Evidently, large water features are now considered passé. According to certain gardening pundits, large water features once promised “luxury and tranquility” and were a “symbol of outdoor opulence”. This year, big splashy (sorry, not sorry) fountains and faux creeks should be considered energy guzzlers that leave an overly large carbon footprint. I’d like to wade…
Yes, it’s a little early to start talking about mowing the lawn. In parts of Ontario, upwards of 10 feet of snow will have to melt away first. But something exciting in the world of mowing has been reported and I just had to share. Really. A large swath of grass lawn at Chanticleer, Pennsylvania,…
If you reside in the northern hemisphere, like me, you’re enduring what’s referred to as the dead of winter. Apt. Not much alive out there (garden-wise) except for the evergreens. Snow and ice have pretty much turned the world into a blank-ish slate. Naturally, I start to crave colour. Colour that occurs naturally, as in…
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…
I love a good trend prediction. Declarations of this being the Year Of The ___________ just seem so optimistic and cheery to me. For instance, American online gifts and flowers delivery business 1-800-Flowers has just announced that Ranunculus is the 2025 Flower Of The Year and, bonus, Snake Plant is 2025’s Plant Of The Year.…
Less than a week has gone by and I’m raring to stuff all the Christmas decor back into their various boxes, bins and tins and shlump the lot to the basement for storage. But, instead, we’ll keep everything up and twinkling for at least another few days. All the (step) kids and their kids are…
This is the time of year when certain choices have to be made for us residents of the Northern Hemisphere. Does one focus on powering through these briefest of daylight-sparse, energy-sapping days (the shortest of the entire year, to be precise) or fully embrace the largesse that might be offered by the longest nights of…
I guess everyone starts to look inward a little more during bleak winter months. With everything outside hidden under ice and snow, turning our attention inside just seems practical. There’s any number of ways to enjoy sun-drenched views without even leaving your couch. But it was just the other day that I realized how truly…
Leaves are pretty amazing things. Any plant that grows them appreciates their usefulness in their own way, of course. But dead leaves serve many purposes, too, including providing shelter over winter for insects that will work hard the next year as pollinators and predators to pests. But I didn’t realize that leaves just might be…
If it weren’t for evergreen plants our Canadian winters would play out like an old black and white movie. Tree bark and grasses are drained of colour–wet or frozen, outlined in snow and lit up by a steely sun. Unless, of course, you live on the far left edge of this country. Over there, everything…
Over the last few days our little town of Fernie in southeastern British Columbia has been buried under a thick blanket of snow. Driving is a horror show but, man, everything looks so pretty. The colours of our town, the woods and surrounding mountains have receded or vanished in the glare of a whiteness so…
All gardeners know that gardening is good for you. We can feel it. Any skeptic can check out the oodles of studies about how gardening can benefit your physical health and mental wellbeing. There’s even been recent research involving a group of seniors in or around their seventies that revealed gardening activities (digging, fertilizing, raking,…
At this time of year in North America, small red paper poppies are pinned to coats. It’s a solemn reminder and yet a lovely gesture, I think. Why the poppy? By the end of WWI, much of Western Europe had been decimated and much of the countryside had been transformed into barren fields of mud…
Having gained an hour of daylight, I feel like the rapid descent into complete winter gloom has slowed somewhat. At least when the cocktail hour arrives I won’t be groping around in the dark for a light switch in order to find the cork screw. For now. But I have to admit that increasingly dark…
Horticulturist, Arborist and Garden Columnist
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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 