My Houzz: A Canadian Garden Is Well-Prepared for the Cold Weather Ahead
Through trial and error over 3 decades, a retired schoolteacher-turned-hobby gardener creates an idyllic garden retreat
Hardiness zones that are based on minimum winter temperatures can help determine which plants are capable of growing in a particular geographic region. Thunder Bay, Ontario, is in Zone 3, the same hardiness zone as southern Alaska and Siberia. Winters can be cold and long, which means a short growing season and frost as early as October. Fortunately, homeowners Lana Lang and Alan Young are very familiar with preparing their garden to handle the harsh climate, as they have planned, pruned and tended to it for the past 37 years. “You need to respect where you are working,” Lang, a retired schoolteacher says. “Our garden is a mix of shrubs and perennials. In the end, the winter takes the garden out.”
Young and Lang’s garden is designed for someone who loves to work in the soil. There are six categories of plants in the garden, and each group requires a different treatment in the fall. The trees are pruned by an arborist to control their size and ensure that they can tolerate heavy snow. Shrubs are also cared for in this way, although some shrubs are pruned in the spring. Lang says her mantra is, “Spring bloom, summer prune; summer bloom, spring prune.”
The garden was designed in the English cottage garden style to enhance the English Tudor house, while keeping in mind that the climate in northern Ontario is not at all the same as in England.
Decorative urns, wrought iron trellises and clay pots are scattered throughout the yard. “I tried to marry the design and look of the garden to the house,” Lang says.
Astilbes, planted throughout the front garden, are perennials and have a long blooming period and good foliage when not in bloom. They also tend to be disease-resistant.
A black urn filled with an Ipomoea species and rex begonias is located by the front entrance to the house. These are tender perennials and are propagated and grown in the greenhouse until all danger of frost has passed, around June 7 in Thunder Bay. “I especially enjoy planting containers and try to change the compositions yearly,” Lang says.
How the landscape looks now is a far cry from when she and Young bought the house. “The house needed a garden, so I taught myself through trial and error,” Lang says.
Thick bushes and a lush green lawn border on the side of the house lead to the back gate. “We had enough rain that we only needed to water once or twice this summer, but we do have dry summers also,” Lang says.
Lang planned the landscape so there are two main garden rooms. The front garden is designed for the enjoyment of the neighbors and has something in bloom from early May to October. The back garden, seen here in the early-morning sun, is more private and is for the enjoyment of the family.
“It is difficult to fit a pond in a garden and make it look natural,” Lang says. Their pond is over 20 years old and is surrounded by evergreen shrubs and perennials. It holds water lilies and water irises that can handle freezing weather, so they survive the winters.
“The wrought iron pergola was added to the garden as a focal-point folly and a place to grow clematis,” Lang says. “We love to look out the windows at it and put fairy lights on it in the winter.”
There are two copper-roofed bird feeders that attract many birds every day, especially in the winter. Local bird-watching clubs visit the garden often.
An almost squirrel-proof finch feeder hangs on the gazebo.
An alpine clematis, which crawls up the trellis, has finished blooming and gone to seed.
A gift from Young to Lang provides a drinking spot for the birds.
The back of the garden is screened by a 30-foot-high cedar hedge that provides privacy and is the perfect habitat for the birds who live and feed there.
“A yard with evergreens means that even in the winter it will be attractive,” Lang says.
A stone urn in a corner of the garden is filled with pink impatiens and rex begonias. Lang plants some annuals in pots in August, when many of the perennials have finished blooming.
A late-blooming astilbe is in its glory at the beginning of September. Lang selects plants so that something is always in bloom during the spring, summer and fall.
Another tall, late-blooming astilbe shows off its lavender color.
Yet another variety of tall astilbe, this one with slightly different flowers, blooms until the end of September.
This brugmansia is kept in a pot so it can be pruned and transferred into the house before the winter, as it is too big for the greenhouse. During the winter, it sits in a south-facing window.
Unlike most conifers, a weeping tamarisk, like the one pictured here, loses its needles in the fall.
Cotoneaster hedges enclose the sides of the back garden to give it the feeling of being in the country. “Visitors to the garden often say that they feel as if they are in the country and it is hard to believe the garden is in the middle of the city,” Lang says.
The greenhouse is empty before winter, waiting for plants to be transferred back to it or started in the spring. “Tender perennials need to come into the greenhouse before the first frost,” Lang says. In spring the greenhouse is mainly used to grow annuals and perennials to plant when the danger of frost has passed, around the beginning of June.
This blooming cestrum is at home in one of the planters outside the greenhouse. “They are native to temperate and tropical regions of the Americas, and the flowers are fragrant,” Lang says. “This plant winters in the south-facing dining room window and wows with red lilac-like flowers for many months.”
An old storm window serves as a lid for a cold frame, which is used in spring to propagate plants that thrive in cooler temperatures than those of the greenhouse.
A large compost bin is tucked in one corner of the garden behind a fence. All annuals are removed in the fall and added to the compost.
Lang loves to garden and says, “[It] keeps me fit.” She also notes that she’s much more knowledgeable than when she started. “I learned through trial and error. I made a ton of mistakes,” she says. “Mistakes such as putting together plants that don’t look good together. You need to know the right plant for the right place; what plants need sun, shade; their rate of growth; and the type of soil that is best. Also, which bugs will attack it.”
She has used her gardening skills honed at home to volunteer for the past 15 years for the Canadian Cancer Society’s Hope and Memory Garden in Thunder Bay. “Gardening is lifelong learning. You have to practice to get good, and it never ends,” she says. “There is no finished product, unlike a painting or a photo. It is not static but continually growing.”
More
Idyllic English Gardens for the Whole Community
World of Design: These Gardeners Dig Cold Climates
She has used her gardening skills honed at home to volunteer for the past 15 years for the Canadian Cancer Society’s Hope and Memory Garden in Thunder Bay. “Gardening is lifelong learning. You have to practice to get good, and it never ends,” she says. “There is no finished product, unlike a painting or a photo. It is not static but continually growing.”
More
Idyllic English Gardens for the Whole Community
World of Design: These Gardeners Dig Cold Climates
Who lives here: Lana Lang and Alan Young
Location: Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
Size: 75 by 108 feet (22.8 by 32.9 meters)
Year house built: 1944
“When we arrived in 1979, there was no garden, so work on the garden started right away,” Lang says.
Planning is needed to keep a garden going in extreme climates. “Many bulbs are planted in the fall, and I especially love allium and lilies,” she says. Perennials are divided in the fall, which allows the homeowner to try new planting compositions.
Lang picks plants carefully and uses grow lights in the basement to keep cuttings from the garden in the house over the winter.