Reford Gardens is known for its blue poppies.    They have acid soil and the humidity from the river.   My fathers garden in Denmark had a large patch of Meconopsis betonicifolia.    I did not know how special that was  They always  turned towards the sun, but in his garden the sun only shone on this patch in the evening and then they turned aways from us.  They are hairy plants, and lofty meaning the flowerstalk is high.

We can hardly grow this in Ontario  our soil is alkaline and it might be too dry

 

 

 

Looking towards the river these portals are looming

 



Coming closer  I do not think they are looming anymore now they are more framing, making illusions

 

and here you can better see the illusions of water rippling



and here we look through "binoculars"  a specific view

 

and here the illusion is gone:  It was plywood in sheets painted with holes. When we left the area  the wind had picked up and the plywood was falling over

Never mind I still love looking at this sequence.

 

Just before the entrance to the architectural gardens,  these two empty chairs were sitting all by themselves

The entrance was bright  and shocking



Lots of orange dahlias

These poplar logs were laid out to show the rotting over time,   the large pile disappeared into a little tiny pile

 

A long row of tangering marygold.   The kind they use against nematodes.   The air was redolent with the smell  I am glad I like the smell

 

And a row of scavolens

Elsie Reford was born Mary Elsie Stephen Meighen on January 22, 1872. She grew up in Montreal where her father was president of the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, the largest flour milling company in the British Empire. Her mother, Elsie Stephen, was the youngest sister of George Stephen. George Stephen was a railway baron who had made a fortune building and operating a railway from St. Paul, Minnesota into Manitoba in the 1870s. The St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway was the foundation of a business empire that spanned the North American continent and made Stephen and his principal partners, his cousin Donald Smith (later Lord Strathcona) and J.J. Hill, some of the wealthiest men of their time. In 1880, Stephen founded the Canadian Pacific Railway. As president and principal financier, he was chiefly responsible for building the transcontinental railway that linked Montreal to Vancouver, completed in 1885. Stephen’s accomplishment earned him recognition from Queen Victoria, who made him Sir George Stephen, baronet, of Montreal and Grand-Metis, Quebec.

The story of this place reads like the story of Canada.  We saw the books that were displayed in the lodge.  It described the number of servants required to run the place in a gentile fashion.    Le Grand Metis is quite far away from any large city and it would have taken a lot of resources to make a comfortable life here

Stephen lived in Montreal, but took several weeks off every summer to indulge in the sport of salmon-fishing on the rivers of eastern Quebec. In the 1870s he leased the Metis River and then bought 100 acres of property overlooking the river in 1886. In 1887, he built Estevan Lodge, a rambling wooden building sufficiently large to accommodate his fishing parties. Stephen was elevated to the peerage in 1891, taking the title Lord Mount Stephen after the mountain in the Canadian Rockies named in his honour. The first Canadian to be made a member of the House of Lords, Stephen left Montreal to take his seat at Westminster. Quiet and unassuming, Stephen lived in London and Brocket Hall, a country house outside London. Thereafter, he spent little time in Canada. He loaned Estevan Lodge to his friends, who made an annual pilgrimage to the Metis River to ply its waters. One of the regular visitors was his niece, Elsie Reford.

 With no children of his own, Stephen gave his fortune to charity and distributed his possessions among his family. He gave Estevan Lodge to Elsie Reford in 1918. Reportedly Stephen’s favourite niece, she shared his love of salmon-fishing. Every season, she would write her uncle detailing the fish she had caught, their size and the pools where she had the greatest success. As she had inherited a third of her father’s fortune and was married to Robert Wilson Reford, the eldest son of a Montreal shipping magnate, she also had the means to maintain the river and the large staff of guardians and guides who worked at Estevan Lodge.



Melianthus

The trees are not large.  Scots pine, firs and spruces.  but it is charming

These lollipops looked like they were made out of glass   but it was probably plastic

This will be the first in a long row of pictures from Reford Gardens in Quebec
Le Grand Metis is situated at the St. Lawrence river close to Trois Pistoles.
 I am guessing it is zone 4.
Elise Reford inherited the property from her uncle and created a large garden  In the last ten years there have been installations by different landscape architects

Keys at Kew.     Willow sculpture from 2008 at Kew gardens in London.  It was a grey day.  I think that I could do willow sculptures  but I have not done any so far.  I think they have a wire structure underneath.   I like that these keys look so grounded ready to sprout

This is Erigenia bulbosa  Salt and Pepper plant, the first plant to bloom in Ontario.  I have seen it this one time at Rare a conservation area in Cambridge Ontario. It smells of spring or maybe it was the soil.  You have to bend down to see it and you have to have good eyesight and go with someone who knows

I took this picture in 2008   5 Years ago    What a lot of bare soil   It is very gravelly right here  and 5 meters away it is nice sandy loam without rocks.   I now appreciate this environment.   Standing and looking at this could make you crazy or nervous:   "so much work, it will never be nice"   We could say the same when we look at all the snow we have now.     Either it is all about waiting or it is all about knowing that it will be okay