A noun. A verb. A blog.
The Italian Garden on Garinish (aka Garnish) Island (aka Ilnacullin) A little putt-putt ferry took us from Glengariff in West Cork across Bantry Bay to see the Garinish Island garden by Edwardian landscape architect Harold Peto. Despite the drenching rain, I was excited. A Peto garden! But whether it was the quality of light on […]
My naked bales did grow the cool ink cap mushrooms called Tippler’s Bane. Don’t eat them if you’re drinking alcohol! I’m a failure – or, a bailure – at straw bale gardening. It was a failure months in the making when, from all I’d read, I’d anticipated easy-peasiness. Sadly, not so here. Read my bale […]
Hydrangea ‘Annabelle’ with Heuchera ‘Caramel’ I chuckle when people say “nothing will grow under Norway maples.” Then I point to a scene like the one above, growing in my doubly Norway maple-shaded, root-infested, deeply sandy garden – the indomitable ‘Annabelle’ hydrangea, fattened on a regular diet of chopped leaves and, recently, duck manure. Yes, things […]
‘Chiare, fresche et dolci acque’ (Clear, fresh, sweet water) – opening line of a poem by Petrarch – surround a fountain. Clear, fresh, sweet cocktails (well, Chardonnay for me, but, hey, poetic license) were sipped in the garden of artist and garden designer Shirley Watts and her husband Emmanuel Coup in Alameda, California. And ’twas […]
The home, garden and studio of San Francisco sculptor Matt Gil and his wife Lesa Porche are tucked against a rocky slope beneath a highway overpass Unhappy with your garden? I’ll give you something to gripe about: A tiny footprint, most of it vertical. And rocky. Really rocky. The view? Highway pilons, albeit with a […]
Leaving your mind blank can give you space for other things. Like admiring this use of chives as an ornamental. I’ve been quiet for a few weeks on the blog and Twitter. You might call it Unsocial Media. Or, in garden terms, The Silence of the Lamb’s Ears. The quiet surface belies the currents beneath. […]
The bold, blue leaves of sea kale (Crambe maritima) anchor a collection of planters – and sea kale is actually edible. Sea kale also produces clusters of white flowers. With less-attractive large leaves, its cousin colewort (Crambe cordifolia) outdoes sea kale with its billowing clouds of small, white flowers. Sometimes you need to sweat the […]
I wasn’t the only one slathering over this lush boulevard planting in Forest Hill It’s time to mark garden tours on your calendar. Yesterday, the press – and that would include lucky old moi – previewed the city’s “really big shoe” Through the Garden Gate, which on the weekend of June 8 and 9, 2013 […]
Tulipa ‘Antoinette’ at the Montreal Botanical Garden ‘Antoinette’ really is prettier than a picture. She arrives a lemony shade of yellow, and gains a widening, lipstick-pink edge on every petal as she ages. I hear that she is also multi-stemmed! A fitting feature for this almost-Wordless Wednesday. A full palette of beauty for any size […]
How much compost is in this bag? Today’s Idea File is really an “I-Have-No-Idea File” – for when someone asks you how much mulch or manure or compost or topsoil you need to cover an area, and you answer, “I have no idea!” This is especially tricky in Canada, where we straddle metric and imperial […]
Heucherella ‘Sweet Tea’ with Hosta ‘Pineapple Upside-Down Cake’ and the glorious Tulipa ‘Prinses Irene’. May has raced by so quickly, I forgot it was the 15th – the day when, every month, Carol of May Dreams Gardens invites garden bloggers to share what’s growing on. I might just make it under the wire. After a […]
Rip me up into eleven pieces! If ever there were an excuse for human cloning, it would be so that I could attend these eleven events at once on Saturday, May 11, 2013. Here’s this week’s full-of-ideas Idea File – check the links for further details on each: 1. Helen speaks on Shade Plants at […]