Adele Pierre’s Trade Secrets
The garden guru creates outdoor spaces that are as stunning as they are sustainable
Adele Pierre spent four decades playing violin for the Stratford Festival, the Canadian Opera Company and the Calgary Philharmonic. Last year, she ditched the orchestra pit for the dirt patch, devoting herself full-time to landscape design. Pierre plants sustainable rain gardens with native species. She often nixes entire lawns, replacing them with heaps of bee- and bird-friendly flowers (echinacea, black-eyed Susans, ninebark) and terracing the land to redirect water away from storm drains and back into the earth. While excavating a recent project, she pulled a boulder out of the earth and transformed it into a water feature. Although she’s hung up her violin, Pierre’s client list is a who’s who of the Toronto music scene, including COC concertmaster Marie Bérard and National Ballet musical director David Briskin.
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Caroline Aksich, a National Magazine Award recipient, is an ex-Montrealer who writes about Toronto’s ever-evolving food scene, real estate and culture for Toronto Life, Fodor’s, Designlines, Canadian Business, Glory Media and Post City. Her work ranges from features on octopus-hunting in the Adriatic to celebrity profiles.