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Category: Advice and inspiration

Early Spring Pleasures

Categories Advice and inspirationTags bees, snowdrops, spring — Posted on April 2, 2021May 25, 2023

When bees come to visit the earliest flowers, I know that spring is truly here.   … Read More

Basic watering for Toronto

Categories Advice and inspiration — Posted on March 13, 2013May 25, 2023

Toronto summers (June-August) tend to be very hot and dry. We need to provide extra water for almost all plants during the summer months. This has overwhelming ecological benefits!   … Read More

Not-so basic watering

Categories Advice and inspiration — Posted on December 15, 2012May 25, 2023

How should I water? This is the most common question I’m asked about gardening. The expectation generally is that there is an answer. And that the answer is something like: 14.

But watering is very complicated if the goal is to provide every plant with the optimum amount of water.
  … Read More

Late October abandon

Categories Advice and inspiration — Posted on July 22, 2011May 25, 2023

By late October there is nothing more to orchestrate and everything can be left to sprawl and bloom with abandon. The hard-working sedum “Autumn Joy” comes into its own and the blues of the late asters take over from the yellow and orange harmonies of September.   … Read More

Using lawn in design

Categories Advice and inspiration — Posted on August 1, 2010May 25, 2023

We are so used to seeing lawn as a default groundcover that we don’t see it clearly as an element in the design of the space we have surrounding us.   … Read More

Setting limits

Categories Advice and inspiration — Posted on June 20, 2010May 25, 2023

The key to avoiding having the garden look like a disorganized plant collection is having a legible structure…   … Read More

Choosing plants

Categories Advice and inspiration — Posted on June 13, 2010May 25, 2023

When choosing plants for the garden, I can’t recommend browsing garden books or magazines enough. You can’t imagine something you have never seen. I have an extensive collection of books and magazines that I’m happy to lend to d.i.y.ers. I’ve always found it helpful to look through images together with my clients. It helps me to understand … Continue reading “Choosing plants”

Hardscape elements: paths, walls, patios, fences.

Categories Advice and inspiration — Posted on June 13, 2010May 25, 2023

A lot can be done in a weekend!   … Read More

Facing the overgrown garden

Categories Advice and inspiration — Posted on June 13, 2010May 25, 2023

The key is not to feel overwhelmed or intimidated by what is growing on in your outdoor spaces.  Especially if a yard has been neglected for a length of time, the confusion and profusion of plants can be daunting. It is obvious that the garden needs putting in order, but anything but obvious where to start. … Continue reading “Facing the overgrown garden”

Garden Journal

recent posts:

Lost Horizons farewell

Inspirational nursery, treasure trove of botanical diversity, enticement to garden adventurously, vendor of plant delight. With much appreciation, thank you!

Early Spring Pleasures

When bees come to visit the earliest flowers, I know that spring is truly here.   … Read More

The Lowly Spirea at its Loveliest

Even the lowly (because ubiquitous) spirea can surprise you with loveliness on a blustery day in April. My main complaint is that it has too many merits, requires too little of us, which seems churlish just now, when spirea is the first shrub to leaf out most bravely.   … Read More

Spring of 2020

Galanthus, more commonly: snowdrops, are one of the earliest garden pleasures in the year, often breaking through the snow long before February is over. And now in mid-March they are still looking splendidly sturdy. They are a welcome sign that spring is indeed progressing and that renewal can happen. Again.   … Read More

Garden reading

Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) is a book that will astonish in its subtle weave of forms of knowing our world and in its homage to the generosity of the plants that surround us, made us, and can save us.   … Read More

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