Gourmet Gardens

Gourmet Gardens

 For almost four decades, the Deep Cove Chalet Restaurant in Sidney, B.C., has been tantalizing the palates of discriminating Victoria-area residents with exquisite gourmet offerings from the kitchen of owner-chef Pierre Koffel. Born in Strasbourg, France, Pierre is renowned for Alsatian-inspired dishes such as rabbit stew with prunes, duck salad, prawn tartelette and a flourless chocolate cake with crème Anglaise. Dinner wines might include a bottle of crisp white from Chalet Estate Winery across the road, using Ortega grapes from the Koffels’ own vineyard near the restaurant’s entrance. So celebrated is Deep Cove Chalet that guests have included Barbra Streisand, Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Jimmy Pattison, Bill Gates and Victoria’s own David Foster, among many others.

Japanese irises pair beautifully with yarrow

Built in 1913 by the B.C. Electric Railway as a tearoom at the terminusof its interurban line connecting Victoria to Deep Cove, the rambling, wooden building housing the restaurant features banks of picture windows framing a spectacular view of the Saanich Inlet, just a stone’s throw away. The seashore, in turn, offers a sparkling backdrop to the colourful and expansive gardens that surround the restaurant, all but one reflecting the creative touch of Deep Cove Chalet’s co-owner and manager Beverley Koffel. The exception is a small, four-square kitchen garden that supplies colourful leaf lettuce, arugula, vegetables and herbs for the restaurant. “That’s Pierre’s garden,” says Bev. “I’m not allowed to go in there.”

Peach Diascia, lavender and fuchsias 
carpet a tiered fountain in the formal garden

Her love of flowers was evident as a young girl at Victoria’s St. Ann’s Academy, now a National Historic Site. Recalling the school’s annual May Day procession, Bev says, “I was the one who made the bouquets for my classmates.” That early training serves her well today as she creates the arrangements for the restaurant’s dining tables with blossoms from the gardens. Similarly, childhood visits with her mother to Windsor Park Rose Garden in Victoria’s Oak Bay inspired a lifelong love of roses, seen today in the many shrub roses in the borders and fragrant climbing roses intertwined with clematis that adorn the trellises surrounding the dining terrace.

Pierre’s  kitchen garden supplies the restaurant

Bev’s first garden, designed in 1998, is an old-fashioned bed that sweeps in a wide, curving swath from the restaurant’s windows toward the sea. Here, Oriental poppies, irises, lady’s mantle, perennial geraniums, alstroemeria, phlomis, flowering sage and lavender combine with roses and flowering shrubs such as ‘Anthony Waterer’ spirea. To disguise bare spots in the border left by fading spring bulbs, Bev positions urns and glazed pots filled with annuals, succulents and small shrubs. Overlooking this garden and lending the property an evocative sense of place is a tall, handsome totem pole carved by the late Brentwood Bay artist and teacher Jim Gilbert.

a bronze frog reigns over the box-edged formal garden

But for the hand of fate and the generosity of a friend, Deep Cove Chalet and its gardens might now be an exclusive suburban subdivision. Seven years ago, the landmark restaurant and its six-acre grounds were on the brink of closure; the Koffels’ lease had expired and the property owner was making plans to demolish the building and sell the land. A dramatic, last-minute rescue by the late philanthropist Bill Winspear, who summered nearby, enabled Pierre and Bev to buy back the restaurant and the surrounding grounds. Their future now settled, the Koffels began construction of a beautiful home at the far edge of the property. For Bev, it was the perfect opportunity to express, on a much larger canvas, her passion for flowers and colour. 

A peach heuchera and red Japanese maple take centre stage in this mixed border of hostas, ornamental grasses and shrubs

And as usual there was a good friend in the wings who shared their love of the property and was ready and willing to lend a hand. “Gerhard Rehm had been coming to the restaurant for fifteen years,” recalls Bev, of the late, German-trained landscape architect. “He would take his glass of wine outdoors and sit quietly while gazing out at the ocean. He loved the property and knew it very well.” For fifty years he collaborated with homeowners and architects in greater Victoria, working with what one writer called “an almost monastic pursuit” to create landscapes that respected the sacred elements of nature already inherent in a site. Together, Bev and Gerhard set about designing two new gardens. The first was an intimate enclosure in front of the new house filled with hostas, hydrangeas and other shade-loving plants. The second was a spectacular formal garden linking the house with the restaurant. On some points, designer and client agreed to disagree, with Bev winning her argument for using clipped boxwood shrubs to edge the intersecting paths that define the four quadrants and contain the ebullient mix of perennials and shrubs. The paths are made of crushed gravel, with one leading from the wisteria-clad arbour under the Koffels’ bedroom window to the dining terrace, the other leading from a trellised fence adjacent to the parking lot to the undulating edge where the garden meets the lawn overlooking the ocean. While Gerhard designed the general layout and hardscaping of the gardens, the choice of plants and actual planting was done with the help and guidance of master gardener Tanya Tomlinson and artist/gardener Elizabeth Kerfoot.

The formal garden is a favorite setting for summer al fresco dinners and as a photo backdrop for weddings or parties

Seven years later, the formal garden is wellestablished, its texture and fullness perfected through Bev’s exquisite sense of colour and fine tuning of plant combinations. Pairings such as the yellow Asiatic lilies with deep-red brushstrokes echo foliage of the smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’) beside them. Flowering shrubs form the woody backbone of the garden and many, such as the brilliantly variegated Nashiki willow (Salix integra ‘Hakuro-Nashiki’), bring a splash of foliage colour too. Shrub roses are simply mixed into the perennials and shrubs. The garden also offers a leafy setting for art and statuary. Large urns filled with colorful succulents, grasses, tropicals and annuals act as focal points at the end of the formal paths.

SEASIDE PARADISE, Idyllic Deep Cove lies past yellow phlomis, pink spirea and maroon ninebark

The formal garden has become a favorite setting for al fresco dinners in summer and is also a beautiful backdrop for photos when the restaurant hosts a wedding or special party. Over the years, other gardens have appeared here and there on the property: an exuberant spray of wildflowers on the bluff overlooking the beach, a rock garden beside the house patio that’s crammed with a tapestry of succulents, and a lily pond and water garden. Like Pierre and Bev Koffel, they’re simply part of the landscape now, and no one really remembers the time when Deep Cove Chalet came so very close to being a distant, beautiful memory.