Forget celebrity train wrecks or political scandals. Real dirt, the kind under everyone’s feet, can be riveting. Before your eyes start rolling into the back of your head or you make a quick flick over to Facebook, watch Symphony Of The Soil. OK, maybe it’s not the most tantalizing of titles but this documentary is…
Originally posted on gardeninacity:
Judy saw a coyote trotting down the street in front or our house a few days before Thanksgiving. Hurrah! Coyotes enjoy the suburban life. Photo from urbancoyoteresearch.com. I like to think that this means we now have our own neighborhood coyote, maybe even our own pack. We need some predators around here…
When you want to give your garden a brilliant send-off before it slips into winter, asters can supply the fireworks. Looking like mini-daisies in purple, pink or white, they’re easy-to-grow perennials and (bonus!) the best of the bunch is a native wildflower of Ontario–New England Aster (Aster novae-anglia). They’re the tallest of the asters and…
There are lots of amazing new plants being introduced in Southern Ontario this spring. I’ll keep you posted on the best over the next few weeks. Here’s one of my faves: a basil topiary. Tiny, tender basil leaves crown a woody (yep!) stem. Harvest the leaves all summer for salads and pasta dishes. Then bring…
After attending yet another lecture at a botanical society shoulder-to-shoulder with a battalion of grey-haired ladies, I wondered about where gardening was headed. I understand that in the eyes of most kids gardening is deeply uncool. Yeah, it was fun as a toddler, digging in the dirt with your bright plastic spade. But later, you raked the…
You’re looking at your yard. Maybe there’s a spot at the back that needs some love. Or you’ve taken a personal oath to finally get that front walkway looking a little more, well, welcoming this spring. Even experienced gardeners can have a momentary crisis of indecision–”What’s going to grow and not die on me after…
A professional artist once told me “Never forget the purple.” He was looking at a portrait I was painting–which lacked, among other things, any sense of depth–and encouraging me to try underpainting. Many great masters of the art world used this technique to give their works luminosity by, you guessed it, painting in layers starting…
Yesterday, The New York Times published a must-read article in their Home & Garden section online entitled: “Brown Is the New Green” Though the people quoted and the lawns and gardens featured are in California, the topics of water shortages and life without lawns are important. Up here in Southern Ontario, our grass is still…
Looking out the window and wondering how much of your garden will survive to see May Two-Fer? As Southern Ontario continues to be pummelled by a record-breaking winter, there’s cause for considering the fate of a garden that may have survived last December’s ice storm only to face drying winds, frost heaves, flooding and more. Even…
The 3,000 Mile Garden is one of those books about gardening that isn’t anything like gardening books. During a long wait for a late spring, dipping into this extraordinary exchange of letters between Leslie Land, who lived in the northeastern United States, and Roger Phillips, based in London, England, is like sitting at…
Nope. Nothing’s changed since yesterday. The garden is still frozen. Old snow is not pretty. Poets wax on about the beauty and stillness of winter but I’m thinking it’s time to move on. Sydney Eddison, writer, gardener and lecturer, wrote: “Perfection in life and in the garden depends on a counterpoise too fragile to maintain…
Thanks to a jet stream that drooped well south of its usual course, followed by repeat performances from a polar vortex, my home in Southern Ontario is locked in a record-breaking deep freeze. Ninety-percent of the Great Lakes are covered with ice. Lake Ontario, just a short stroll from my front door, is now famous for escaping…
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 