A “West Coast” Toronto garden

You might be forgiven for thinking this is a West Coast rainforest garden… but it’s an urban garden in Toronto’s east end Toronto is a city of ravines and lost rivers; Glen Davis Crescent is home to both. Its lost river, Tomlin’s Creek, still runs through a culvert underneath the road in the vee of […]

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Rocks to riches: Story of a garden

Talk about a rocky start! Dave and Heidi Rita (sorry, Rita!) Fleury got more than a “rock garden” when they purchased their Beach area home about four years ago – they got edge-to-edge beach stone, punctuated by some accent rocks and elderly evergreens. The previous owners had taken the drastic measure of installing stone to keep […]

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Toronto artists in the garden

Sculptor, Marilyn Walsh, with her work I’ve really enjoyed seeing art by local artists showcased on recent garden tours. In one of the gardens, the owner told me that the goal is to match the right piece with the right place. In fact, the placement in the garden sometimes feels so natural, it’s only after noticing similar […]

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Garden colour: Cooling down the reds, Part 1

Papaver orientalis ‘Beauty of Livermere’ is an astonishingly red red*. Our grey-day colour series continues with red. A craving for red seems to be programmed into our red-blooded DNA, especially at this time of year. And this red is pure Santa-suit, Rudolph’s-nose, holly-berry red – the red that seems even redder when paired with its […]

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I call it mellow yellow, quite rightly

She’s a perfect poster girl for my post on yellow: the much-maligned Hemerocallis ‘Stella de Oro’ (not, as is often written, ‘Stella d’Oro‘). This photo shows how effective she can be “when well used.” The day is grey. Grey, grey and more grey. Plus, it’s December. Naturally, this inspires me to begin a series about […]

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