Splendour in the BY SIGNE BALL
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PHOTOGR APHY BY ROSEMARY HASNER
n the spring of 2015, this magazine featured the perennial garden of Misha Dubbeld. Lush and abundant in colourful, artfully curated blooms, it is an exceptional classic country garden surrounding a classic Ontario Gothic farmhouse in Mono. But even then, Misha was laying the carefully considered bones for a new garden vernacular on a much broader landscape. Six years later, we are revisiting Misha to see how her vision has come to fruition. Located on two acres of what was largely a flat and windswept field north of the house, the mature garden is now a moody, motion-filled canvas of swaying, textural
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grasses that line a crafted spillway of field rocks. The whole expanse is defined and protected by a stone wall to the east and a sculptural double cedar hedge to the west, and surrounded by an arboretum of unusual conifers. In conceiving the garden, Misha says, “I wanted to burst out and take on something that was truly, for me, a challenge. What would work on a piece of land that had been a sand ring for horses – without changing too much about the soil, and without requiring a ton of inputs of water and topsoil? That was a big part of the decision to do a grass garden.” That, and her admiration for the work of Dutch master gardener Piet Oudolf, whose sweeping and painterly
