For this year’s Historic Places Days, we are highlighting Phoebe Watson’s Palette Garden. Planted inside a ring of stones, the Palette Garden was named for its shape which imitates an artist’s palette. Inside the garden, Phoebe planted colourful plants to “honour the colour-splashed palette of her brother”.[1]
The plants growing in the garden itself were mostly low perennials in a “hodge-podge,” rather than being organized by colour.[2] One of Phoebe’s nieces remembers cosmos and wild pholox growing in the garden, as well as a plant she called “Aunt Pheeb.”[3] This was remembered as a plant with “grape-like berries, and a wine-coloured tassel.”[4] There was a pathway that went through the garden and Phoebe had an apple tree planted in the garden to represent where the artist’s thumb would sit on the palette.[5]
Phoebe’s love for her garden was well-known by her friends and family. She proudly talked of her garden in letters to her friends.
“…my crimson ramblers climbing over the arbor over the outside pump – together with my morning glories, wild geraniums, the pink rambler roses against a grey stone wall, with blue anchusa veiling parts… Oh you will have to come and see it.”[6]
Phoebe’s love of roses and flowers is also evident in her ceramic painting. Many of the ceramic pieces of Phoebe’s in the collection have a floral pattern.
Phoebe’s colourful garden was surely a beautiful sight to behold. Read our blog post about Phoebe’s houseplants here.
[1] Fran McIntosh, “The Palette Garden at the Homer Watson House & Gallery,” n.p.
[2] Interview with a niece of the Watson family, conducted by Fran McIntosh and Mary Firth, November 30, 1987
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Phoebe Watson to Lorne Pierce, 8 July 1942, Lorne Pierce Fonds, Queens University Archives and Special Collection, Kingston.
