Easy creative ideas for small gardens, shade gardens and rock gardens plus using colour in innovative ways.
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…
Sculpture? Gazebo? Multi-tiered plant container? The Growroom, an “urban farm pavilion” is all that and an elegantly presented political statement. Swedish architects Mads-Ulrik Husum and Sine Lindholm teamed up with Space10, an innovation lab supported by DIY furnishing mega-brand Ikea, to promote local agriculture and came up with the Growroom. They’re hoping the globe-shaped structure…
Sure, you could go traditional and plant a maple tree on July 1st in celebration of Canada’s big 150. Or you could flaunt your patriotism a tad more quietly with a Canadian-bred, new for 2017, velvety red rose. But if what you really want is to go all-out, in-your-face “Hooray For Canada!!!” then bright red and…
Do the seeds we use to grow vegetables have an untold story? In a new video documentary presented by TVO, the “battle for the future of our seeds” is presented with fascinating viewpoints that certainly aren’t mainstream. But this collection of personal stories from a wide variety of impassioned people–from “the Noah of the seed world”…
Got an invasive weed overtaking your garden? If you’re a glass-half-full kind of person, there are a couple of reasons why that might not be such a bad thing. First, weeds are actually great communicators. If you’ve got two or three kinds of weeds that thrive way more vigorously than any other kind, they’re likely indicator…
Want to try growing some of your own food but don’t have a lot of space? Maybe all you’ve got is a small raised bed or a couple of containers, some hanging baskets or a window box. And what if you live in a place where summertime is glorious but all too short? Luckily, there…
Oh, Canada! Here’s the first in a series of posts on very special but easy to grow plants for your garden in honour of Canada’s birthday. First up on my Celebrate Canada Plants List is a gorgeous new variety of rose. Celebrate Canada with The Canadian Shield™ Rose Grown exclusively in celebration of the 150th anniversary…
There’s nothing like appalling winter weather to make you think about upholstering every square inch of your home in softness. Nesting writ large. If you go that far–giant pillows scattered everywhere and you sunk up to your chin in layers of loopy afghans–consider that cozying up your garden next spring can be done much the same way.…
Sure, keeping rainwater on our properties is way better than having it wash away into storm sewers and eventually into our Great Lakes (picking up pollutants as it goes). At the same time, who doesn’t want to jump on the Grow Your Own bandwagon? But creating an edible rain garden? That had to be music…
What grows brilliantly in southern Ontario? What fails miserably? And what catches the eyes of pro landscapers? I found out last week when I was invited to view the newly expanded University of Guelph/Landscape Ontario trial gardens at the LO office on the outskirts of Milton. There’s nothing glamorous about these gardens. Bordered by the…
Color, texture, form, movement as well as interaction with light, deer, rabbits and overall health – all are assessed when trialing plants Between testing plants for growers and having the opportunity to grow new introductions in my landscape or containers for photo shoots I consider myself incredibly fortunate. The sense of anticipation never gets old;… via…
I had fun last year gathering ideas for how to rock your garden. There are a whole lot of gardeners out there creating gorgeous environments using stone they’ve either recycled from their own plot of land or brought in. Now, like collecting different coloured pebbles, I’m hooked on finding inspirations. Here are more DIY rock…
The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens is a system of gardens working together to make one enormous woodland garden that rocks (appropriately with rocks) on the rocky, amazingly beautiful coast of Maine. My guy and I were there only last week and the ideas I got from these gardens are still whirling in my head–massive stone…
Why have one hedge when you can have two layered hedges? Let’s put five separate seating areas in our average-sized backyard! Who wants to settle for a garden gnome when you can have huge shining metallic butterflies! ‘More is more’ seemed to be the mantra at the gardens I visited recently on a tour in…
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 