Creating garden walls with gabions

Outdoor dining area defined by gabion cage garden walls

When visitors see our garden renovation, one of their first positive comments is about the gabion retaining walls. We agree. For high design impact at low cost, the gabions – the stone-filled wire baskets shown above from our window on a rainy day – were among our most satisfying decisions. Other options for the garden walls ranged from cheap (cementing the old limestone pavers that […]

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How we built our shed from a kit

Our back yard transformation began with the demolition of our +30-year-old cedar shed and construction of a big, beautiful new Urban Studio from Summerwood. We managed to snag it at a Black Friday discount in November 2020. Picturewise, this is a long post! Here’s the TL:DR. We’d thought about a new shed for a long time. Summerwood offers […]

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The Pollinator Victory Garden helps you help the world

As gardeners during two world wars knew, even during a major crisis you can do your bit to make things better. Victory gardens were designed to boost food productivity during the wars, one little garden plot after another. The benefits spread far beyond individual garden gates. And gardens need pollinators. Their work, done mostly by insects, is behind one […]

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A reminder about taking cuttings

I’m never ruthless enough when taking cuttings of geranium (Pelargonium). For one thing, I can never buy ventolin online healthdirectionsinc.com/i buy bactroban online rxbio.com/css/css/bactroban.html no prescription pharmacy mages/png/ventolin.html no prescription pharmacy bear to remove the flowers, the blooming of which distracts the cutting from root production. But when they look like this, who can blame […]

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When bad things happen to good gardens

It all started with a basement pillar that had been removed, years ago, by a previous owner. The shoring-up they’d done might have once been code. According to the structural engineer we consulted, just in case, it wouldn’t be code now. And our basement project escalated from there. For me, the worst of it wasn’t […]

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Why you should do the grade-school bean experiment

Did you do this in grade school? You should do it again. Watching beans grow inside a jar is like Jack and the Beanstalk meets x-ray visi buy clenbuterol online doctorgreenwald.com/Layouts/OutboundEmails/html/clenbuterol.html no prescription pharmacy on. I did it recently to get pictures for a Gardening with Children Master Gardener presentation I was writing. But with the beans growing right beside me on my desk, […]

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Fighting invasive tree-of-heaven

This summer, I’ve been battling tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima) like never before. We’ve written before about this struggle, but I’ve never seen it keep coming back so aggressively from the root – till now. Ailanthus is an alien species (read more about it in our previous post), that has become a regular citizen of Toronto’s unguarded laneways and unclaimed […]

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Hortus TV for tranquil garden therapy (and a special discount)

[Editor, Nov. 22, 2018: Unfortunately, HortusTV is off the air due to lack of subscribers. What a pity!] buy arimidex online www.auriculotherapy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/jpg/arimidex.html no prescription pharmacy I’ve given up watching the late-night news. No need to be reminded that the world is going through a bit of a bad patch. Not right before bedtime. And I can’t always […]

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