Ghosts of the Victorian garden

Last Monday was Victoria Day here in Canada, a national holiday that was once the official day to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday and is now simply our unofficial kick-off to spring. This weekend also semi-reliably marks the moment when danger of overnight frost has passed–at least for most Canadians. Hence, gardening centres finally fling open…

6 easy shortcuts to a classic Canadian garden

Earlier this month I published a post (highly opinionated, of course) about gardening shortcuts for getting that traditional English country garden style. Since then, I’ve been thinking. The British garden look is popular for good reason, as are other well-known garden looks such as the Japanese-style garden or the American Southwest style (think lots of…

No mow doubts

I realize I’m a bit late to the No Mow May party but I kept seeing a lot of messaging through news and social media about what a great idea not mowing your lawn in May is but not a lot of good hard reasons why you should or what to do after May. The…

5 ways to love your dandelions

Is it just me or did all the dandelions in the universe just invade our gardens overnight? The battle is on but it doesn’t have to be horrific–especially if you take a different tactic than the usual OBLITERATE THEM ALL. Here are some timely reasons for putting down the pesticides and making dandelions our co-conspirators…

An apology to lawns

In a post earlier this year I asked “Are you ready to give up your lawn?” The motivation behind the question was sincere but, now that I’m neck deep in organic horticulture studies, I’ve realized I was really just jumping on a bandwagon. Sneering at lawns has seemed the politically correct thing to do for…