Bring more interest to your yard
Well, thank you Mother Nature for the downpour and cloud cover. During the heatwave, the wee birds were sitting in the trees with their beaks open to cool themselves. All the while Mrs. Robin Redbreast had her beak stuffed with worms to feed her young in my neighbour’s back yard. Five times a day I would see the robins with their beaks full. They got those worms from my yard I am sure!
Every time I put the hand spade in my soil I’m digging worms because we have loamy soil from years of composting our own kitchen waste and leaves. During the heat of July and August it is advisable to top-dress your garden with compost to cool your soil and add nutrients to the depleted soil. Keeping your plants dead-headed and healthy also helps to ward off the sucking, chewing insects from your plants. After this rain shower, thirsty plants will revive and bloom again! The participants of this year’s Horticulture Society’s garden tour will appreciate this rain, as will the farmers. The garden tour is this Sunday so get your ticket.
Each day I have been diligently watering the shrubs and trees at work and at home. If you are planting in this heat, know that a helping of compost and bone meal will feed the root systems and you have to water so it reaches two feet below the surface to wet those roots. A sprinkler system set up to water your lawn does not provide a deep enough drink.
When driving around our city I take note of the shrubs I see. The bright yellow forsythia and lilacs blooming on 13th Avenue in early spring, as well as the double-flowering plum and purple leaf sandcherry, bring lots of customers to the greenhouse wanting one.
Now the multitude of different coloured leaves of flowering spirea and ninebark and elders are the attraction. The variety of long-blooming hydrangeas, from the shade-loving Annabelle to the sun-loving Pinky Winky and Limelight are in bloom. I have a Bloomerang lilac that is a spring bloomer and then it blooms again in August thus the name Bloomerang. It comes back with that lovely fragrance! My golden Mock Orange certainly had an abundance of white blossoms that smell like oranges. Yummy.
There are shrubs that show off in every season. The red leaves of burning bush are ever so popular. Another from that family is the Euonymus, Blondy, with a succulent looking evergreen leaf that is variegated. It is an interesting sight all winter, as are the barberries of so many colours.
Winter doesn’t have to be barren of beauty. The dogwood has red or yellow branches to bring colour, especially on a snow fallen day. Yew, juniper, cypress and cedar are also ever green to look at. Some advice to help your evergreens stay healthy through winter is to water them extremely well before frost and spray them with a desiccant, like WiltPruf, to protect them from sun and wind evaporation.
There are shrubs for fragrance; colour; providing food for birds – the cranberry, dogwood, red currant; tiny shrubs for a rock garden – the eightinch tall emerald spireas; and shrubs for dry spots — potentilla, and wet spots — willow and birch.
Come for a tour of our shrubs and also tour the Horticultural Society’s annual garden tour for ideas to bring more interest to your yard.
Bev Crawford is the Perennial House Manager at The Windmill Garden Centre and John’s Butterfly House.