A Landscape Designer Shares Her Tips For Creating A Dreamy City Backyard

“It’s much harder working on my own garden,” says landscape designer Meredyth Hilton of Toronto firm Artistic Gardens.

Especially so when your vision is a colorful perennial garden designed to attract birds and bees. “Perennial gardens are high-maintenance, but they have big rewards,” she says. For city gardens, paying attention to scale and choosing slow-growing, dwarf varieties is key, as is adding shaded areas for hot summer days. Meredyth’s backyard oasis — which she shares with her husband, Brad, sons Cade and Dylan, and dog Princess — faces north, but it’s in full sun all day. Peonies, roses, hornbeam trees and boxwoods are just a few of the plants she chose. Here are her expert tips for doing it yourself.

1. Take A Softer Approach To Walkways

An irregular path with globe boxwoods, creeping thyme and Ajuga reptans ‘Chocolate Chip’ leads toward Meredyth’s backyard studio. “I designed the path so you’d have to zigzag through the garden,” she says. At the back is a katsura tree and two weeping hornbeam standards.

2. Balance Hardscaping With Comfy Seating

The cedar hedge behind Meredyth’s lounge area was the starting point for this vignette. Plush outdoor sofas soften a poured concrete patio that has a limestone look. Instead of a coffee table, Meredyth opted for a vintage stone trough planted with herbs and ivy.

3. Mix High- & Low-Maintenance Plants

Fussier plants such as peonies and delphiniums are balanced by easygoing varieties including cranesbill, obedient plant and giant lamb’s ears. Meredyth prefers an iris’s grass-like foliage and flowers to ornamental grasses. “I love tall Siberian irises and the shorter, early flowering dwarf bearded iris,” she says.

4. Get Creative With Materials

A custom cedar pergola with a bamboo roof is the perfect place to sip afternoon tea. “Bamboo is very inexpensive and provides about 90 per cent shade, letting in just enough light so you still feel like you’re outside,” says Meredyth.

5. Add A Covered Conversation Area

Meredyth’s sheltered porch is an ideal spot for her shade-loving ferns. The family’s two lovebirds, named G and T, hang out next to the vintage granite trough that was repurposed as an ice bucket.

Meredyth’s Favorite Flowers

David Austin roses have beautiful fragrances, enjoy full sun and provide pollination for bees.

Meredyth’s Favorite Flowers

As the name suggests, water hyacinths float in water and sprouts pretty lilac-hued flowers.