Another visit to Jardins de Metis/Reford Gardens

Shortly after I arrived in Quebec, we made our first visit to Jardins de Metis on June 6, just about 40 minutes away.  It makes a great excursion, with lunch, coffee, or dinner on the way back.  The scenic drive is along the coast, which takes a bit longer, but we frequently take it back.

We visited for the second time yesterday; it's a wonderful place to visit frequently, as it's filled with unusual horticultural treasures. There had been lots happening over the last few weeks, as you'd expect in a northern climate!

I'm not normally particularly enthused with "collector's" gardens, but Jardins de Metis provides a remarkable array of interesting plants that are unfamiliar to us, from blue poppies to globeflowers to rock garden plants to color arrays of rhododendrons that we'd never see back in the U.S., not to mention an abundance of peonies and shrub roses.  And it's simply charmingly and eclectically gardened, with imaginative combinations of colors and textures in the display beds -- in quite a distinctive style.

The setting is equally lovely, on the edge of the Metis River facing the Gulf of St. Lawrence, complete with the historic house turned exhibit space and lovely restaurant and cafe spaces.

And the lupine meadows -- well, last summer, they inspired my gardening companion to plan on doing lupine beds here at our historic cottage, replacing the weedy variegated Bishop's weed that comprised much of the groundcover plantings around the house.  The lupines he grew from seed in early May are now sturdy young seedlings.

lupine bed near the house

a wonderful apricot-colored Rhododendron

Blue poppy

Trollius europaeus

a Trollius flower

view from the beldevere