof" front garden to the sybaritic pleasure of the back garden oasis, Hobbs has created a world where plants and people dance in the sunshine, splash through the rain showers, and sigh under the night skies. Garden and gardener are one.

In the Hobbsian plant world, Stipa tennuissima is a Tina Turner fright wig and 'Patty's Plum' poppy, once rescued from the garbage and certain oblivion, grows on to become the cover girl of a nursery catalogue. Aside from the orchids he grows and propagates, one of Hobbs' favourite plant families is the Echeverias. It's a plant "that doesn't need you at all," says Hobbs who uses pots full of different varieties to mix up a "textural salad" and "Echeveria pizzas". Where does he find them? In the aisles at Home Depot. ("They don't know what they have!" he exclaims, letting us in on the secret.)

His pots are the jewels of his garden. To Hobbs, placing them amongst the plant borders is like creating a necklace of brilliant gemstones. Encouraging us all to use "wacky stuff" in our pots, he shows slides of California and Seattle potscapes filled with the exotic and the bizarre--combinations that none-the-less work with their surroundings. Hobbs also plays "pot tricks" with wacky containers. He uses a wall fountain as a planter and delights in "staging an incident" by creating a vignette with a birdless cage entwined with vines. Just as arresting, though, is a simple, unplanted pot. Filled only with water and placed amongst a lush, leafy border, the container provides what Hobbs calls "a Zen moment".

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