Just a short distance west on Rte 132 from Metane is Jardins de Metis where we arrived at about 11:00 am in light mist. And it's cold...49 degrees this morning as we walked through the gardens and as I write this it's only 51 and foggy, misty and, well, just plain bone chilling miserable. This is not good weather and the forecast for the next couple of days is also none too good.
The Metis gardens are really quite impressive, mostly perennials with a few spring flowers for additional color. The few tulips were in full bloom. Very interesting that in these gardens we saw no lilacs or forsythia. That's puzzling, but it only dawned on me just now. Lots of primrose types, hosta, peonies, crab apple trees and a host of other perennials we are familiar with in Vermont.
This is a brief description from the website:
"Les Jardins de Métis /Reford Gardens are the extraordinary achievement
of a passionate gardener – Elsie Reford. In the summer of 1926, at the age of 54, she began transforming her fishing camp on the Mitis River into a garden.
Over more than three decades, she created a garden that featured one of the largest collections of plants in its day. Designing the garden herself, she carefully created flowerbeds alongside the stream, realizing by trial and error that the long snowy winters and humid summer air provided the ideal growing conditions for the perennial plants she imported from around the world. Pathways meander through the forest and alongside the brook, providing visitors with moments of discovery and intimacy, where they can enjoy many vistas and fragrances. Where others had failed, she succeeded in cultivating rare plants, like the Himalayan blue poppy, the garden’s emblem. When it blooms from the end of June through the end of July, visitors can admire this extraordinary plant and admire the tenacity of the woman who introduced them to gardeners in eastern North America."
We had a light lunch on the grounds which was very nice with soup, homemade pastries and a smoked salmon, like a lox, but on a type of flatbread...really quite good. The gift shop claims the biggest selection of horticultural books in Quebec. The parking lots can hold several hundred cars. There were 15 this morning. Comparing this to Burchart Gardens in Victoria on Vancouver Island, which I visited last summer, Metis was very much smaller and focused on a different climate than Burchart,but very nice and as well kept as Burchart.
After Metis we traveled to Rimouski for some shopping at Wal-Mart and a super market, then on to to Rte 20, a fast highway headed for Riviere du Loup. All this in a misty, cold heavy overcast day. Very light traffic, as usual.
We arrived at our campground and it is sparely populated also as usual. Carol is doing some laundry and I'm about to start supper.
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