Beds and Boarders

An inkeeper in the morning, a gardener in the afternoon It's interesting that Madeleine Côté Lussier views her garden as a private place. While that may be true of the borders behind her St-Hyacinthe, Quebec, home, the exuberant plantings in front are on show to all who drive by this bucolic setting.And these plants often beckon to guests who stay at Motel Le Boisé du Baronet next door, which Madeleine owns and runs. “Sometimes, the guests in the motel ask if they can tour the garden,” says Madeleine, who spends her mornings working as an innkeeper and her afternoons tending her eclectic plant collection.The garden has been a work in progress since Madeleine and her husband, Noël, built their home in 1989. Noël, a former construction company owner, had built dream homes for clients and yearned to create one for his own family. So the couple bought the motel, built in 1949, and 12 acres of land surrounding it with the intention of living next door. But Noël was so busy with his company, it took him five years to get around to completing his own dream home while the family continued to live in a smaller house elsewhere in St-Hyacinthe.Wanting a garden at their new home, Madeleine was dismayed to discover the low-lying land was flooded in the spring by the Delorme River, which bisects it. “It took rocky landfill and 100 truckloads of topsoil to raise the land by two metres,” she recalls. Once the family was settled, she turned her attention to creating a garden.“I had been gardening since I was six years old, when my grandparents, who had vegetable and flower gardens, gave me seeds. Every year, I would plant more flowers than vegetables.”That may have been the genesis of Madeleine's passion for accumulating plants. “I'm a real collector,” she says. “When I choose a plant, I look for rare cultivars, plants that I'm not familiar with. I also look for colour and texture. And one of the key criteria is that the plants I choose have to be hardy enough to survive here in Zone 4.” Plant combinations to catch a visitor's eye Madeleine has used about four of the 12 acres she and Noël own to cultivate an assortment of beds and borders. Fifteen years ago, she began by building a rockery in front of the house, which curls around the walkway leading to the front door. Here she planted several spireas, which soon outgrew the space and had to be moved to the backyard. The rockery has evolved and now plays host to such plants as variegated euonymus, several varieties of lilies and Japanese anemones, yellow meadow rue (Thalictrum flavum) and corydalis.Directly in front of the rockery is an overflowing border that flanks a low stone wall, which runs along the width of the front lawn to a wooden fence separating the house from the motel. Here, delphiniums and Queen Anne's lace keep company with wild anemones. In another corner of the front yard, Madeleine is fighting a losing battle against Mother Nature.“This was my rose border,” she laments. “I've lost almost every rose except two [Explorers] in the past couple of winters.”Superb plant combinations are also on display in front of the house between the driveway and the Delorme River. Divided in two by a lattice fence, this outstanding border boasts a collection of daylilies on one side and a swath of blue, white and pink blooms on the other. A few elders (Sambucus canadensis) anchor the border along with a Rosa glauca, while clematis such as ‘Belle of Woking', ‘Victoria', ‘Prince Philip' and ‘Carnaby' ramp up the lattice. Flowers that bloom at their feet include pink musk mallow (Malva moschata), a collection of speedwell (Veronica spp.) and marguerites, rose campion (Lychnis coronaria) and feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium syn. Chrysanthemum parthenium).The property boasts a broad selection of trees-spruces, maples and oaks-many of which Madeleine has planted throughout the years with the help of her children, Roxane, 29, Michaël, 27, Evelyne, 23, and Marie-Eve, 21. And each time a grandchild is born, she plants a tree in the child's honour. The arrival of 10-month-old Maéva was celebrated with a sugar maple (Acer saccharum), while a maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba) was planted for Jayson, 2. There's a horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) for Vincent, 2, and a black walnut (Juglans nigra) for Antoine, 4. Flowerbeds full of memories Various trees on the property were severely damaged or lost during the ice storm that ravaged Quebec in 1998. “There were branches everywhere,” Madeleine says. But many remain, creating dense or dappled shade, so she's underplanted them with shade-tolerant perennials.On the southwest side, a long border that's home to obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana), Jupiter's beard (Centranthus ruber), various bee balms (Monarda spp.) in red, pink, lavender and white, bladder campion (Silene vulgaris), yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia) and scabious (Scabiosa caucasica) hugs the wooden fence dividing the two properties. There's also a collection of hibiscus that spends the winter in the house. Because most of them were gifts, Madeleine has not been able to identify the cultivars. She says her next project will be to determine the names of all the plants she owns and tag them. “I really don't know what cultivars I have unless they still have the tags they came with,” she says.