Of all the colours you can find in a garden, orange can be the trickiest, I think. As hues go, it can glow brighter than red or yellow all the while doing more clashing than complementing. It’s very much a shout out colour. But that’s what also makes it a great colour to have in…
With April showers come May flowers and lots of bees (hopefully) to lap up nectar and do their pollinator thing. I always thought that whatever was served up in a flower was good enough for the average bee but it turns out that pollen and nectar aren’t great sources of moisture. Bees need sources of…
Is this the year you’re going to rip up your turf? Are you looking for an alternative ground cover that’s low maintenance, drought resistant and yet still delivers an eye-soothing swath of green where you once had a lawn? (Yes, I realize I’m sounding like a bad TV infomercial. I’ll stop now.) I’m really excited…
Gardeners have double vision, I think. You’ve got one view towards what’s happening in the here and now. But you’ve also got a picture in your mind’s eye of what will be happening months from now and even into the next season. One way we play out this balancing act is when we plant now…
A reader of Ministry Of The Fence recently asked me about what to add to the soil for planting a new fruit tree. She posed the question in the comments section of the post entitled “Tea And Bananas: Saving Water, Feeding Plants“. Her question got me thinking. Planting fruit trees is a tricky business but…
Primulas (aka primroses) are the poster flowers of spring with their carousels of blooms in every cheery shade imaginable swirling above rosettes of velvety green leaves. The cute, short varieties are such common spring-welcoming plants here in Canada that you’ll often find them at the grocery store (strategically positioned next to the cash registers to…
A friend of mine recently asked me whether I’d heard about this new method for growing seedlings. Evidently, the “seed snail” method was heating up Instragram. I had to find out more. And when I did, I wondered what you might think about it. A screenshot of the Instagram page introducing the Snail Method of…
March is slowly coming to an end but for gardeners in many parts of Canada actual gardening is still a good month or two away. So who among us, itching to get our hands on plants and dirt, have turned in desperation to our houseplants? There they sit, oblivious, while you come to the conclusion…
I learned a new word the other day: hortifuturism. I also learned about a new colour: Cyber Lime. The Garden Media Group, a U.S.-based garden industry PR firm was championing both as hot, hot, hot for 2024 in their annual trends report. “What better color to symbolize the traits of hortifuturism?” the giddy copy gushed…
The sight of tender tulip and daffodil sprouts poking up out of the sodden earth in springtime usually makes me smile. But it isn’t springtime yet. So surprise, concern, even a little dismay is more like it. In most parts of Canada, this time of year is supposed to be all about that long pause…
If you happen to be driving along a backroad on the Bruce Peninsula in early spring, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the dandelions have come early. Those bright yellow flowers sprinkled along a roadside ditch or covering a knoll beside a pasture in early March sure look like them. This hillside is covered with…
Of all the trends that pundits are hailing as hot, hot, hot for 2024, none intrigues me more than stumperies. Elegant and always on point Garden Design magazine declared that, along with other rising trends such as installing a rain garden and accommodating for climate change, building a stumpery will be a really big thing.…
Winter gardens are simply gardens that have “great bones” as my mother-in-law used to say. These ‘bones’ are the structures that support and delineate a garden throughout the year but can look particularly striking in winter when there’s nothing else (like flowering plants) to distract the eye. They can be man-made, such as a gazebo,…
To me the garden in winter is fraught with deliciously poetic angst. That all-encompassing deep freeze, wiping out colour, lushness, life, really, brutally exposes the bald truth about one’s gardening ambitions which then need to be wrestled with through many a dark and unfruitful day. But, with the freedom of not being able to do…
We know that plants communicate. Childhood fairy tales taught us this way back in the day. And, in the last four or so decades, hard core, just-the-facts-ma’am researchers have proven that plants of all sorts, from weeds to willows, have means of transmitting chemical signals in order to attract pollinators or defend against predators. But…
Goth gardens are a thing now, apparently. Garden Media Group (a public relations firm supporting the home and garden industries) points out in their annual Garden Trends Report that #Gothgarden(ing) is a natural progression of “our culture’s love affair with the occult”. This year, in fact, they predict we (Gen Z, in particular) will be…
Last week, the temperature dipped to -51C, the lowest I’ve ever experienced. And that was in the morning. Mind you, wind chill was factored in but even still it was frigging cold. We’re in the small, fabulous town of Fernie, British Columbia–our home for half the year every winter. Fernie is a ski town. We…
I want to share my thoughts with you about an app I’ve been using that I think has really exciting potential for gardeners. It’s called One Second Every Day (1SE) and, no, I’m not getting paid to tell you about it. But I think you might find it really handy. Or just loads of fun.…
A week into 2024 and so far, so good. I’m very lucky to be looking ahead and figuring life is pretty good. The world is getting more complicated, for sure. But I have so many wonderful reasons to feel grateful and you are one of them. Thank you so much for your interest, for following…
I can’t think of a better way to close the year than to share with you a remarkable book I’ve been reading. The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell is nothing short of breathtaking in scope and style, remarkably so given that the entire book focuses on one small patch of forest floor just a…
Reflections On A Life in Exile
Saint Andrew’s Forest Farm Blog
a chat over the garden fence
There's always room for one more plant.
a little garden near Gawler
.....and nurturing my soul
Gardening in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada
The life and loves of a plantsman
if your garden is bigger than a courtyard, but smaller than an acre
Exploring the Depths of Curiosity
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