by Margaret deWeese
Charlie Sale, formerly from Ontario and now living in Deep Cove, North Vancouver spoke from the heart when he said there is joy in remembering one’s former garden, joy in one’s present garden and there will be joy in the garden still to come. He opened his presentation with a few slides of his heritage house and beautiful garden in Ontario. It was a flat garden with wonderfully crafted stone walls with lavenders, and rock plantings enhanced with pergolas built during the long winters of the region. The scene changed to the high rocky screes above Patagonia where, on a hiking expedition, Charlie, a frail flower in the wild, was collected by his wife, Margaret Charlton, after what he joked as a test of his fitness for her established rock faced garden of thirty years in the rainy inlet of Indian Arm, North Vancouver.
Together they have expanded an already large garden by most standards, by forty per cent where, on three and a half acres of mostly vertical scapes, they have created an opulence of worthy plants from the four corners of the world map, with particular emphasis on tender South American and Asiatic species collected from seed expeditions. Eschewing such a modern device as a wheelbarrow, Margaret and Charlie have gained access to nooks and crannies in the rock face employing mediaeval scaling ladders and have named their workplace “Bucket Hill”.
His presentation showed us what can be achieved if one had the dedication to garden for hours of every day over forty years, beginning with the growing on of hundreds of flats of rare seed yearly. It showed us how those small conifers grow until they must be removed by chainsaw and replaced with choice and rare flowers: Meconopsis grandis, hellebores, primulas, lilies, arisaemas, lewisias and the vertical covers of splendid vines such as Tropaeolum speciosum, all manner of clematis, Japanese Acer maples with delicate leaves providing filtered sunlight, and the dramatic fall colouring of the Hamamelis and Enkianthus. What dramatically caught my eye was the huge Crinodendron hookerianum, with its crimson red bells hanging in clusters in a Zone 7 garden, dying back during severe winters yet bouncing back to have another chance to stand proud in a truly amazing garden for the connoisseur. Thank you to Carol Dancer for recommending such an educational evening for us, and our garden hats off to such a dedicated couple, Charlie and Margaret.