The Canadian Cottage Garden, 10 June 2025

An article on the BBC, "Is it better to Neglect Your Garden?”, suggests allowing "nature to take its own course". The whole article is of interest as it suggests the importance of biodiversity, which includes a variety of insects, weeds, and even urban wildlife, and the article goes in some depth on this subject. It even asks, "What if you just do nothing?", and just let one's manicured garden return to nature. This interests me but it would defeat the purpose of my garden; I need to cut the grass, using my push lawn mower, and cut grass allows easy access to the whole garden, especially for seniors, keeps the neighbours and one's family happy, and keeps the gardener busy and getting some exercise. I also need to do some weeding if I want to have as many perennial flowers as I have. To do nothing might reduce the diversity of flowers that I've planted over the years, which is part of a cottage garden; these plants have been cultivated for gardens that are maintained in a traditional way. A return to nature may end up being not having a garden at all; but raking and disposing of leaves in fall can also be limited and even eliminated. The author of the article writes, 

While experts recommend doing a little less mowing and pruning in the spring and summer, it's also recommended to let some things pile up in the autumn, specifically leaves. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, a non-profit organisation focused on the conservation of invertebrates, promotes an initiative called Leave the Leaves that advocates for this to protect insects that overwinter on your property.

I didn't discard the leaves last fall, I raked them onto flower beds, and, for the most part, they are no longer visible except around the hostas at the rear of the garden. They are excellent mulch and allowed my lavender, and other plants, to survive our particularly cold winter. My own approach to gardening is more aesthetic than anything, as it might be for most gardeners. I would like my own small, shady, garden to be as much a part of nature as possible. I welcome weeds, I welcome as many insects as visit the garden, I rejoice seeing birds, and I celebrate any wildlife that passes through the garden; a garden is a simulated return to nature that allows access for people to enter, sit and visit, or just walk through. An enclosed or walled garden is a private space for nature, usually in an urban setting, the more abandoned looking the better but not, in fact, abandoned at all. Gardening is more artifice than authenticity, as poets might say, although in poetry authenticity is better than artifice; living in the city some of us want to return to nature but just to neglect the garden ends up having an unusable and perhaps uninviting garden, and defeats the purpose of the cottage garden. Here are photographs of my garden taken on 10 June 2025; this is early June in Montreal's West End, still waiting for most perennials to bloom.

The following photographs were taken on 11 June 2025. 

                 

Note the decomposing leaves, raked in place last fall, in this hosta bed

Chintz drapes, cottage gardens, and being at home

When I was a child I would lie in bed in the morning, and looking at the chintz drapes covering my bedroom window I could see faces in the drape’s patterns. Even as a child I took these faces for granted and knew they were a creation of my own imagination. And this is what we do as children, we enter a land of make believe, we create a narrative of the imagination, and it is an activity that seems as natural to a child as sleep. Only much later do we realize that things such as this are also an entrance to the soul, and this includes an assortment of imaginal work, it includes dreams and being creative, for me, for no reason at all, I began writing poetry. An active imagination also includes archetypes and symbolism, in this case the symbolism of windows is important, think of window symbolism in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. A window is like a picture frame surrounding the outside world; it is a moment caught in space and time, a moment celebrating life; it is an entrance to the soul.

My friend, George Johnston, was a member of the William Morris Society of Canada, and one day he told me he was scheduled to address the Society on some aspect of William Morris's philosophy and art; it was Morris who raised the art and design of chintz to a new level of sophistication. Anyone interested in W.B. Yeats might enjoy reading The Yeats Sisters: A Biography of Susan and Elizabeth Yeats (1996) by Joan Hardwick. In addition to learning more about the sisters of probably the greatest poet of the Twentieth Century, Susan and Elizabeth Yeats made a living in London working for William Morris and his daughter, May Morris, but it was not a pleasant experience. When one thinks of chintz fabric, or of wallpaper, one thinks of Morris's designs. Chintz fits in with cottage gardens and cottages, the arts and crafts movement, and it is part of the ambience of cosiness, making one's home welcoming and warm, a place that is a sanctuary from the outside world, a place of refuge where one can think one’s own thoughts and let one’s imagination go where it will. There is a healing quality to this, healing that is found in an environment not far removed from nature, it is healing that is possible for our inner being.                                          

Looking at the chintz drapes that I recently put up in a room in our home, I now see the psychic (as in “psyche”, the soul) quality of this fabric, the drapes seem to continue inside the room what exists only a few feet outside, they are a transition between the outside and the inside of one’s home. Chintz drapes embrace the outside world, they are an extension of the outside world, the garden, flowers, shrubs, and trees, the sky, clouds, rain, snow, and birds inhabiting the sky. There is a conservative repetition of certain patterns and motifs in these drapes, including flowers, vines, and greenery. Household furnishings—carpets, easy chairs, table lamps, bridge lamps, bookshelves, books, visual art on the walls, the colour of the walls, and drapes—all assume a oneness, and the garden is an extension of the rooms in one’s home to the natural world outside, the two becoming one. In order to discover what it means to be fully human, one’s environment needs to be a reflection of one’s inner being, and know that it can be a life lived sanely in an increasingly disturbed world. There is nothing modern about chintz or a cottage garden or being home, they breathe security and comfort.

             

                   

                   

Photos above taken 22 May 2025

Crows, Canadian Cottage Garden, 12 May 2025

 

At the garden centre, 6 May 2025

Vincelli’s Garden Centre is long gone but we still have,  locally, the Reno-Depot Garden Centre on rue St-Jacques, and this is where I was on Tuesday, 6 May 2025. A good selection of flowers but nothing extraordinary. I bought three hanging baskets at a reasonable price (each $14.99 plus tax) and I plan to return for two or three more; I could plant hanging baskets myself but then there is waiting for them to be as mature as these baskets already planted and purchased by me. There isn’t a lot of gardening time in this climate. 

Vincelli's Garden Centre on 13 April 2025

We used to have fun—buying annuals, choosing perennials, preparing the garden for another year of gardening—at Vincelli's Garden Centre. A few years ago someone wanted to build condos on this property but it seems the City of Cote Saint Luc wisely decided against it. This past winter the main building, visible in these photographs, was renovated and something must be happening, new tenants moving in, but no condos. These photographs were taken on 13 April 2025.

Canadian Cottage Garden, 15 March 2025

It's 10 C this morning, 15 March 2025; spring is here and winter has come to end. This was a winter we are happy to see the end of, very cold, a lot of snow, and hard on all of us. Right now the garden doesn’t look like much, it's still winter, it's still covered with snow, but soon it will be green and full of flowers, birds will be at the bird bath, life will return to life.