A noun. A verb. A blog.
Where do you go when you’ve used all the space in your garden and in front of your house? You take it to the office and up the elevator. Gardener and artist Vivian Reiss has transformed two spaces in her office building on Merton Street into garden paradises in the middle of the urban jungle. […]
Sarah and I were talking about blue foliage plants this afternoon. She’d been thinking of a blue hosta for a friend’s garden. Large blue leaves would be just the right counterpoint to her friend’s fine-textured gold spirea. Trouble is, that spot in the garden gets baking-hot sun. The glaucous waxy coating that makes blue hostas […]
Too much direct sun, especially along with unusually hot weather, can be a bad thing if you’re a ripening tomato. It’s one factor that can lead to the colour disorder shown above, which goes by names including yellow eye, yellow shoulder and green shoulder. Some tomatoes, particularly some heirlooms, grow naturally with a bit of […]
Before the end of July 2010, we’ve harvested radishes, many bouquets of frilly lettuce, a kilo or more of bush beans, and nearly that in tomatoes, with more to come. Not to mention the flowers. Aren’t they all pretty? The contrast between this year’s and last year’s tomato harvest alone from our community garden is […]
Taro plant with rescued and repurposed piece of decorative concrete. Vivian saves architectural pieces from demolition giving new life to old beautiful objects. As you approach Vivian Reiss’s Victorian house in Yorkville you know it’s no ordinary dwelling, but a house and garden space created by a gardener of unusual and vivid passions. There was […]
Look what I found at the industrial park! The contradiction in that phrase always strikes me as quaintly hopeful. It’s industrial. Yet it’s a park. Builders in the 50s and 60s must have been inspired by the great promise of industry – the same impulse that turned warehouses and pumping stations into cathedrals in the […]
Because, really, the privacy screening a hedge provides often only makes a difference when you’re outdoors during the clement seasons. Why not use it to support your beans and cukes – which can be highly ornamental, as well as being practical and delicious. A more decorative frame might have more good-neighbour appeal, and I perhaps […]
Sarah and I garden two doors away from each other in the same dry shady conditions. But, when it comes to colour, we couldn’t be further apart. Sarah’s all about the hot colours, reds, oranges, yellows; I prefer mine muted, going for pinks, corals, creams and blues. The red of this little ‘Happy Thought’ pelargonium […]
For the garbage bins Toronto residents hate to love, or for those who say a rain barrel is too ugly, here’s one of our favourite snippets from the Garden Walk Buffalo preview. Paint yourself a garden. The gardener who painted these in Buffalo’s Cottage District gave me the basic how-to. She simply used acrylic paint, […]
For Toronto garden lovers, the biggest open garden tour in North America is only a two-hour drive (and a wee wait at the border) away. In 2010, that means the chance to see more than 350 open gardens in one weekend. And admission is completely free! It’s Garden Walk Buffalo, always held on the […]
Not Far From the Tree (NFFTT) is expanding in the east end of Toronto. If you know someone with a fruit (or nut) tree but with no time or energy to harvest it, you can spread the wealth through this network of volunteers, plus avoid that litter of fermenting, fallen fruit. NFFTT operates in west-end […]
Here’s a fountain any garden would have space for: A perpetually refilling watering can. One like this captured my imagination at Canada Blooms one year, so I immediately asked the ever-ingenious Mr. TG to figure out how to make one for me. It’s just the kind of challenge he relishes. With a few rocks in […]