We’re with Cherry Ong today, tagging along on a garden tour she did earlier this year during a trip to the Toronto area.

According to the brochure Cherry received for the tour, this woodland planting is the garden of a professional gardener who likes to garden in harmony with nature, using nothing but fallen leaves to fertilize and enrich the soil. Here you can see a diversity of beautiful ferns as thriving in those conditions. If you choose the right plants for the right spots, they’ll thrive without a lot of added inputs.

Clearly this gardener collects things besides interesting plants. This combination of stones and skulls makes the garden ready for Halloween every day of the year.

There is really beautiful detail in the hardscaping. The large, dramatic rock is raw and naturalistic, contrasting beautifully with the formal, straight lines of the paving around it.

This stonework is incredible; I’ve never seen anything like it. Beautiful and dramatic, these stones almost look like living things rising up out of the ground.

A minimalist stone sculpture

This round, metal sculpture contrasts beautifully with the trees behind it. The silvery trunks look like those of beech trees (Fagus grandiflora, Zones 3–9), one of our most beautiful native trees.

These appear to be automotive parts, transformed into stepping-stones through the woodland garden, with all sorts of green treasurers growing around them.

Mature trees are the best garden feature possible. I love this view up the trunk of a mighty giant in the garden, which provides the shade and leaf litter that the plants below need to thrive.

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