A noun. A verb. A blog.
For down-to-earth, spring flowering rock garden basics, you don’t have to go much further than the letter A. Rock garden plants are often called by their own A name: alpines, because of their origins on mountainsides, thriving with sharp drainage and full sun. A well-drained, full-sun position is still is their favourite venue. This is […]
Poor cultural practices – the things you do when you garden – can be a hazard to your trees. People kill trees all the time, quite innocently, simply by saying: Honey, let’s put a cute little raised bed around the tree. All the active tissue in a tree trunk exists very near the surface under […]
If you plant lily of the valley, you had better love lily of the valley. And your neighbour had better love it, too. If not, your neighbour had darned well better love you. Lily of the valley (Convallaria) is a plant that doesn’t do things by halves, and it’s no respecter of fences. Given the […]
This clump of hellebores (Helleborus orientalis) started to open up a week or so ago, towards the end of April this year. But I could see the flower buds marshalling for the big push under the leaves as early as March. That’s why a common name for this flower is the Lenten rose, because it […]
I wrote about these hyacinths last year. Someone gave them to me at the birth of my daughter, a long, grown-up-and-moved-away-from-home time ago. It amazes me that they’re still coming up, looking cheery and perfuming the garden air after nearly a generation. Hyacinths to feed my soul, indeed.
It’s too long since I’ve had the joy of seeing a sea of trilliums brighten up a woodland floor. This is one of my fond memories of childhood, having spent part of our youth living near wooded areas in different parts of Southern Ontario. However, I do have a few in the garden. This year, […]
This is the lovely bouquet Sarah brought me from her country garden yesterday. But, sadly, Narcissus or daffodils, don’t make very long-lasting cut flowers. Today, most of them have expired. Best to enjoy them in the garden… If only we could put far-off places on wheels and yank them closer, our gardening lives would be […]
Let’s call the whole thing … a really splendid harbinger of spring. Actually, most people say “fors-i-thia” when we’re talking about Forsythia. But I always see Mr. Forsyth’s surname fossilized in there. He was the royal gardener who introduced this Asian native shrub to the west, around the time when Jane Austen was a girl. […]
This little seedling of the Norway maple (Acer platanoides) is one of the small forest that germinates in my garden each spring. The maples are a constant reminder of the old chestnut (as in: saying) in the title. Why would you get seven years of weeds from one year of seeds? One reason is that […]
When you’re noting your things to do for fall, be sure to write: Plant more Anemone blanda, the Grecian windflower. This diminutive, daisylike member of the Ranunculus or buttercup family is an early spring bloomer in my garden. It flowers best where I allow the leaves to accumulate and compost into mulch under shrubs. Generally, […]
Another quickie to herald today’s opening of one of my favourite spring displays, the Tulipa tarda, aka, astonishingly, tarda tulips. This early species tulip stays low to the ground, and tolerates a root-filled space on a slope in my dry, sandy garden – albeit in one of its sunniest spots. The bulbs seem to increase, […]
With the sudden spike in temperature expected over the next three days, I might just have left it a little too late to start sowing these lettuce and salad seeds I’d been saving — samples received through my membership in the Garden Writers Association. I hope not. I’ll be squeezing the seeds into some of […]