A noun. A verb. A blog.
On Wednesday, Sarah and I were thrilled to enjoy a Tweetup in the Ancaster garden of Country Gardener blogger and garden author Yvonne Cunnington, joined by Hamilton Tweeter Tricia of @ycswid. It was just a few days after Yvonne hosted a garden tour, so every inch was pristine. However, my sense is that “pristine” is […]
I had a chance/excuse to go to Dyer’s Bay in the Bruce Peninsula to visit a garden Mecca: Larkwhistle Garden. As I was dropping my son at a friend’s cottage in Georgian Bay anyway, I thought, Dyer’s Bay is only a 3 hour drive from the cottage — it was a temptation I couldn’t resist! […]
Edit: The pink peony we found on site is probably Cora Stubbs, an old variety, highly scented. A while back, we wrote about discovering the recently installed Scarborough Community Garden on Kingston Road. The space provided for the garden came from the grounds of the historic Cornell Campbell Farm next door. William Cornell settled here […]
On a rainy afternoon at the end of June, we and our umbrellas (and cameras) toured twelve lovely gardens in the Upper Beach. This is my first time using a slideshow on the blog. Hope it doesn’t cause any technoglitches. If you have problems seeing the slideshow [ed: or if you want to view the […]
Twitter. Wow. Only through Twitter did I learn about a garden a short drive from home – from someone hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away in the United States. Here’s how it happened. Through Twitter links, I won a copy of the book The Green Gardener’s Guide by Joe Lamp’l. This great book has a […]
Thanks to the blog Don Watcher for this tip: Get to know Toronto’s urban green spaces through one or all of this series of inexpensive hikes. They’re like mini-staycations. You’ll discover sides of the city you might not have known about, like Toronto’s Belt Line Trail – a forgotten bit of Toronto history, revived as […]
Hidden away on quiet Laing Street that runs between Queen Street East and Eastern Avenue is a little piece of Canadiana that most Torontonians might be unaware of: Maple Cottage. Standing at the corner of Memory Lane, Maple Cottage is named for the tall silver maple (Acer saccharinum) said to have inspired Alexandar Muir to […]
The Evergreen Foundation partnered with many others, including Toronto and Region Conservation, and the City of Toronto, to revitalize and publicize this green space, which has been mostly hidden in the middle of the city for many years. Working together they have made this historic site and wildlife refuge the lovely natural destination it has […]
If you haven’t been to the Toronto Botanical Garden since it was transformed with new gardens and a new name (formerly the Civic Garden Centre), you have one more reason to do so on Saturday. It’s the final day for their spring plant sale. Nice specimens for containers, or garden beds in sun or shade, […]
Seen on the road today: the field of bluebells, Siberian squills or Scilla siberica that blankets the corner of Rosedale Valley Road and Park Road every spring. Did someone plant them here? Or, more likely, did they tumble down the slope from the houses above, wantonly self-seeding into this amazing early spring display. (Always carry […]
I made a trip out to a great resource for bird feeding in Toronto yesterday, a store in north Toronto called Birdwatch. It was freeeeezing cold, minus 20 windchill outside, but inside the shop was full of harbingers of spring: wildly creative bird houses galore, and a beautiful metal birdbath created by metal artist Dog […]
This little paean to one of Toronto’s hidden garden gems is long overdue. Set at the edge of the Bluffs near where Kingston Road merges with Danforth Avenue, Rosetta McClain Gardens [link updated 11/21/15] is a beautifully manicured space, or should I say: series of spaces. All of them are worth a visit. At the centre […]