A noun. A verb. A blog.
A gaggle of writers under the tall trees Sure, you know High Park, Old Mill or The Kingsway. But did you know the Village of Swansea is just around the corner? Swansea? Yes, Swansea – one of Toronto’s best-kept secrets. Long-time residents like to keep it that way, says garden writer Sonia Day, who lived […]
On Sunday, I spent three wonderful hours looking at a spectacular garden, and talking to people about it. What bliss. Most of these images are cleverly devoid of people… but be assured, the place was hopping. And the rain held off. Hope you enjoy the tour.
Get those squishing fingers on. The lily leaf beetles are back, and they’re noshing on your Asiatic and Oriental lilies. In fact, they’re making like the two-backed beast, or beetle, to create the next generations of bright red eating machines. Until they earn their red beetle wings, these will be squishy brown blobs of beetle […]
Upside down in this pic, these onion sets form at the top of the stem There aren’t too many do-nothing perennial vegetables, but one of them is the Egyptian walking onion, Allium cepa var. proliferum. That variety name, proliferum, isn’t because these onions produce well, although they do. It comes from the botanical term proliferation […]
A tomato plant is indeed a beautiful thing. Don’t throw out that coffee cup! Don’t even toss it in the blue bin! They make great seed starting pots. Poke a hole in the bottom, fill with soil, and plant a few tomato seeds, or anything you want to start from seed. At planting time I […]
Double bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis forma multiplex AKA S. canadensis ‘Flora Pleno’) At last, I can put a tick mark on my Lust List: I now have double bloodroot, the fluffier, multipetalled version of the native spring ephemeral, Sanguinaria canadensis. The large-format image was a must here, that’s how much in love I am. They look […]
Call me superstitious, but some garden things are best left unsaid. For example, it can be dangerous to look forward to the blooming of t***ps. I dare not speak their name. Because the squirrels who, each spring, unceremoniously snap off the heads of the handful of t***ps in my tiny, tiny garden have been at […]
Cornus kousa ‘Summer Fun’ from Reeves last year We’ve had a lot of hits to our blog recently looking for the now sadly closed Reeves Nursery, which we wrote about when it opened on the Danforth in our east-end neighborhood last spring. Makes me think that we are sorely in need of another independent […]
No need to choose between your garden voyeur fix and your favourite dad in 2011. For the first time in I don’t know how long, Through the Garden Gate, Toronto’s biggest garden tour, does not fall on Father’s Day. Every year highlights a different part of Toronto, and Swansea Village is this year’s destination – […]
Study nesting box for wild solitary bees Something special arrived in our back yard on Earth Day 2011: a nesting box for wild cavity-nesting solitary bees such as mason (Osmia) and leaf-cutter bees (Megachile). It’s one of 220 scattered in private and public spaces, including green roofs, around the city, as part of a […]
Historic industrial space becomes an innovative park at the Brick Works Despite the grey skies, a sunshine of ideas bloomed at the Toronto Alliance for Better Parks Summit last Saturday – ideas about the importance of parks to people, and importance of people to our city’s parks. Where better to do this than at the Evergreen Brick […]
I always let out a whoop of delight when I see the first seedlings poking their heads up. Spring has sprung! You may be going crazy wondering where to start if you are planning a vegetable garden by growing from seed. Help is at hand. Some vegetable seeds you baby a little by starting indoors, […]