Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. For all those people who have left figuring out what to do until now, I have one suggestion: Skip the chicken special and hit the road. I know. Taking dear old Mum out for a special meal is right up there with giving her flowers or a plant and buying her…
It was love at first strike. With one smooth movement, the CobraHead sliced into the ground. I gently angled it and then pulled up, releasing the gnarliest dandelion from its smug existence. Ironically, I was the one that was bitten. My CobraHead Weeder and Cultivator arrived in April’s mail. The Wisconsin-based makers of these tools…
Let me state for the records that I’m anti-minimalist when it comes to gardening. Minimal does not do anything for me, even if you’re talking a painfully chic urban rooftop garden-slash-yoga retreat. To illustrate my point, just Google anything about Japanese zen gardens–supposedly the poster gardens for minimalism. There’s actually a lot going on in…
Originally posted on GARDEN OF EADY:
Do you love wine? Perfect. Me too :-). But what do we do with all the wine bottles? Every year we throw out a lot of glass bottles, which could be reused in our garden. How? Very simple. We can edge our garden with wine bottles. A wine bottle…
You may have heard that Monarch butterflies aren’t doing very well this year. Turns out their numbers have hit an all-time low while they were winter vacationing in Mexico. Jode Roberts of the Toronto-based Homegrown National Park Project reports on David Suzuki’s website that there are two reasons for this: severe weather and “the virtual eradication…
We sneak peeks “behind the scenes” on everything from Canada’s covert commandos to Kate’s latest meet-n-greet (with Wills and baby George in tow), so I thought the time was right–just before the spring plant-buying frenzy–to delve into the mysterious world of commercial garden nurseries. Was I going to find adorable sprouts? Exotic aliens (gardener-speak for…
Are you ready to go a little wild in your garden? Miriam Goldberger says there are 60 ways to do it. (Don’t get your rubber hose in a knot quite yet.) We’re talking sixty of her favourite native wildflowers and grasses. She knows what she’s talking about. Miriam is founder and co-owner of Wildflower Farm, a…
Originally posted on Garden Variety:
This photo courtesy of wallpaperswide. Subsequent photos copyright by Mike Alexander. Our man in Europe, horticulturist Mike Alexander, on the season of the dandelion, the bane of gardeners everywhere. The dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) is a perennial weed that plagues gardeners and grows on every continent on the planet, including Antarctica.…
Forecasters are predicting a long, hot summer. If we’re looking at a dry summer, too, that’ll also mean plenty of blazingly bright days. Luckily, you can still turn a deck or patio into a lush oasis despite the hot + dry + bright equation. One answer is wildly popular Calibrachoa hybrids, commonly known as million bells…
Despite below-average spring temperatures here in Southern Ontario, the big box hardware stores are busily stacking patio furniture to the rafters–always a heartening sign. But I’m not feeling the love for tastefully modern, ebony-coloured plicker side tables or neon-bright recycled-plastic faux Adirondacks. After one crazy-long winter, I’m thinking big and bad. Huge and heavy. I’m thinking…
Officially, spring arrived a month ago. But in Southern Ontario, late April is when spring really begins. Around our house, that’s when the BBQ starts winning over the stovetop, we can finally sit out on the patio (OK, so we’re still wearing our parkas) for the cocktail hour, and we make a quick weekend trip…
We’re almost at the end of April and that means one thing to a lot of gardeners and most landscaping suppliers in Southern Ontario–mulching time. If you’re already hooked on mulch, you know first hand the benefits of this spring rite. Let me count the ways we love mulch: Weeds are kept at bay. Mulch…
Ever seen a tree in a park or your neighbour’s front yard and thought “I want that tree for my garden. What on earth is it?” I just discovered there’s an app for that. Two universities and the Smithsonian Institution collaborated on Leafsnap, a free tree field guide for iPhone introduced three years ago. (OK–so…
Who’d transform a huge garden by planting all kinds of annuals and perennials to match a wedding’s colour theme? That’s exactly what Trish Symons did. At the Peterborough Garden Show last weekend, she explained how her daughter’s blue-themed wedding inspired her garden makeover. Me? In the same circumstance, I’d probably buy paint and super-saturate the…
In this month’s issue of Sunset magazine, a feature on mulches for containers suggests using untumbled mirror. That’s little pieces of broken mirror. Hmmmm. The idea is kinda cool. For a combo of alien-looking succulents, why not have something metallic and shiny as a mulch? I figure if you don’t have kids or pets and…
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a chat over the garden fence
There's always room for one more plant.
a little garden near Gawler
.....and nurturing my soul
Ministry of the fence 