I dropped into one of my favourite grocery store pop-up garden centres yesterday and was very surprised to see impatiens for sale. They’ve always been a popular plant, for sure, and a terrific problem solver in past years if you wanted lots of cheap ‘n’ cheerful colour in shady areas of your garden. But they’re…
This is such a fun idea and so easy! I had to pass it along. Tipsy pots: free instructions for this fun and easy garden art project. via How To Make Tipsy Pots.
The weirdly early May Long has come and gone. The temps are up and staying up. We can all exhale. It’s safe to go plant shopping. This year, natives are going to be on the top of my list. And, no, I haven’t gone all crunchy-granola on you. Native plants can save you lots of…
I was at a big box store a few days ago (ok, Costco) and barely got out alive. People were scrambling to grab white plastic hanging baskets stuffed with all kinds of crayola-coloured flowers. The prices were insane, of course. But as I dodged a careening cart bulging with containers of hot pink geraniums, peachy…
I love a good thunderstorm. And now that our dog is almost completely deaf, we can enjoy the cracks and booms without having to peel him off the ceiling. But during our last storm, as the rain continued to crash down with the strength of a firehose at full spray, the romance fizzled when my…
My back garden has finally rediscovered spring. There’s a Virginia creeper about to conquer new territory. The clematis is feeling sorry for itself. And I’ve got morning glory seedlings about to bust open their seed tray. All of this means one thing. There’s gonna be trellis. In my opinion (as someone who loathes to spend loads…
There’s a nasty threat of aliens taking over (and I don’t mean the already-panned Tom Cruise space thriller due out this June). I saw it first-hand and took the photo you see at left. It’s a rampant patch of periwinkle flourishing in the woods near Wiarton on the Bruce Peninsula. What this area should look like…
Can garden gloves make you laugh? (In a LOL way. Not a nervous giggling kind of way.) They can if they come from Watson Gloves of Burnaby, B.C. I think I love this company. It’s so refreshing to see people making good products and doing a good job of getting that product out to people without…
Maybe it’s that we’re lucky to live in places where there are lots of big trees (read: gardens with lots of shade) or maybe it’s because we’re looking for plants that reliably show up every year, do a great job of quickly filling up an area with lushness and look quite elegant in the process.…
In art class, a depiction of a bunch of stuff all in the same colour family is considered monochromatic. Think Picasso during his Blue Period. In gardening, this is usually considered boring. Unless you were Vita Sackville-West, whose White Garden (Ok, so there are green and silvery grey plants, too) at Sissinghurst Castle still brings droves…
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. For all those people who have left figuring out what to do until now, I have one suggestion: Skip the chicken special and hit the road. I know. Taking dear old Mum out for a special meal is right up there with giving her flowers or a plant and buying her…
It was love at first strike. With one smooth movement, the CobraHead sliced into the ground. I gently angled it and then pulled up, releasing the gnarliest dandelion from its smug existence. Ironically, I was the one that was bitten. My CobraHead Weeder and Cultivator arrived in April’s mail. The Wisconsin-based makers of these tools…
Let me state for the records that I’m anti-minimalist when it comes to gardening. Minimal does not do anything for me, even if you’re talking a painfully chic urban rooftop garden-slash-yoga retreat. To illustrate my point, just Google anything about Japanese zen gardens–supposedly the poster gardens for minimalism. There’s actually a lot going on in…
Originally posted on GARDEN OF EADY:
Do you love wine? Perfect. Me too :-). But what do we do with all the wine bottles? Every year we throw out a lot of glass bottles, which could be reused in our garden. How? Very simple. We can edge our garden with wine bottles. A wine bottle…
You may have heard that Monarch butterflies aren’t doing very well this year. Turns out their numbers have hit an all-time low while they were winter vacationing in Mexico. Jode Roberts of the Toronto-based Homegrown National Park Project reports on David Suzuki’s website that there are two reasons for this: severe weather and “the virtual eradication…
Horticulturist, Arborist and Garden Columnist
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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 