Earth, Air, Scree and Water

The most advanced gardeners make magic with the most elemental materials: visit Marion Jarvie's amazing rock garden.

Most gardeners may go through the rose-and-peony stage, but rock gardens, Marion Jarvie believes, are "where many of the great gardeners end up." Why? "In a rock garden you can gather together all of the things you've really loved in a miniature landscape of trees, shrubs and perennials," she says. "You're working with it all — sand, soil and rocks, form, colour and texture — in an environment that you can control. You can even create small boggy areas and mini microclimates. And unlike a typical perennial bed, a rock garden doesn't go underground for the winter. The plants are tough and tailor made for Canadian conditions.

Any visitor to Jarvie's garden in Thornhill, just north of Toronto, can find evidence of this great gardener's explorations and how she's ended up. Born in Britain and a gardener from childhood, Jarvie moved to the property almost 30 years ago. The 30- by 26-metre back garden was a flat, windswept hilltop within plain view of a dozen neighbours. And in winter this patch of "waterlogged clay" was occasionally subjected to -38°C temperatures. It's now a leafy, serene and almost-secret garden, surrounded by a dense green wall of clipped cedar. Looking south from the terrace behind the house, you see the magnificent border of the garden: raised perennial, shrub and woodland beds that circle partway into the central lawn and finish with a low-lying bog garden and pond.

The jewel in their midst is Jarvie's special joy, an undulating scree garden covered in silvery shards of stone, patterned with quiet greens, greys, purples, reds and golds. Not a standard suburban "rockery" — often a bank with rocks and petunias tucked into it — hers is a carefully constructed yet naturalistic rock garden containing more than 100 genera of plants, including more than 30 dwarf shrubs (only 50 per cent flower) and 15 types of grasses. The limestone scree (small, sharp chips) provides the quick drainage and alkaline environment that alpine plants need. Suited to barren, cold and windy conditions, they are perfectly situated in this garden, which has constant air circulation and spots that dip down to Zone 4.

The scree garden stretches 12 metres across the yard and, in places, is 7.5 metres deep from front to back. Jarvie used a full dump-truck load of sand and one of gravel to build up the bed over compost. Then came the planting. She favours woody plants, subtle variations in colour and texture and varying shapes (soft, spiky, flat and full). A true collector, she exults that, in the space required by an average adult peony, 50 alpines can happily coexist. Primarily interested in foliage, Jarvie often chooses plants, such as the variegated Daphne 'Carol Mackie', that have clusters of ever "blooming" rosettes. Alongside rare plants, she has planted some scaled-down versions of familiar species, including Pinus parviflora 'Adcock's Dwarf' (the smallest pine), Dicentra eximia (a compact bleeding heart) and Fuchsia magellanica (a dwarf fuchsia that usually needs overwintering indoors).

Jarvie, who propagated plants at a commercial nursery for 11 years and taught courses in city gardening and landscaping at George Brown College in Toronto for 10 years, has become fascinated by dwarf alpines. Between giving lectures, designing private gardens and propagating rare species in her greenhouse, she now spends several months each year travelling to remote and rocky mountainsides to photograph these hardy, high-altitude gems.