Garden tour shows off what can grow in South Frontenac

Craig Bakay | Jul 25, 2018

There are quite a number of amazing gardens in South Frontenac so when Southern Frontenac Community Services decided to host a tour of said gardens as a fundraiser for its seniors programs, it should come as no surprise that they decided to split the Township into four distinct regions to increase the number of gardens they could feature.

“This is the first time we’ve done this and we decided to make it a four-year program,” said Nona Mariotte, past board chair. “This year we’re featuring the Southeast Quadrant, which includes a couple of locations that are technically in the City of Kingston but that’s OK because we service them too.

“Everything north of the 401.”

The tour is not a competition but it’s hard to imagine there would be a more impressive entry than Linda and Brian Hetherington’s home on Sunbury Road. It’s a couple of acres devoted to all sorts of gardening techniques and one of the gardens to be featured later this summer when the Kingston Horticultural Society hosts the Ontario Horticultural Association convention later this week.

Forty years in the making, this amazing backyard is a collaboration between the husband and wife team that seem to compliment each other’s skill sets.

“I’m the initial landscaper, having built the pond and waterfall and split the rocks over the years,” said Bryan. “She does the maintenance.”

“He also grows the seeds in his greenhouse,” said Linda. “I like to plant plants, not seeds.”

There seems to be a minor disagreement as to how many varieties of plant they have, but about 400 seems right, including about 200 perennials, trees, shrubs and annuals.

In her younger days, Linda was a successful artist (“she paid income tax from selling her paintings,” Bryan said) so she kind of takes charge of where things go.

“She’s ruthless,” he said. “If something isn’t in the right spot, she changes it.”

Areas are broken up according to themes, such as the goldfish pond, vegetable garden and the ‘fairy garden.’

“The fairy garden is primarily for children,” Linda said. “It’s got all sorts of fairies in it and when kids come to visit, they go home with a fairy.”

They’ve managed to arrange things so they have flowers all growing season, spring through fall, and have recently added a ‘potager’garden.

“A potager, or pretty kitchen garden, is a combination of flowers, herbs and vegetables,” she said. “It has a central area and the plants radiate out from there.

“Bryan built the picket fence around it and the bird bath in the centre was made by his dad.

“It’s very calming in here.”

It is indeed.

The Hetheringtons encourage people to visit their garden. Not only is it visually incredible, it smells really good too.