Garden renovation is nothing new to Jennifer Buckland and Van Eriksen. Over the years, they have owned and renovated a couple of houses and gardens, but their biggest challenge came in 1995 when they moved into their present home on the University of British Columbia campus in Vancouver.
“The people we bought the house from lived here for 40 years, but they hadn't done any gardening,” explains Jennifer. “They moved a large deodar cedar to the backyard to hide a hydro pole and there was an old cherry tree and some lawn. That was the extent of the landscaping.”
In no time at all, however, Jennifer and Van, both flight attendants with Air Canada, began to make progress. (They've brought their garden to great heights, winning the grand prize in Canadian Gardening's 2001 Gardens of the Year contest.) They rescued all sorts of mature flowering shrubs-
rhododendrons, skimmia, hydrangeas, azaleas, a large cotoneaster and camellias-from demolition sites and started to create the garden. In some cases, they paid less than $20 for sizable, top-quality plants. The recycled shrubs quickly filled space and gave the garden a more established look. And they were happy to accept gifts of perennials and groundcovers from their new neighbours.
Unfortunately, as soon as they began their horticultural adventure in 1996, they suffered a setback. Fire destroyed the entire house and they were forced to divert energy into building a new home.
But a year later the garden work was back on track. Their first job was to create more privacy by planting some trees and shrubs to make a screen at the bottom of the garden. To pull this off, they planted a pink-leafed ‘Flamingo' box elder (Acer negundo ‘Flamingo') and some recycled hydrangeas. Behind them, they placed a golden-leafed black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia').
Next, Van built an attractive cedar arbour-seat and installed a small concrete patio in front, decorated with pebbles and stones gathered from local beaches. On one side of the arbour, Jennifer planted ‘Snow Goose', one of David Austin's popular climbing roses that produces slightly fragrant, white flowers. On the other side, she put in the reddish purple, summer-flowering ‘Ville de Lyon' clematis.
The ‘Flamingo' box elder now offers a strong counterbalance to the busy jumble of the back border. A stand of red valerian (Centranthus ruber) shares ground with the silver foliage of a cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) while the tall, slender feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster') immediately catches the eye, as do clumps of non-stop flowering golden yellow ‘Stella de Oro' daylilies, a young, willow-leafed pear (Pyrus salicifolia ‘Pendula'), the upright blades of blue oat grass (Helictotrichon sempervirens syn. Avena candida) and orache (Atriplex hortensis ‘Rubra'), with leaves the colour of bruised raspberries. Jennifer says she was inspired to plant this by the books of British garden guru Christopher Lloyd, of Greater Dixter fame.
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