A noun. A verb. A blog.
When a garden friend told me about this mosaic installation by Canadian artist Katharine Harvey, I rushed right over to Chester subway station for a new installment of our TTC Garden Tour. Wow. These glorious panels of hand-glazed ceramic tile depict native plants that might have grown in and around the old Chester Village or Don […]
This summer I talked to wild bee expert Sheila Colla, a scientist from York University, about wild bees and what we as gardeners can do to help them. One of the first things Sheila made clear was that wild bees are native bees and we must make a distinction between them and honeybees, which are not […]
This ghostly character is something you don’t see every day, certainly not in Toronto. With its fleshy, pale appearance those who see it can mistake it for a mushroom. It isn’t. Instead it’s the chlorophyl-free parasitic plant called variously indian pipe, ghost pipe or ghost plant, and corpse flower (Monotropa uniflora). I came across it while camping […]
Tomorrow, we visit the VIP preview for the second annual sculpture show known as ZimSculpt at the Toronto Botanical Garden. Our weekly mailing goes out at noon on Thursdays, so I wanted to get the word out early to our subscribers. Hence the hasty scribbling*. More to come on the show soon. Last night, my […]
An early Mother’s Day visit to our Number One Dot and her partner O – on the first fine day this spring – took us in search of waterfalls on the Niagara Escarpment. The couple had newly moved to Hamilton, with over 100 waterfalls within its boundaries. This was news to Mr TG and I […]
My title is a bit misleading, because our covergirl (or coverboy) photo of Echinacea Sombrero® ‘Adobe Orange’ happens to be the right size to crop for today’s feature image. But although s/he’s a couple of years old, isn’t s/he a stunner? This was only one of an Echinacea (aka coneflower) near rainbow on display for show and trial […]
When Pantone named Ultra Violet its “Color of the Year” 2018, native plants were way ahead of them. Pollinating bees and butterflies love the colour purple – because that’s how butterflies’ and bees’ eyes are made. So it’s unsurprising that many native plants can be found at this end of the spectrum. It’s especially true for fall plants striving […]
While planting the first 300 of my far-too-many bulbs today, I felt I’d earned the right to pause for a moment and admire the red fall foliage on my serviceberry (Amelanchier). The sun had scooted under the clouds and was making the leaves just glow. Amazing. This year’s glow seems stronger than last year’s. However, when […]
A wee bit of excitement here, as we both spotted a Monarch butterfly on the butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) that Sarah has been nurturing along over in the guerrilla garden. It’s a male (you can tell by the two black dots on the lower wings), but we hope he finds a girlfriend and they start raising […]
Look at these yellow wild indigo (Baptisia tinctoria). When Sarah and I saw them at dusk a week ago at the Toronto Botanical Garden, they were glowing like candles in the dimming light. Immediate crush! But I fall in love easily, it seems. It has been an unusual spring, cool and wet. We’ve had late […]
Every spring, a small, white, puffy flower explodes on the shady north side of my garden – and every year, it’s pure excitement, all over again. It never fails, and it never fails me. In fact, this double version of the native Sanguinaria canadensis has multiplied constantly, ever since it came as a gift from Cold […]
My sister is the seed-starter in our family. She’d tell you all the great reasons to start plants from seed, beginning with the joy of seeing a wee plant unfold from the soil – an everyday miracle I never get tired of. Cost-effectiveness is another one. Seed-started plants make it all the more affordable to create a scene like the one above, a […]