Don’t clean up your garden this Fall
In the past, the idea of ‘putting the garden to bed’ for winter meant cutting everything down, pulling out all the annuals, raking every leaf and disposing of them off-site, spreading a load of compost...
View ArticleBook Review on “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations”
Did you know that the earth needs 500 years to produce 1 inch of topsoil? David Montgomery, a geologist and professor at The University of Washington, posits that soil is the most overlooked and...
View ArticleDrought Resistant Gardening
A quote from Pam Penick’s excellent book ‘The Water-Saving Garden’:“… we design our homes and grade our property to shed water and then pay to pipe it back in and spray it across our yards when...
View ArticleDiversity in the Garden
Insects need food sources and shelter with different types of foliage, at different times of year, at different heights, etc. When you mix diverse plants together, you bring layers of color, shapes,...
View ArticleTips for watering containers
Containers provide great flexibility in a garden-they allow you to garden in a restricted space and grow plants which require specialized soils. Containers can also be used to restrict the growth of...
View ArticlePruning Deciduous Flowering Shrubs
Your first job would be to decide if your flowering deciduous shrub needs pruning, You will need to step back and look at your shrub and determine what kind of look do you want. Do you want a...
View ArticleGardening with children
I recall many years ago when our kids were little we visited an elderly neighbour who gave a great piece of advice. “We never restrict our kids in the garden.” That was a great lesson for me. We tried...
View ArticleBook review: Gardening with less water
Published by Storey Publishing in 2015, this book by David A. Bainbridge provides numerous low cost solutions to water efficiency in a garden. Although written from the perspective of a scientist who...
View ArticleIn Praise of insects!
I’m old enough to remember having to scrape the bugs off the windshield every time we filled up with gas in the summertime. Insects were numerous, especially in the evening. Where did they all go? I...
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