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A good veggie reference for those who don’t need books with pretty pictures When you nickname your garden The Microgarden, as I do, one thing is certain: Abundant space is not a feature. The first is Karen Newcomb’s The Postage Stamp Vegetable Garden that invites you to grow tons of organic vegetables in tiny spaces and containers. […]
Not all pollen is alike. Despite its abundance (or in this bee’s case perhaps “a-bum-dance”), Thomas Ogren tells us the pollen of Alcea or hollyhock is a low-allergenic pollen. He warns those sensitive not to sniff it, however. It gets right up your nose. And in your eyes. And down your wheezy throat. Pollen. At […]
‘Therapy’ – Joyce Johnson’s ribbon-winning design in her category at Canada Blooms 2015 – seems like a serendipitous way to begin a post on The Herb Lover’s Spa Book. Geez, it has been a cold, cold, cold, cold, cold few months. The snowy, snowy, snowy weather is finally receding, at least in Toronto. Still, we […]
Taming Wildflowers is Miriam Goldberger’s just-launched book from St. Lynn’s Press Between the front cover’s exuberant coneflowers and the back cover’s Piet Oudolf blurb, Miriam Goldberger’s work of passion Taming Wildflowers is the little book that could. Although it appears skinny, this is a highly concentrated primer on knowing, growing and using wildflowers. Toronto-area folk […]
Vegetable gardening books are on the menu for this week’s Idea File You’ve come to the right place if you want a good how-to book on growing vegetables. And as yesterday was International Women’s Day, and as this week a friend shared with me these dismaying statistics about the dearth of women authors, I thought […]
British writers Mark Diacono and Lia Leendertz When you have less, you want more. Especially when you have less time or, in my case, less space and sun in which to grow vegetables at home. So I was excited to receive The Speedy Vegetable Garden, a new Timber Press book about veggies for the impatient […]
The Rock Garden at Whistling Gardens What’s going on in your winter garden – anything? With Toronto’s long, dreary winters, you’d expect us to pay more attention to the winter months. Yet, bedazzled by leaves and flowers, winter is often the last thing we think about. In 2012, Whistling Gardens near Brantford opened to give […]
This post could have been called, “Andrew Keys broke up my marriage.” It was a long marriage, too; 25 years. Of course, my partner was prickly: a climbing rose (Rosa ‘New Dawn’). And the break-up is only starting, thanks to Keys’ book, Why Grow That When You Can Grow This? 255 Extraordinary Alternatives to Everyday […]
Some people live to garden. But, for many of us, gardening is only part of the pleasure of living. We want a nice garden, but we don’t want to be a slave to it. We want to spend some time simply enjoying the fruits of our labour… and with a lot less labour. If that’s […]
Last summer, I was thrilled to visit the queen of all things handmade, Lorene Edwards Forkner, to see real-life versions of projects that would appear in her then-upcoming book, Handmade Garden Projects from Timber Press. Stick around to learn how you could win a copy in Toronto Gardens’ first-ever giveaway. If you’ve read my disaster with concrete […]
This sexy little book comes in a plain, brown wrapper There’s still time to captivate your Valentine between the covers – the covers of a new little pillow book, The Untamed Garden: A revealing look at our love affair with plants. Sonia Day’s newest book looks at our relationship to plants. But thine own true love needn’t […]
On first hearing about Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees by Nancy Ross Hugo and photographer Robert Llewellyn (Timber Press) I positively salivated. For dendrophiles, the book’s beautifully rendered cover image promises a new level of beauty and intimacy. First, though, a confession: I’m not just a dendrophile (tree lover), I’m a treek (tree geek). I […]