A year of gardening highs and lows
Here’s my roundup of the best and worst in gardening in 2017. Best news: In the about-time department, Toronto city council has adopted a ravine strategy to protect the 18,000 hectares of wilderness (60-per-cent publicly owned) that are the lungs of our increasingly choked city. No money committed yet, but it’s a start. Worst news: The city’s dithering over a 350-year-old red oak in East York. One of the oldest trees surviving in North America, it stands in a private backyard. So will councillors finally designate this magnificent specimen as a heritage tree, thus ensuring that no one can chop it down? C’mon, guys. Meanwhile, kudos to the tree’s tireless champ, Edith George, for keeping the pressure on. Best new flower (a tie):
Starry Sky petunia. Brash, purple, speckled crazily with white. Dazzling on a deck, but not for the faint-hearted. Ontario-grown by Jefferys Greenhouses in Niagara. Look for it next spring in a pot with helpful instructions printed on the side.
Rockin Deep Purple Salvia. A hit with hummingbirds (they couldn’t get enough of my sample plant this year) and eye-catching all summer long. After the long, deep purple petals fall off, unusual bracts, black as charcoal, are left behind. From Proven Winners next spring. Best new product: The Original Garden Broom from Sri Lanka. Handmade from fallen (not living) leaves of coconut palms. Sturdier than a corn broom, well made, truly the best thing I’ve ever found for sweeping decks, patios and garden paths, even in winter. If more people bought this broom, would leaf- blower usage decline? Ah, if only. About $22 at Home Hardware and Lee Valley. Worst new product: Horticultural apps. Muddy fingers and cellphones don’t mix. Who wants to be taptapping in the garden anyway? Not me. Out there, amid my plants and bees, is where I escape the hassles (and increasing horrors) of our technology-fixated world. Best gardening event: Whistling Gardens Peony Festival. Sumptuous, voluptuous, a flowery feast in a surprising setting: the corn and soybeans fields of Norfolk County, Ont. Aided by peony society volunteers, dogged entrepreneur Darrell Heimbecker has amassed the largest collection of peonies in North America — and the results are a must-see. Best viewing time: May 31 to June 30. whistlinggardens.ca Best garden: The Trial Gardens at Landscape Ontario’s head office in Milton, and at Guelph’s former Turfgrass Institute. Not really open to the public, but they don’t mind weekday visitors during office hours. The huge, colourful array of plants, all correctly labelled, provides a great glimpse into what’s cookin’ in the world of horticulture. Go from mid-July till frost. Best garden activists: The publicspirited people of Buffalo. First, they dreamed up their spectacularly successful Garden Walk, which draws thousands of visitors every July. Now, they’re rescuing abandoned tracts of land and brownfield sites around the city, with imaginative, people-friendly projects. gardenwalk.com Best book: The Flower Book, by Rachel Siegfried. Published by Dorling Kindersley. A big, beautiful book on flower arranging that’s different. Siegfried grows her own flowers instead of buying them, she clearly knows a lot about plants and she isn’t bothered by the odd bug hole in petals and leaves. She also favours the kind of floral arrangements I like — loose and naturallooking. And the photos in this book are truly spectacular. Best diary for gardeners: The Toronto Gardeners’ Journal. Started by Margaret Bennet-Alder, who finally, at 90, has hung up her trowel. Yet this useful compendium of things local isn’t headed for the compost heap. The Battersby sisters, Helen and Sarah (of torontogardens.com) are taking over, with a fresh look and new ideas. Order the 2018 diary at torontogardens.com Most overused word: Sustainability: sigh. We surely all know by now that the Earth is in a sorry state and gardeners must make responsible choices. So let’s stop trotting out this buzz word in every article, talk, TV and radio show, tweet and Facebook post about gardening. The nagging is tedious — and taking the fun out of growing things. Most surprising trend: Macrame plant holders, back in vogue as part of our renewed interest in houseplants. Do you still have one of these horrors lurking in the basement somewhere? soniaday.com