A noun. A verb. A blog.
Whether you’re a bona fide homegrown vegetable gardener or, like me, simply grow veggies on a small scale, right now you’re probably taking stock of what worked this year and what didn’t. You probably roughly know your yields. Perhaps, like Margaret at Homegrown, you’re fairly rigorous about it. But have you calculated your return on investment (ROI) […]
Late summer and early fall often belong to the enormous daisy or aster family (Asteraceae or Compositae, for those looking for plant surnames). But one perhaps underused group of plants can be pretty Wow! at this time of year. They’re in the same family as buttercups or clematis (with another mouthful of a family name, […]
Houseplants and vegetables are the “gateway drugs” to gardening. They certainly were for me, and I think they are again today. I was a university student with a windowsill full of houseplants when first bitten hard by the gardening bug. Later, Mr TG and I had our first apartment and an allotment garden at the Leslie Street Spit. One […]
Gardening is a conversation. That’s what I’ve been ruminating on since spending an enjoyable hour last month talking to the Oshawa Garden Club about Gardening in Shade. What do I mean? Well, of course, a conversation is a sharing of thoughts, ideas and opinions with other people. After I spoke to the lovely folks in Oshawa about shade gardening, […]
My sad story is that I constantly fall in love – with plants that I can’t grow. But if your garden (unlike mine) is sunny, hooray! Here’s a great one for you. The delightful name azure blue sage (Salvia azurea) refers to its sky-blue flowers in late summer and early fall. Right about now, for instance. It gets big bonus points for being a […]
It’s a lovely day. The evening of the first day of school for 2016/17 and, coincidentally, the night of our first Toronto Master Gardener meeting for the new season. We have a few minutes. Come walk with me through the Piet Oudolf entry garden at the Toronto Botanical Garden. Let’s not worry about plant names. Let’s […]
Yes, they can look stiff and formal. But I like glads because they remind me of our mother. Not only because Gladiolus is August’s birthday flower, and August 31st – today – was her birthday. It’s because of a piece of art she made, a print of some coral-coloured gladioli. Both our parents were gifted artists. Both were art-school […]
The first time I saw hardy hibiscus or swamp mallow flowers (Hibiscus moscheutos), it almost caused whiplash. Mine. We were driving through St-Laurent on Ile d’Orleans near Quebec City when I spied what looked like a tropical hibiscus. Only the flower was huge. HU-U-U-UGE. What the heck, I thought, this is Zone 4B (Canadian Zone 4B!), for […]
A hedge of Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) near us used to look absolutely show-stopping in late summer – a time when flowering trees and shrubs are rare, and rarely so generous with their flowers. Tired of being stopped by people asking what it was, the homeowners resorted to posting a sign: It’s called Althea!* Althea is another of […]
Certain plants. Hostas. Daylilies. They inspire the collecting FEVAH. I never thought I would get as potty about hostas as my sister Helen; but now, inexorably, I am. I never thought I would get as potty as my father was about succulents. But now I am. Is there something about certain plants that invade your […]
We should be grateful to Philippe Kahn, credited with inventing the camera-phone, back in 1997. (Or not, according to C-Net.) Whomever the mastermind, he (or she!) ensured we could have a camera, all the time and everywhere. So as we walked briskly past this fence near Woodbine Park one evening this May, I could follow up my double-take with the […]
Last night, I was presenting at the Newmarket Garden Club – a demonstration on making simple flower arrangements using materials from your (in this case, mostly my) garden. It was a fun 50 minutes, during which I did five designs. The materials weren’t all from my garden. It’s the mini Microgarden, after all. There were five kinds […]