Revisiting Marina’s Garden

28.11.2023 - 08:51 / finegardening.com / GPOD Contributor

We’re in Beeton, Ontario, today, visiting Marina. We’ve been to her beautiful garden before (Marina’s Garden in Beeton, Ontario) when it was just a few years old, and we’re back today to see how it has thrived and grown since then.

I just wanted to send you a few pictures of my garden taken this past summer. You can see that the weather was the most favorable for gardening, unlike our usual hot and dry Ontario summers.

My backyard is getting there, with the rainy summer helping a lot. As you see, my garden is pretty wild. I like to collect plants and plant them densely. I also have an ambition to complement the gorgeous self-seeded sea of wild grasses beyond the chain-link fence. I made two geometric beds and am in the process of adding a few tightly clipped topiaries in order to add some structure to the “wilderness.”

Early summer in the garden. I love the repeated elements of pink, purple, and burgundy from flowers and foliage. It really gives the garden a unified theme.

So many different plants are in here, all thriving and blooming, while the limited color scheme keeps it all harmonious.

There are more yellow notes in this part of the garden. Look at that fabulous clematis (Clematis hybrid, Zones 4–9) by the front door!

Yellow, gold, and orange are repeated in foliage and flowers here for a sunny part of the garden.

I love the warm pink color of these foxgloves (Digitalis × mertonensis, Zones 4–8).

Against the dark foliage of a smokebush (Cotinus coggygria, Zones 5–8), this lily (Lilium hybrid, Zones 5–9) really stands out.

An unusual perennial foxglove (looks like Digitalis lanata, Zones 3–8, or one of the related species)

A rainy summer makes for a lush, green garden. Here it is about to burst into color as the H