My Long Overdue Review of Canada Blooms 2010

With Canada Blooms being next week, "What are you looking forward to at Canada Blooms?" is a question that keeps popping up on facebook and twitter. Since I haven't yet posted what I enjoyed most about Canada Blooms 2010, I guess I'd better get to that, before I'm two years behind instead of one!

Purple hyacinths, purple campanula, white tulips, and ferns--what a combination!

What I enjoy about Canada Blooms is liable to be a little different than everyone else--you see, I'm one of the small team of volunteers that are responsible for planting up all of the huge planters you see throughout the show. So while I do swoon over many of the larger feature gardens, I have a fondness for the exuberant collections of blooms we create throughout the show.

You'd never get this combination to grow together "in real life", but what a show it makes!

 

 

 

 

A delicious combination of pink. These ranunculus were amazing.

Proudly showing off one of my creations

Small scenes with big impact
Being a rabid heuchera fan (betcha don't know many of those!) I had to stop and take half a dozen pictures of this "lawn" of heuchera and "Princess Irene" tulips at the Home Depot garden. Absolutely adorable.

The Canadian Cancer Society's fortress of daffodils was a sad and delightful monument, all at the same time:

Air ferns and orchids make extraordinary wall art

Vegetable Delight
The Toronto Botanical Garden's display had a whole edible theme to coincide with their 'edible summer.' I know the trend now is to include edibles with your ornamentals, but no one can make those combinations look as stunning as Paul Zammit (TBG's Director of Horticulture.)

I did not know that chrysanthemums were edible. And how did they get tomatoes to fruit in March?!

A tiny perfect raised bed.

The vegetable theme carried through with the City of Toronto's garden. Check out this herb and veggie topiary:

And if you could actually grow a real garden with this mix of plants, we'd have everyone in the city gardening:

Competition in the flower show is tough. I do a bit of floral design but these arrangers are in a whole other league:

The Dance of Time

Feature Gardens

Some things at the show are just too big or too difficult to do capture in one tiny photograph. Landscape Ontario's garden was a stunner but how to encapsulate something so mammoth? This time lapse video from Landscape Ontario will give you some idea of the scale of this undertaking:  

 

Good Things

And of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that a highlight of Canada Blooms in 2010 for me was seeing...

Martha!

Canada Blooms 2010 was a wonderful burst of garden in a desert of winter, and I've no doubt that Canada Blooms 2011 will be even better. I promise not to take a year to post a report...

Adventures in Seeds

It’s nice to finally have a winter where the garden has a decent blanket of snow to insulate it. My plants looked so exposed and cold without it.

My first attempt at serious indoor seed-starting is moving along. I have now assembled the light stand and have started to give some thought as to what I might plant. Growing my own flats of impatiens or other easily and cheaply available plants doesn’t seem like it would be worth the trouble so I’ve been on the hunt for unusual things I might have difficulty finding elsewhere.

Last fall I read an article on ground cherries (Physalis pruinosa), which one source describes as a “small orange fruit similar in size and shape to a cherry tomato. The fruit is covered in papery husk. Flavor is a pleasant, unique tomato /pineapple like blend. The ground cherry is very similar to the cape gooseberry, both having similar, but unique flavors.” The article said they grew very much like tomatoes but, unfortunately, were extremely hard to find—only one or two nurseries in North America carried them. Hmph. So when I stumbled on a package of ‘Aunt Molly’s Ground Cherry’ seeds in the rack at Canadian Tire a few weeks ago I immediately grabbed them. They may end up being inedible but the birds and squirrels can have at them if we don’t like them. These plants need a really early start so I’ll probably get them going next month.

During gardener Ken Brown’s talk at our society last year he showed us slides of a climbing zucchini, tantalizing us with tales of massive zucchinis that were still tasty, and all on a climbing plant. Eureka! I listened carefully and took notes as he said the only place he’d found seeds was through reneesgarden.com and they didn’t seem to be in the store displays of that brand of seeds, but only by mail order. I bookmarked the website and figured I’d place an order later. Well, again, I lucked out and found these seeds on a rack at the shop in the Toronto Botanical Garden. The package recommends Climbing Italian Summer Squash (Trombetta di Albenga) be planted directly in the ground, but I may start them a week or two early, inside, to give them a fighting chance against my ravenous slugs.

I may pick up a package of yellow zucchini seeds. Firstly, because the “yellow zucchini” plants I purchased at Canadian Tire last year turned out to be green. And secondly, because I seem to have a problem growing enough zucchini. Yeah, I know everyone else plants one zucchini and ends up with carloads, but my garden is “blessed” with striped cucumber beetles, and they spread a virus that zaps my zucchinis before I get enough. I sprayed beneficial nematodes last fall, so maybe there’ll be less of the beetles, but I won’t know until later in the summer.

Also on my “to grow” list (which is way more fun that a “to do” list!) are Rattlesnake pole beans (they have patterned pods), Purple pole beans (they’re purple, as the name suggests), and “Amazon Jewel” Climbing Nasturtiums. The seed packet description made me buy the nasturtiums: “This spellbinding nasturtium offers unusual variegated vining foliage and brilliant spurred blossoms in exotic and unusual shades of pumpkin, painted peachy-rose, ruby, gold and pale lemon.” Spellbinding—how could I resist a description like that?

So that’s my little seed packet collection to date. Are you planning on growing anything from seed this year?

TBG's Annual Garden Tour

This past weekend (June 16-17, 2007) I had the pleasure of volunteering at the Toronto Botanical Garden’s (TBG) 20th annual garden tour. Through the Garden Gate: Wychwood Park & Davenport Ridge provided access to over 20 private gardens, as well as the grounds of Spadina House.

I volunteered on Saturday, and was stationed as a host at 57 Hillcrest Drive, just west of Christie and north of Davenport. The front and side garden (this corner lot used to be two addresses) are beautiful examples of sunny English borders—roses and clematis twining through the wooden fence, with peonies, spirea, rununculus, and other assorted species spilling blooms everywhere. A surprise hit with visitors was an annual penstemon from the President’s Choice cut flower collection (yes, from Loblaws). Also eliciting cries of “what’s that?” where two specimens of Sambucus (cutleaf elder) that resemble a lime-coloured Japanese maple, a variegated Japanese maple (that resembled a variegated dogwood), and the largest goatsbeard anyone had ever seen. Also not to be missed was a stunning container planting by the front door—a Boston fern was surrounded by a ring of dark Alocasia, followed by a layer of white fibrous begonias, finished off with loads of ivy spilling over the planter.

The back garden was quite a different story from the front—it was a shaded contemporary retreat that looked like it stepped from the pages of House and Home or Canadian Style at Home. Honey locusts provided an overhead canopy (with a large variety of mature trees blocking neighbouring views). A large concrete patio area held a set of dark brown wicker-like outdoor furniture. Almost all of the ground level planting consisted of 6” of mulch topped by a creeping/low euonymus. The homeowner shared that she had created this garden retreat because of her dog—in the previous garden (presumably, a more traditional one matching the front and side yard) her puppy constantly tracked mud into the house and his galloping (he’s not a small dog) damaged the plants. With the euonymus as a groundcover there is no mud and the dog can’t really do any damage.

Interestingly, garden visitors were impressed with the rare specimens and excellent cultivation of the sunny English garden, but it was the contemporary back garden space that caused them to say “wow!”. I’m not sure if it was because one felt like one was walking into the pages of a design magazine, or if this truly is the most pleasing aesthetic. As a voracious plant collector I know I will never have a space like the back garden (I just can’t get excited about a monoculture), so I think I’ll strive to borrow the best ideas from the front garden.

Plans are no doubt already underway for 2008’s TBG garden tour. Watch for details next spring.