Toronto Music Garden: Brown Friday

Can dormant ornamental grasses be...ummm...ornamental?

The American shopping phenomenon called "Black Friday" has been rearing its lovely commercial head in Toronto with greater frequency and intensity recently. For those few not in the know, the last Friday in November in the Great White North is just that: the last Friday in November. But for more than a few of our American brothers and sisters, Black Friday means donning on the protective gear and joining the masses at the Wal-Marts (brawl anyone?) to get, apparently, ridiculous deals on made in China widgets.

Hey, I love a deal as much as the next guy but lining up in the cold at 5:00 a.m. for widgets doesn't do it for me. So the celebrate Black Friday, garden muses-style, I visited a place far, far away from the madding crowds: the Toronto Music Garden.

To my half-dozen readers, I present Brown Friday!

Toronto Music Garden winter
ornamental grasses Courante section

Ok, so you see dead plants (I prefer dormant but I won't split hairs). But if you're a zone 5 or lower gardener in many places of North America, you should consider such plants with "winter interest." Now I write these two words in quotes because, for some, asking them to appreciate dried berries, peeling bark or dead stalks and flowers for a solid 4 months (!) of the year is really asking too much. Many gardeners just dismiss this idea,  raze their garden beds to stubble, close the curtains and finger their seed catalogues longingly in January and February.

Last time I checked, brown is a colour and on this cold Friday, you can see many shades of brown in these pictures I took at the Toronto Music Garden today. 

I do think the grasses and sleeping perennials are ornamental indeed for maybe 10 months out the year, except when they're cut back hard in spring. 10 out of 12 isn't a bad ratio, when you think about it.

Toronto Music Garden perennials showing
their winter structure in the  Courante section 

Toronto Music Garden in early winter
with the CN Tower poking out of a grove of conifers! 

Toronto Music Garden winter
Miscanthus/maiden grass 

Toronto Music Garden winter
Miscanthus/maiden grass seedheads

Toronto Music Garden winter ornamental
 grasses and rudbeckia along Courante section 

Toronto Music Garden Courante section
 showing winter ornamental grasses and
 other perennials 

Toronto Music Garden Revisited in the Fall

Autumn glory at the Toronto Music Garden

On an impossibly beautiful day in late fall, I made time to visit one of my favourite places in the city. I've posted about the Toronto Music Garden twice before under the titles 
"wind + ornamental grasses = kinesis" and "Toronto Music Garden with the kids" so as you can guess this garden still intrigues and inspires me. The design is thought-provoking and the plant list, well, elicits serious hort envy!

Under a brilliant blue sky with an ever-present prevailing wind off Lake Ontario, I spent an hour admiring the fall foliage and feeling at peace with the rustling sounds from the ornamental grasses. My only regret was running out of camera battery power but the memory is ingrained. Anyone in the Toronto area should visit the space, whether one is a lover of Bach or garden design or not.

Shimmering Miscanthus, Chasmanthium, and Panicum

Fall common witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) foliage
and blooms

More common witch hazel blooms with
last year's opened seedpods

Another reason to love Hakone grass

Maiden grass seedheads ready to catch the wind

Going up the Courante section...

A grove of paper birches in its autumn glory

On July 1 compared to...

A more subdued feeling 4 months later

At the adjacent Spadina Quay Wetlands.
An excellent example of ecological planting
that is also highly ornamental.

wind + ornamental grasses = kinesis

Toronto Music Garden in its fall glory

When the wind picks up at this time of the year, I always think of ornamental grasses. They evoke waves on land and show the wind's kinetic energy pulsing, pushing and pulling. Gardens around the city are changing towards new forms previously hidden or distracted by foliage and, forgive me, flowers. Senescence comes to mind, a word more descriptive than dormancy. 


Grasses like feather reed grass  (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) in the fall show the inevitable sleep that descends on us all after a season of push and pull.

Feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) 
in motion

Pennisetum , Miscanthus, et al: all texture, wave after wave

I visited the Toronto Music Garden earlier this past summer in a post called "Toronto Music Garden with the kids" when a greater emphasis was found with flowers. In the courante section of the garden, grasses and other sun-worshipping perennials spiral along the path towards the maypole at the top. Right now, I love this layer of purple coneflower seedheads, plumes from the fountain and maiden grasses, spires of the butterfly bush and Russian sages. No hot designer colours, just a repetition of a plant forms that makes for superb garden design.

What's around the bend? I suspect more Pennisetum, Miscanthus, Chasmanthium, and Panicum willing to embrace and caress you while you hear the rustling with each gust.

Ornamental grasses provide a tactile experience

Why wouldn't you want to proceed?

Toronto Music Garden with the Kids

School's out and what's a Toronto gardener to do?

The kids finished school and their day camp starts next week so I had to entertain them yesterday. Did I take them to a movie or the mall? They know better!

As it was an absolutely beautiful day, I wrangled / bribed / threatened them into accompanying me to a garden we last visited last fall: the Toronto Music Garden. Designed by Julie Moir Messervy , cellist Yo Yo Ma, and others, the three acre space is "a reflection in landscape of Bach's Suite No. 1 in G Major for unaccompanied cello, BWV 1007."

There are six sections of the garden which corresponds to each dance movement in Bach's piece: Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, and Minuets. Here is the link which describes each movement's physical, design, and horticultural components.

I think a visitor can have a greater appreciation of the space if she/he actually knows the music driving the design. Since I don't (but should simply add it to my iPod and listen to it during my next visit,) I am more interested in the perennials and woodies used and their placement in the design which equally drive the design.

Toronto Music Garden Gigue section
showing Japanese forest grass, blooming smokebush,
purple salvia, yellow potentilla 

This picture is in the Gigue section but more importantly, to me, shows the design principles of mass, line, and repetition in combination with using complementary colours (yellow and purple) for visual tension and excitement. Yes, you can grow the Japanese Forest Grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) in full sun and doesn't it look smashing containing the Dropmore Blue Catmint (Nepeta x faassenii ‘Dropmore Blue’) and the yellow cinquefoil (Potentilla tridentate) on top? A smokebush in bloom to the left and a crabapple in the background provide more structure throughout the year.

Looking eastward, there's an ubiquitous condo to the left and the CN Tower in the middle. To the immediate right is the lakefront, providing conditions which make the visit very pleasant with a prevailing breeze.

Mass of pink astilbes

Lines are always flowing in this space and here's a great example in the Minuet section. The curved metal bench merges into this bed with the Japanese Anemone, a mass of pink astilbe blooming so nicely for us, "Makamik" crabapple, and dwarf lilac in the background. If you like pinks, this area is for you!  I hope you can make out the path to the right. It leads down a grove of nannyberry viburnum fronted by a mass planting of "Stella de Oro" daylilies, both in full bloom.

To their credit, the kids humored dad for about an hour before making plaintive cries of starvation and neglect. Time for lunch and they led the way up the stone stairs of the gigue. If you're in the Habourfront area, as a local or visitor, try to spend some time at this garden. It's hard to believe that the busy city is so close when you're wandering down the garden's many spiralling paths.

Among the many things I adore about it is the realization that there is not one annual used in the plantings so the space is visually interesting (arresting, peaceful) for most, if not all, of the year. Come back in October to confirm this. Its design principles are timeless, like Bach's music.