Larkwhistle garden

Last week we explored the rugged southwest shore of Georgian Bay. Now continuing on our tour of the Bruce Peninsula, let's move to a more intimate scale with a visit to one of Ontario's most famous private gardens.

There is a prevailing atmosphere of love over Larkwhistle, the creation of noted garden writer Patrick Lima and his partner John Scanlan. Few regions in Ontario seem as hostile to a rich and pleasing show of cultivated flowers. But that is exactly what the two men have nurtured from the Bruce's thin, marginal topsoil since the 1970s. Larkwhistle's colours and textures are exquisite to both eye and heart.

I have visited it four times, each time wondering why it is here. Leaving the security of Highway 6, you have to venture down an interminable gravel road, hoping to God you're on the right one, before you finally see a reassuring sign to Larkwhistle. The land is largely devoted to cattle farms scattered with limestone rubble, and not looking especially prosperous. The province has many richer areas, with a longer growing season and winters less harsh. All the nearby villages, like Tobermory and Lion's Head, are tiny harbours perched on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment. Most of the gardens I have seen there are wistful and modest, only half-hopeful. There is no grand tradition of earnest gardening to give precedent to what you will find at Larkwhistle. I wonder what considerations led Lima and Scanlan to put their spades to this particular soil.

But the result is unquestionable. The place's warmth and gentleness complement rather than conflict with the austere landscape. Such a garden would not be what it is, anywhere else. The feeling that it belongs there is a tribute to its design.

The first book of Lima's that I owned was The Harrowsmith Illustrated Book of Herbs (1986). I have always found herbs at least as intriguing as they are useful. So this book has been well used over the years. Laced throughout the pages are descriptions of Larkwhistle.

Five years ago, my partner John Scanlan and I built across the front of our house a raised porch of flat stones laid over several feet of well-tamped sand. A flight of low stone steps, also set in sand, leads up to the porch. When the work was done, John tucked a sprig of the lowest of the low creeping thymes in the steps. In short order, a stream of green was following the narrow gaps between the stones, and by June, the flat greenery had become a flowery patch of bright lilac humming with honeybees. Lovely - and the next spring, bits of green tracery appeared between the porch stones and spread out to soften the rockhard lines; again in early July, green was lost under lilac. A perfect picture, this, and all the better because it happened on its own.
The copyright of the article Larkwhistle garden in Living With Nature is owned by Van Waffle. Permission to republish Larkwhistle garden in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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