Looking for some new (to you) and interesting perennials? Or a few annuals to brighten your 2009 garden?
Roselands Horticultural Society, the group I belong to, will be hosting our annual plant sale on Saturday, May 16th, 2009 from 9 am to noon.
We will be located in the Northwest quadrant of Eglinton Flats park (take Emmett Avenue north off Eglinton, just west of Jane). This is the Mount Dennis area of Toronto.
Evergreen will also be there, doing the season kick-off for the Emmett Avenue Community Garden, and the Mount Dennis Community Kitchen will have breakfast available for purchase.
I've been busy dividing up my perennials. I have about 25 pots filled now, including cushion spurge, columbine, bachelor's buttons, lots of anemone, and Lysmachia Firecracker. The next step will be labelling, which takes a bit of time...
Thoughts from an urban gardener
Monday, 4 May 2009
Monday, 23 March 2009
New Hort Research that Gardeners Can Use
Courtesy of Garden Rant, a very interesting compilation of the latest garden research.
Monday, 16 February 2009
HGTV Canada finally airs some GARDENING programs!
I keep meaning to mention to my flower-loving friends that HGTV is finally putting a little bit of garden back into Home and Garden Television:
On Mondays at 10:30 p.m. they’re running a show called Petal Pushers. Supposedly it’s a behind-the-scenes look at a florist’s shop. I expect that most/all of it is staged (I can’t imagine anyone could be so nasty to their customers and maintain a business—wait, actually, yes, I have been in a florist like that on St. Clair West, so maybe it’s more realistic than I give it credit). The best part of it all, for me, is seeing how they construct the arrangements. The arrangements aren’t high-end floral competition style (i.e. Canada Blooms), but are interesting and offer some insights for those of us arranging for home and local hort society competition.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Garden Renovations in My Sleep
I don't know what other folks think about to put themselves to sleep at night, but I often pick a part of my garden I want to change and think about what would improve it.
Lately I've been obsessed with this one spot in front of the chain link fence I share with my neighbour. I've been steadily planting a series of tall and dense plants along this fence to block out my view of their garbage bins, etc. One of the last open spaces receives a fair amount of sun so I decided to put in a rose. After scouring all of the garden centers at the end of the
summer I picked what looked, from the tag, to be a dark pink edged floribunda. I checked out a description of the plant on the internet and learned it was relatively well behaved and disease resistant. Great, in it went.
Do you know what I mean when I say "hot pink"? Not bubblegum pink, Pepto-bismol pink, or little-girl pastel pink. I mean fluorescent, knock your retinas out pink. Well, it turns out that this lovely, healthy rose bears large white flowers, thickly edged in a particular shade of pink-hot pink-that I had not previously believed could be found in nature.
I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if it was surrounded by nothing but green and white, but no, of course it is positioned directly beside a very orangey-red Maltese Cross (Lychnis chalcedonica) and the clash of colours is quite something to behold.
The only good thing about this rose's colour is that I think my neighbour's daughter will like it, as I've seen her wear soccer shoes in that exact shade of pink (it looks cute on shoes, but not in my garden).
So lately, as I work at drifting off to sleep, I wrestle with this patch of garden in my mind. Do I uproot the rose and haul it off to our plant sale for someone more appreciative of its distinctive hue? Do I grow it, in hopes that it's "unique" blooms will score points with the flower show judges? Can I plant something bushy in front of it to hide it from my view, while letting it still get enough light? If I moved it, which rose would I put in its place (the lovely newer "David Austin" with the orange-toned blooms?).
It looks like it will be a long winter, so I have many more nights ahead of me to sort it out. Maybe I'll dream up a solution during one of them!
Lately I've been obsessed with this one spot in front of the chain link fence I share with my neighbour. I've been steadily planting a series of tall and dense plants along this fence to block out my view of their garbage bins, etc. One of the last open spaces receives a fair amount of sun so I decided to put in a rose. After scouring all of the garden centers at the end of the
summer I picked what looked, from the tag, to be a dark pink edged floribunda. I checked out a description of the plant on the internet and learned it was relatively well behaved and disease resistant. Great, in it went.
Do you know what I mean when I say "hot pink"? Not bubblegum pink, Pepto-bismol pink, or little-girl pastel pink. I mean fluorescent, knock your retinas out pink. Well, it turns out that this lovely, healthy rose bears large white flowers, thickly edged in a particular shade of pink-hot pink-that I had not previously believed could be found in nature.
I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if it was surrounded by nothing but green and white, but no, of course it is positioned directly beside a very orangey-red Maltese Cross (Lychnis chalcedonica) and the clash of colours is quite something to behold.
The only good thing about this rose's colour is that I think my neighbour's daughter will like it, as I've seen her wear soccer shoes in that exact shade of pink (it looks cute on shoes, but not in my garden).
So lately, as I work at drifting off to sleep, I wrestle with this patch of garden in my mind. Do I uproot the rose and haul it off to our plant sale for someone more appreciative of its distinctive hue? Do I grow it, in hopes that it's "unique" blooms will score points with the flower show judges? Can I plant something bushy in front of it to hide it from my view, while letting it still get enough light? If I moved it, which rose would I put in its place (the lovely newer "David Austin" with the orange-toned blooms?).
It looks like it will be a long winter, so I have many more nights ahead of me to sort it out. Maybe I'll dream up a solution during one of them!
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Spring 2008!
This is a drumstick primula (Primula denticulata) blooming its little heart out in my back yard, in mid April. This is its third year, and it has really come into its own. The picture doesn't quite capture how astounding it is to see this burst of purple in the midst of what was an overall brown spring garden. An excellent plant to place prominently so that it can boldly declare that spring has arrived!
Wednesday, 12 September 2007
Photo Contest Tips
The horticultural society to which I belong is having a photo contest. I put together a few tips for our newsletter, and thought I'd share them here.
I’ve been fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of photography advice since I was born (my father is a part-time professional photographer), so I have collected a few words of wisdom over the years:
l Make sure your photo is in focus! Crisp pictures
win contests. Out of focus ones don’t.
l Frame your image properly (i.e. pay attention to
how you position the main subject in the photo).
Last year’s judge pointed out that many of the
photos could have been improved by cropping
them (i.e. positioning your subject properly within
the frame). All entries in our contest must be
4” x 6” (your photo will be disqualified if it doesn’t
meet this criteria), so this means that you have to
frame the photo properly when you shoot it, or
have it printed so that the central image is situated
properly within the frame (very easy with digital
cameras). Don’t take a pair of scissors to your
4”x6” print or it will no longer be 4"x6"!
l Only enter images that reflect the contest subject.
If the category is “farm scene” the main thing you
see in the photo should be a farm or something
that looks like it’s on a farm.
I’ve been fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of photography advice since I was born (my father is a part-time professional photographer), so I have collected a few words of wisdom over the years:
l Make sure your photo is in focus! Crisp pictures
win contests. Out of focus ones don’t.
l Frame your image properly (i.e. pay attention to
how you position the main subject in the photo).
Last year’s judge pointed out that many of the
photos could have been improved by cropping
them (i.e. positioning your subject properly within
the frame). All entries in our contest must be
4” x 6” (your photo will be disqualified if it doesn’t
meet this criteria), so this means that you have to
frame the photo properly when you shoot it, or
have it printed so that the central image is situated
properly within the frame (very easy with digital
cameras). Don’t take a pair of scissors to your
4”x6” print or it will no longer be 4"x6"!
l Only enter images that reflect the contest subject.
If the category is “farm scene” the main thing you
see in the photo should be a farm or something
that looks like it’s on a farm.
Monday, 18 June 2007
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.
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