A noun. A verb. A blog.
How charming to see a word as tricky as “chlorophyll” correctly written in learning-to-print letters! Even more charming to think that the knowledge came from a plant that children had grown themselves from seed, transplanted, tended and soon would taste. It’s all in a school-day’s work in Stonewall Gardens at Stonewall Jackson Elementary School on […]
You never know where you’ll find garden inspiration – perhaps on holiday in Reykjavik, Iceland. After a day of seeking out and being rather disappointed by the Reykjavik Botanical Garden, we headed to Reykjavik City Hall to look at the 3D map of Iceland. Almost by accident, we exited via the not-so-obvious front door, and […]
Where do you go when you’ve used all the space in your garden and in front of your house? You take it to the office and up the elevator. Gardener and artist Vivian Reiss has transformed two spaces in her office building on Merton Street into garden paradises in the middle of the urban jungle. […]
Sarah and I were talking about blue foliage plants this afternoon. She’d been thinking of a blue hosta for a friend’s garden. Large blue leaves would be just the right counterpoint to her friend’s fine-textured gold spirea. Trouble is, that spot in the garden gets baking-hot sun. The glaucous waxy coating that makes blue hostas […]
Taro plant with rescued and repurposed piece of decorative concrete. Vivian saves architectural pieces from demolition giving new life to old beautiful objects. As you approach Vivian Reiss’s Victorian house in Yorkville you know it’s no ordinary dwelling, but a house and garden space created by a gardener of unusual and vivid passions. There was […]
Look what I found at the industrial park! The contradiction in that phrase always strikes me as quaintly hopeful. It’s industrial. Yet it’s a park. Builders in the 50s and 60s must have been inspired by the great promise of industry – the same impulse that turned warehouses and pumping stations into cathedrals in the […]
Because, really, the privacy screening a hedge provides often only makes a difference when you’re outdoors during the clement seasons. Why not use it to support your beans and cukes – which can be highly ornamental, as well as being practical and delicious. A more decorative frame might have more good-neighbour appeal, and I perhaps […]
Sarah and I garden two doors away from each other in the same dry shady conditions. But, when it comes to colour, we couldn’t be further apart. Sarah’s all about the hot colours, reds, oranges, yellows; I prefer mine muted, going for pinks, corals, creams and blues. The red of this little ‘Happy Thought’ pelargonium […]
For the garbage bins Toronto residents hate to love, or for those who say a rain barrel is too ugly, here’s one of our favourite snippets from the Garden Walk Buffalo preview. Paint yourself a garden. The gardener who painted these in Buffalo’s Cottage District gave me the basic how-to. She simply used acrylic paint, […]
Here’s a fountain any garden would have space for: A perpetually refilling watering can. One like this captured my imagination at Canada Blooms one year, so I immediately asked the ever-ingenious Mr. TG to figure out how to make one for me. It’s just the kind of challenge he relishes. With a few rocks in […]
Never thought of garden design as a numbers game. But the Ryerson landscape design course I’m taking this summer is all about the math: Landscape Construction, Materials and Methods. For the past five weeks, my head has been swimming with formulae and calculations. Yi, yiyi, yi, yiyi, yi! The fascinating learning for me is about […]
Our little 0.0018 acre looks a whole lot neater than it did last year. If you were reading Toronto Gardens then, you might recall our very late start in July 2009 as brand new plot owners at the East York Community Garden. Earlier this year, I described how Mr. TG created raised beds using cedar […]