Big box plants bad for bees?

Can a bee-friendly garden actually kill bees rather than help them? An article published last June on wired.com reported that gardeners may be accidentally poisoning bees when they purchase what they think are bee-friendly flowers at big box stores in the U.S. and Canada. Several named store brands in the article were found to be selling…

“Evergreens” that ain’t

You’d think a tree covered in pine needles in the middle of summer would A) be a pine tree and B) be evergreen. I’m learning how wrong I can be. And how un-evergreens are golden in the fall garden. Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus) is indeed a pine tree–a beautiful, fast-growing native of Ontario with long,…

Oh, Canada: National Garden Days, 2014

Ignore the calendar. Today’s your lucky day. There’s an Urban Vegetable Patch Garden Tour in Oshawa starting at five this evening. You can ride a bike to each private patch. Kate’s Garden Annual Lavender Vintage Fair in Unionville just kicked off its two-day shindig this morning. And you can do a Honey Tasting featuring honey harvested…

Say no, no, no to zombie impatiens

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…

Garden needs a reno? Power-wash your birches

Yesterday, I sat in on a lecture at the Toronto Botanical Garden by plantswoman extraordinaire Marion Jarvie of Thornhill, Ontario. The topic was renewing and renovating your garden–starting now. This dynamo gardener had eyes popping over photos of her handiwork and eyebrows raised over some of her suggestions for sprucing up our own gardens this…