A noun. A verb. A blog.
As gardeners during two world wars knew, even during a major crisis you can do your bit to make things better. Victory gardens were designed to boost food productivity during the wars, one little garden plot after another. The benefits spread far beyond individual garden gates. And gardens need pollinators. Their work, done mostly by insects, is behind one […]
The theme is A Family Affair at Canada Blooms 2019, a little more than a week away. Just for the event, I’ve written a brand new talk on Gardening with Children for the Toronto Master Gardeners’ presentation library – you can see it (and me) on the Harrowsmith Garden Solutions Stage at noon on Tuesday, March 12th. My talk is just one […]
Making a garden is important to me, so my garden can (occasionally) look okay – or okay enough that someone compliments me on it. Honey, I think at the time, all I see are the flaws. Look at the picture above. Aren’t the tulips lovely? Are you like me, distracted by the stump of the Japanese maple, slowly […]
Sarah and I are thrilled to bits to be able to present the digital/ebook version of the Toronto Gardener’s Journal source book. Don’t worry that we’re becoming overly commercial on Toronto Gardens, but this has been such an all-consuming project for us that we really must talk about it. The Source Ebook is us “being the […]
It doesn’t always happen, but when my review copy of Veggie Garden Remix arrived – the latest garden book by Niki Jabbour – I sat right down and read it. Cover to cover! Jabbour began with a garden best-seller in her Year-Round Vegetable Gardener, which is in something like its eighth or ninth printing now. Her newest is on its way […]
Gardening is a conversation. That’s what I’ve been ruminating on since spending an enjoyable hour last month talking to the Oshawa Garden Club about Gardening in Shade. What do I mean? Well, of course, a conversation is a sharing of thoughts, ideas and opinions with other people. After I spoke to the lovely folks in Oshawa about shade gardening, […]
Mulch is a must to keep soil cool and moist. [EDITED July 1ST 2015: Sadly, the company we wrote about below only takes orders from U.S. Addresses, even though their website clearly asks for “postal codes”. We’ve written them to ask about extending their reach to Canada and will update when we hear anything. In […]
In winter, I walked past this snowscape on Unwin Avenue (shown through the lens of the Waterlogue app) Spring and fall are the big work seasons for gardeners. They’re also when my other hobby messes up my gardening life. I’m a power-walker. Since 2003, I’ve averaged 3.27 half marathons a year, in spring and/or fall. […]
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 […]
Grand simplification in progress, May 2012 A couple of years ago, I embarked on a garden project I called my Grand Simplification. My goal was to make my gardening life less complicated by rethinking the space. Simple is hard, as any designer will tell you. While the process is nowhere near finished, this is my […]
Any garden that’s a major tourist attraction can’t afford to sit on its aster. The Butchart Gardens is no exception. I first visited back in July. An impressive experience, even if you aren’t a gardener – the garden’s theatrical quality gives it a crossover appeal that is a reason why the Butchart Gardens is the […]
Seattle gardeners, Jim and Suzette Birrell (with grand-sprout) The great thing about the private gardens we visited during the 2011 Garden Bloggers’ Fling in Seattle, Washington, was that they were all designed and maintained by the homeowners, themselves. It’s inspiring to see the work of professional garden designers (which some of the homeowners were), but […]