Merlin’s Hollow, Beautiful Accents Of The Garden

We travel thousands of miles to visit places, yet we sometimes forget to check out our local treasures. I am now convinced that Aurora has many, especially after last weekend. On Saturday June 11th we had an opportunity to visit a beautiful Merlin’s Hollow garden in Aurora established by David Tomlinson and his wife Dierdre.

We briefly met Dierdre at the entrance and at the exit, and what a nice sweet lady with a good sense of humor she is. In addition to reading about them in the newspapers a lot, I also had an opportunity to attend David’s presentation back in 2004 here in Aurora Library organized by the University of Toronto (University Lecture Series). I checked my notes and looks like I never made notes on his presentation, but his presentation is the only one I can remember after that many years. May be nature interest was my thing always, I just did not know it then.


I have to say that when we arrived at the garden, ‘The Secret Garden’ a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett came to my mind. I read the book and I watched the movie when I was very young, and that day I finally got to live in it, only not so secret. Merlin’s Hollow is open to public on the scheduled dates throughout the summer featuring different aspects. We are very fortunate to have this opportunity here in Aurora.


I always like to bring my Matthew with us to such places. He enjoys flowers, where I enjoy watching him reaching out for them, and there was a lot of reaching out that day – but just reaching out. This time no dry flowers in his pockets and my pockets.


Our visit this time was a short one as we had busy schedule that day. We were also caught by the rain, however, I was still able to snap photos of blooming flowers. I love rain and it does not bother me at all. My camera on the other hand does not. An umbrella was a great invention which I forgot to bring with me that day. Too little time, but I know that we will be back in July for summer flowering perennials, pond and water garden.

The best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow. ~ Author Unknown

The Tomlinson’s Merlin’s Hollow is accented with many beautiful flowers, only few presented here. It was our first visit ever. The feature of this visit was the fragrant garden, thyme lawn, iris and peonies. I cannot stress enough how beautiful and healthy looking the iris and peonies were. The garden has also art component incorporated which I am going to share with you in the next post.


Sometimes something beautiful is really hard to describe. Technology allows us to take photos and share them, however, if David and Dierdre did not share their garden with us, I probably would not have the opportunity to capture some of the beautiful flowers I am sharing with everyone here today.

Don’t wear perfume in the garden – unless you want to be pollinated by bees. ~ Anne Raver

The Merlin’s Hollow is a prefect example where everything grows in unison, especially the Fragrant Garden providing a palette of scents. We all know that fragrant plant species attract all kinds of insects, bees and butterflies – and attracts us as well, but for different reasons of course. Sometimes, somethings cannot be photographed or recorded with the latest technology and that being the scent, but we are fortunate for memories.


I named some of the flowers here. Peonies were always my favorite. I remember, many moons ago, in our old house back in Europe we had this one location for the peonies. Every year they bloomed and I enjoyed hanging around them, and sometimes counting small ants on the flower heads. They always gave out such a pleasant perfume-like scent.

My favorite wild flower, I don’t know its name, but it is the flower on the first photo above. This one may be different sub-species, because the one I always enjoyed in the fields has dark purple flower petals and is much smaller.


I cannot emphasize enough how beautiful garden Merlin’s Hollow is. Pictures are always nice, but to see, experience and to enjoy the scents by visiting is much more worthwhile.

I hope everyone enjoyed some of the beautiful accents of the Merlin’s Hollow garden and this time thank you all for reading my accented thoughts.