Elizabeth Ganiatsos, Artistic Director of Consortium Aurora Borealis since 1979, is native of Toronto. She performs repertoire from the Baroque, Mediaeval, Renaissance, Classical and Early Romantic eras together with the finest professional soloist and chamber ensembles.
Elizabeth holds an Honour B.A. in Music History from the University of Toronto and an M.A. from Harvard, where she completed Ph. D coursework in musicology. She received numerous awards and scholarships throughout her academic career and had performed in early music groups, chamber orchestras in Toronto, Boston, New Heaven, Waterloo and Thunder Bay concentrating on harpsichord, organ, viola and other Mediaeval and Renaissance instruments.
In her Toronto’s house she designed a lovely garden, purchasing and putting into position plants, except for the shrubs and larger ones, which her gardener, who cuts the grass and does maintenance, planted. Her garden is always in flux and it is not the same from one year to another!!
Elisabeth is usually away in Venice or Greece from the end of April to June, so she rarely sees her spring garden. She says:
“It’s good to have a lots of various hostas and hydrangeas, which are always thriving in the months that I am home! (…) When I get back near the end of June, I head off immediately in search of annuals. I realize that it is an instant gardening but my garden is fairly large, and I need splashes of colour and varied shapes and textures to fill things in amongst the lovely green”.
On the left side of the garden there are two variegated dogwood shrubs and several types of hostas, like the huge blue-green one with big, thick leaves that turn yellow in fall.
Along the fence line there are numerous emerald cedars at various places and a row of black cedars planted along the bottom of the garden, as a screen. There are also a couple of large, tall yews on the right. In addition, some low junipers, small globe cedars.
On the left side of the patio, near the little statue of Autumn with his grapes, we find a weeping mulberry. Near the house are purple summer-flowering clematis, white spirea, and euonymus climbing up the brick wall. At the bottom left of the garden a few forsythias. To the right of the cedar deck, just inside the garden gate, is an old lilac tree, plus two more lilacs, one white, one mauve, at the bottom right of the garden, as well as one Rose of Sharon.
This garden is really exciting!!
(Pictures by Elizabeth Ganiatsos)