They’re baaaaack. In the last couple of days, my windowsills have accumulated drifts of tiny black bug corpses. I’ll clean up the mess one day and there’s that much more the next day. I always thought of this buggy onslaught as a spring ritual so I decided to find out more about why these critters,…
When’s a good time to plant flower bulbs in the fall for a good show come next spring? Heaps of bagged bulbs are appearing everywhere from garden nurseries to grocery stores so you’d figure that now, now, now is the best time. But there isn’t actually that much of a rush here in Southern Ontario.…
I just got the cutest poster in the mail. Hand-drawn pictures of flowers, shrubs and trees illustrated “Ontario’s pollinator pals”–pollinator-friendly plants that Ontario Nature is suggesting you plant in your garden. It’s a good idea. Bees, butterflies, moths and birds help spread pollen so that more plants grow. We should help these critters by supplying…
As much as I loathe seeing Halloween candy already lining grocery store shelves, I love the flip-side to putting autumn in overdrive–finding cool weather plants that take over garden beds and containers with all the subtly of a Mac truck. Great big orange domes of neatly clipped chrysanthemums lining a front walkway. Constellations of purple…
I didn’t think of marigolds as a salad ingredient until I visited the vegetable and herb garden at Les Jardin de Metis, also known as Reford Gardens. The ‘potager‘ as it’s called there (hey, it is in Quebec) is a screaming example of how things you can eat can also make the most incredibly beautiful garden. The…
“When extinction adjusts the number of species to the [undisturbed] land area that remains for the plants, mammals, reptiles, birds, and invertebrates of North America (something that will happen within most of our lifetimes), we will have lost 95 percent of the species that greeted the Pilgrims.” That sentence was excerpted from my textbook, Bringing…
Spring’s got a reputation for being the apex of a garden’s beauty. The idea is that once those darling buds have popped, it’s downhill from then on. I blame it partly on Wordsworth who wrote about stumbling upon ten thousand yellow daffodils thus sealing the fates of a generation who, as schoolchildren, were programmed to…
When I first saw this mesmerizing flower at Sissinghurst Castle Garden in the Weald of Kent (which is a fancy way of saying in a bit of South East England) I had no idea that the plant was actually a North American wildflower. All I could think of was that all those delicate white and…
You’d be forgiven if you read “International Garden Festival” and thought “Hoity Toity Ho Hum”. But the annual showcase of out-of-this-world garden designs at Reford Gardens in Grand Metis, Quebec, is simply amazingly crazy fun for kids, adults, gardeners and non-gardeners. I recently posted about seven reasons for going to this extraordinary place but didn’t…
When this story broke a couple of weeks ago, I thought it was a press hoax like when Orson Welles had everyone in a panic over the idea of an alien attack. But it turns out Austria’s Social Democrat Party members really do have their lederhosen in a twist over the theft of some 400…
Two weeks ago I drove (and drove and drove) to Reford Gardens, also known as Les Jardins de Metis in Grand-Metis. The historical landmark sits on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River about halfway up the humped back of the Gaspe Peninsula. The journey there took two solid days of driving from my…
Using the lawn as a back-scratcher hadn’t occurred to me until I met Berkley, our almost-white golden retriever. He’d casually walk into the centre of the backyard and then flip onto his back, throwing all four paws in the air and wriggling his back. He’d leave a flattened patch that seemed oddly paler than the rest…
Last May, I planted some beans in a pot–another big gardening adventure for me. I’ve already admitted my fear of vegetable growing in a previous posting so I hope you’ll understand that, after the exhilaration of throwing all caution to the wind and planting lettuce, I felt downright at one with nature and the universe planting…
Globe thistle (Echinops sphaerocephalus) shares its name with a cuter-than-cute hedgehog from Madagascar (Echinops telfairi) because of their uncanny resemblance but, by the light of a recent super moon, I thought the plant looked very nearly like a teeny, tiny exploding planet. Almost, but not quite. Planetary explosions must be massively messy and the head of a globe thistle has to…
I know rock-star botanist sounds like an oxymoron but I’m loving the fact that Voice Of America is trying to sprinkle a little glamour over plant research. This article is a fun read not only for the idea of a 60+ year-old plant geek rappelling down the same cliffs where scenes from Raiders of the…
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 