As Liz Reid worked in her garden recently, she heard a familiar sound coming from the boggy vessel that houses her pitcher plants.
It was the sound of the pendant purple flowers snacking on a bug.
"They're incredible," says Reid of the carnivorous members of her garden.
Although the plants look "a bit alien," Reid says her and her daughter Amy, who got the first one as a gift, particularly enjoy the pitchers.
Their carnivorous nature doesn't bother Reid.
"It's not bees because bees are smart. It's usually flies and the world's got enough flies. We can let go of a few," she says with a laugh of the plant's preferred snack.
Situated in Lower Lonsdale on a large 60-by-160-foot lot, Reid's garden is coming together after years of hard work. She and her husband moved into the old heritage home, a former rooming house, two years ago but spent a year renovating before that.
"It's a great old house," says Reid.
A big part of the renovation was designing an English country garden that the whole family could enjoy. Reid's daughter, son-in-law and two granddaughters also live in the home, and Reid wanted to ensure the garden was a place they could all share.
Over the past two years, everyone rolled up their sleeves to contribute to the garden build, and many changes occurred: the backyard was dug up by hand and bricks were laid as a patio and pass; a small water hole and old hut tub were removed; the family planted seed for the lawn, watched it grow and cut the borders into an uneven coloured perennial border; and lots of bamboo was taken out.
"I'm still digging out bamboo that's coming up," says Reid, noting it's hard to get rid of.
"I like bamboo in its right place, (but) my garden isn't for bamboo because I like to cut flowers and I like to bring flowers in and put flowers in a vase, put flowers on the back deck, put flowers on the picnic table, so that you've got colour."
The garden has taken two years to renovate and Reid says she is still working on it, moving plants around and trying to get perennials. "I'm not an annuals person," she admits.
At the foot of the garden facing south sits a big hump (berm) that was left from the original garden and is now populated with daylilies. Reid says she's trying to move the daylilies around and put them in other spots so she can bring more colours onto the berm.
A little pond at the front of the house was filled in with soil for safety reasons, and the site now sports a large birdbath Reid found in the rubble of a nearby home demolition.
Rescuing and re-purposing found items is something Reid has been doing for many years, and her garden is home to many of her finds, including an old iron gate, broken pieces of iron work, pots, urns and planters. Broken pieces of Italian pottery from her kitchen are pushed into a place in the garden, saved because of their hand-painted colours. Even the red chimney brick used for the patio was recovered from demolition sites.
"I've got so many little odds and ends," says Reid.
As well as lots of colourful flowers and found items, her garden also features items with history and meaning such as gifts from her students when she worked as a preschool teacher, containers that belonged to her dad, and shells collected on vacation with her husband many years ago. "It's a mixture of everything just put together and I'm trying to build things up so that there are different levels."
Reid learned all about gardening from her parents, and these days she shares most of the gardening with her own daughter.
She admits her husband doesn't know much about gardening, but "he knows dandelions and he loves to take dandelions out of the lawn."
The family is also growing a small vegetable garden and they are already eating their homegrown arugula, beets, peas and tomatoes.
"This is a lovely, lovely big garden," says Reid.
