This spring is unusual (understatement!). There’s a good chance you are A) needing to follow a very tight budget because your retirement savings are tanking and/or B) recently recovering from freaky storms that crushed your garden and/or C) up to your eyebrows in existential stress and just can’t get your head wrapped around a spring…
Where I live in Canada, spring can be about as long lived as an ice cream cone which is to say not long. Sometimes I feel like we barrel right through late winter into early summer with spring merely a squashed hope staining the sidewalk. It’s the fleetingness and fragility of ephemerals (plants that pop…
Any day now the miracle of cherry blossoms will begin. Not here in Fernie, of course. We’re still encased in snow and ice. But in Tokyo, beloved cherry blossoms are predicted to appear around March 26 and peak April 2. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, B.C., cherry trees have already started to bloom, evidently, depending on where…
Spring is almost here. I know it’s not far off because our grocery stores are displaying pots of those classic white trumpet-shaped lilies right up next to the check-out counters. I guess they’re hoping you’ll succumb to their beauty and intoxicating fragrance and grab one on your way to the cashier even though you only…
I was having a lovely (long distance) conversation with my dear friend (and outstanding gardener) who lives in Gananoque, Ontario about, oh, loads of things when the subject of fedges came up. I know. It is an unlikely topic of conversation. But I had seen fedges mentioned in a magazine and, of course, the meaning…
All signs were pointing to this year being less than exciting colour-wise. Paint company Benjamin Moore promised that 2025 is going to be all about Cinnamon Slate, described as a “delicate mix of heathered plum and velvety brown.” Sherwin Williams went the extra mile introducing a “color capsule” of the year which included a painfully…
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…
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…
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…
I didn’t know “up close landscaping” was a thing until I discovered a page about a ruffled Pansy on the Proven Winners website. The plant was described on the site as “a frilly flower that looks great in containers and ‘close-up’ landscapes.” (More on those pansies below.) What is all this about Close Up Landscaping?…
I’ve moaned about the limitations of gardening in a true woodland setting (Rocks! Tree roots! More @$#*?! rocks!) but there are a great many wonderful benefits, one of which is the variety of native spring flowers that plant themselves and then pop up reliably every spring independent of my ministrations. Starting around the first week…
We’re already in the middle of April and I’ve just found out that butterfly season is already well underway. These bedazzled bugs start making their appearance in Canada as early as March in balmy British Columbia. It won’t be long before Ontario is in peak butterfly mode. What’s the panic, you may ask? It’s surprising…
One of my favourite signs that spring is on its way is the sound of bird song. After months of listening to the crunch of ice under tires and the crack of branches breaking under the weight of snow, that exuberant trill from a goldfinch or the unique melody of a sparrow is a genuine…
I couldn’t believe the inventiveness of this fellow in Australia (that’s him in the video below) who, after discovering a frog living in his fence post, proceeds to fine tune a better home for the wee thing (whom he names Frod) after a series of night ops-style observations. With some fancy 3D printing and a…
Horticulturist, Arborist and Garden Columnist
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Saint Andrews 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
Ministry of the fence 