Easy creative ideas for small gardens, shade gardens and rock gardens plus using colour in innovative ways.
Hallelujah! Spring has officially sprung. Ok, it’s tomorrow but my patience for the return of sunny skies and warmer temperatures has run thin. In celebration, I’d like to share some of my favourite spring plant stars. These 6 spring flowering plants are dear to my heart because of their lovely colours–shades from dusky to brilliant…
More And Less lists are replacing New Year’s resolutions and this makes sense to me. Compiling a list of what you’d like to do/see/manifest more of as well as what you’d like less of in your life seems, well, just easier–less intimidating, more approachable and (getting down to brass tacks) more achievable. I’ve never been…
I realized we were officially in the grip of pre-Halloween hysteria last week when I was fishing out my wallet to pay for some items in our local pharmacy. A woman swept past me, one hand gripped on a trailing child, the other pointing towards the back of the store. In a loud, theatrical whisper,…
Foodscaping has been a hot gardening trend for years now. What goes around comes around. In a past blog post, I explored how a lot of “new” foodscaping ideas are actually pretty old. Gardening with edibles is simply a terrific idea. A real win-win. But, I have to admit, there are times when I’ve grown…
Whether your country is part of the Commonwealth as mine is (Canada) or not, you may have joined me in having some quiet thoughts about the remarkable woman everyone knew as Queen Elizabeth II. Even if you’re not into monarchies, you have to give her credit for her steadfastness and grace under pressure throughout a…
True story: A couple of years ago, when my guy was applying for a permit to build a stand-alone garage near our cottage on the Bruce Peninsula, he had to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops, including an on-site inspection by the powers that be to ensure we would be inflicting the least amount…
Amazing garden design ideas popped up everywhere I turned while on a couple of garden tours held recently (July 9 – 10, 2022) in and around one of my favourite Canadian small towns–Gananoque, Ontario. This vibrant and very scenic town, situated where the Gananoque River meets the great St. Lawrence River with its Thousand Islands,…
The longest day of this year will officially begin on June 21, at 5:13 a.m. here in the Northern Hemisphere. This means, of course, that June 22 marks the inexorable decline of daylight into another long winter. So I figure celebrating heat and happiness right now are in order. Here are 10 not-so-conventional ideas for…
One of the biggest challenges for any gardener is trying to make something of the long, thin and usually dark strip between two houses. This stretch of gardening purgatory is often euphemistically referred to as a side garden. But getting the space to look anything like a garden can be really hard. So how do…
I’ve been trying my very best (for several years now) to start a completely natural wildflower garden at our cottage on the Bruce Peninsula in southwestern Ontario. The garden is a small patch of land, decorated with several dead logs and a tree stump, just feet from the shoreline of our small freshwater lake. I…
Easter lilies are in grocery stores everywhere right now. They’re wonderful plants–heralding the coming of spring, symbolizing new beginnings (for both Christians and Pagans) and are/were absolutely de rigueur as an OTT decor flourish, especially during the fabulousity that was the 90’s. But as much as I respect and admire the glamour of Lilium longiflorum,…
A wonderfully mysterious plant at the base of a tree stump on our neighbour’s property caught my eye this spring (May, 2021). The stems and new leaves, looking like shredded rags, were a lovely deep purple with a velvety sheen. Amidst the leaves were tiny blue brown flowers, each accented with a mini golden star.…
If you’re not lucky enough to have a property measured in acres instead of metres, conveniently positioned at the edge of a lush forest, you can still adopt some of the landscaping and planting ideas from this spectacular woodland garden located in southwestern Ontario (Canadian garden zones 5b to 6a). Even its grandest elements, like…
With news headlines getting ever weirder and more worrisome, I recommend daisies. There’s nothing quite so charmingly uncomplicated as a daisy and there are so many ways you can make the world a better place with them. Give someone a daisy bouquet. Wear a pair of $800+ daisy and gold glitter heels. Plant them in…
What could be more exquisitely transporting than an all-white garden, I used to ponder rhetorically. Back in the day, as a card-carrying Hopeless Romantic, I trusted my life views would shift in some remarkable way if only I could visit Vita Sackville West’s legendary White Garden. Late in the summer of 1996, I managed to get there…
Love to Garden? Learn Some Helpful Tips And Tricks To Help You Get That Green Thumb
Life is an interesting journey. These are journals, stories, reflections of a traveller of this journey. (songoftheheartsite@gmail.com)
for OCA Visual Communications BA (hons)
Where observation and imagination meet nature in poetry.
A blog about life in Wellington, New Zealand
Plants, veg and chickens: a cottage garden on the edge of Brussels
This blog is about gardening in the north.
Discovering the joy of art
Do not go where the path may lead, instead go where there is no path, and leave a trail -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ministry of the fence 