In its best show to date, Canada Blooms (March 11 – 20, 2016) is bigger, bolder and filled with more ideas than ever. This event, Canada’s largest flower and garden festival, has finally embraced the fact that it’s smack in the heart of a young, innovative, and very urban environment. Here are my votes (from…
When spring seems to be taking forever to arrive, I take matters into my own hands and add a few pots of flowering spring bulbs to the kitchen windowsill. But I’ve never been keen on those sad plastic pots filled with sodden potting soil. Here’s an easy trick for making spring bulbs light up with…
Growing red tomatoes. Ho hum. But what if you could find seeds for tomatoes that glow orange and gold like a burning sunset? Or almost-black toms? Or a tomato that looked just like photos of a galaxy? (That would be the aptly named Cosmic Eclipse tomato.) When I first laid eyes on The Whole Seed Catalog, I…
As trend predicting goes, you’d think proclamations about gardeners and gardening would be a snooze fest. I mean, what’s there to say? Pink roses are in, yellow daffs are out? Now’s the time to rock that shorter handled spade you’ve had your eye on? Surprisingly, the Garden Media Group‘s annual trends report has consistently dished up…
At one of my favourite grocery stores, the exit takes you right through the floral department. You have to push your laden cart through a gauntlet of kaleidoscopic bouquets and potted houseplants primped with foil wrappers and cute signs for maximum adorableness. Which is fine by me. In the depths of winter, I love a…
Want a gift that really spreads the love? Plant an oak tree. I know this isn’t the sexiest idea but hear me out. I’ve got 5 great reasons why oak trees are the lovingest of all the plants you can grow. REASON #1: Oaks are the ultimate sharers. Sitting under an oak tree in late fall,…
Yesterday, I partially devoured the latest issue of Allure, a glossy magazine devoted to glorious exposés of all things glamorous and how to achieve an approximation of such. I had only thumbed through a couple of pages when I came across an ad for getting “ridiculously glowy skin”. It seems that the miraculous benefits of…
“Every garden has a desert and a swamp,” he declared. OK. He had our attention. Finding the right plants for those unlovely spots—that’s the challenge. So when someone comes along and offers a tried and true list of plants recommended for your personal garden hell, well, hello! At the recent Landscape Ontario Congress, a huge trade…
With this inaugural posting from my new and improved blog (formerly RhymesWithLinnaeus.com), I want to state for the record that Ministry Of The Fence may be adding greener perspectives on gardens and gardening but there will continue to be a strong appreciation for both the sublime and, yes, the unserious. So what better way to kick…
This is the last posting for RhymesWithLinnaeus.com. After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to give this blog a makeover, starting with a new name: The Ministry Of The Fence. When you see this name pop up in your media feeds, I hope you take a second to check it out. I’ll still be covering…
Slow growing. Too big for a shrub and too small for a tree. Straggly. Did I say really slow growing? Smoketrees can get a lot of heat from picky gardeners. But when the setting sun lights up their panicles in a shimmering nimbus how can you think otherwise than your garden is all the more miraculous…
Halloween may be over but there are still some zombies striking a pose out there. One is in my front garden. Our wind–tossed, sun–scorched Japanese maple (Acer palmatum ’Bloodgood’) finally gave up the ghost this past spring. There’s a smattering of leaves on two or three branches, flapping in the fall breezes, but they’re only serving…
I love driving out into the country to find a farmers’ market. Covering a few dozen kilometres or more doesn’t faze me a bit if it means scoring super fresh, local produce and maybe a homemade pie as well. But I’m not sure I’d be that enthusiastic about covering long distances for my next meal…
You know you’ve drunk the Koolaid when you’ve just turned in a paper on weeds for an organic horticulture course and it’s all about how amazing they are and why you have them proudly growing smack dab in the middle of a flower bed in your own garden. One of the weeds I included in…
Heat is important when you want to grow things in your garden. That’s pretty self evident, particularly when you’re staring out a window at a world covered in snow and ice. But I didn’t realize just how much heat affected growing things until digging deep (har, har) into my latest course on organic horticulture through…
Horticulturist, Arborist and Garden Columnist
Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
Garden of Flowers, Beads, and Yarns
ruminate vb. to chew (the cud)
Reflections On A Life in Exile
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 