On Saturday I attended my first Master Gardeners Technical Update, held at the Toronto Botanical Garden. It was my first time visiting the TBG and I admit that I was hoping very much for at the very least, a brief walk through a greenhouse. I’ve been craving that greenhouse smell, the green and earthy aroma that is ever present inside a greenhouse. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

Under the umbrella of “The Practical Gardener,” the topics of discussion presented were:

The Importance of Soil: Getting it Right – Darrell Bley, Instructor and Curator of Woody Plants at Niagara Parks Commission talked about soil texture, soil composition, soil amendments and touched briefly on soil testing, as well. I took a lot of notes during this talk and I’m planning to expand upon what I learned here on the blog in a future post. To sum up, soil is really, really cool, and there are some practices I need to change in our own garden beds.

Durham Master Gardeners puzzle over identifying a selection of twigs.

Sonia Day gives her entertaining and controversial talk, "Perennials: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"

One of the other highlights of the day was seeing the name Helen Battersby on the name tag of another attendee and recognizing Helen before running over to introduce myself. Helen is a fellow garden blogger and writer who has always been so lovely and kind to me on Twitter, where we’ve exchanged words, and I was really pleased to meet her. Helen and her sister Sarah write a terrific garden blog called simply, Toronto Gardens. I didn’t know that Helen was also a Master Gardener, although I should’ve suspected it, so bumping into her was a real treat.

Botanist, naturally.

What a bizarre year, weather-wise. I always hope for at least a dusting of snow in time for Christmas, and almost as soon as the clock strikes midnight at the end of Christmas Day feel ready for it all to melt and for the growing season to be upon us.

Even now as I write this blog post, I am looking beyond the lit boughs of our Fraser Fir Christmas tree to a rather bleak and dull yard that is being pounded by a driving rain, a rain that is trying very much to become freezing rain or snow.

We took Nate to see the Santa Claus parade for the first time this year, which was held on November 19th if memory serves correctly. As we walked to find a spot from which to best view Santa himself, I gasped as we came upon a cluster of cosmos still blooming in a church yard garden. I couldn’t believe it! I have never seen annuals growing so long into the fall before.

Nate also has continued to enjoy eating broccoli right off the stalk in our back garden, and there are also some violas, or johnny jump-ups in bloom in the back lawn as well.

If only spring will be as early to arrive as winter has been late!

Boy, have I been slacking in the blog department lately. I had all of these plans to be super productive in the garden during my vacation, posting about all I was accomplishing, but those plans just haven’t come to fruition. I’ve had Nate home with me all week, which I wasn’t expecting, and if you’re a parent, you know what that means. In my case, it means I get to do gardening while Nate is either asleep or I get to pull the odd weed while he plays in the back yard.

I’ve been meaning to post this photograph I took of one of my most favourite garden sights from the entire summer so far. I passed this field on the way home from visiting with family after my Gramma passed away a few weeks ago. Isn’t this an incredible sight? This property contained fields of many different plants, trees and shrubs, and I happened upon it when the hydrangeas were in their prime. I love hydrangeas. They were the prominent flower in our wedding arrangements, and I wish I had more of them in our garden.

I’m not 100% certain, but I believe this place is located on Old Scugog Road, between Concessions 9 and 10.

Whenever I deadhead my marigolds and their pungent aroma wafts through the air, I think of my Gramma, my mom’s mom. She always had huge, brilliantly blooming marigolds at the front of her house in downtown Oshawa. She and my Grampa lived on McMillan Drive for years and years, and the house my brother and I visited them at as children is the same house that my mother grew up in.

My Gramma wasn’t an avid gardener but she and my Grampa always had beautiful marigolds and traditional red geraniums growing in boxes around their deck in the back yard of that same house. Some people think of marigolds and geraniums as staid or boring but I think they’re both classics.

My Gramma is being buried today, so I decided that I would honour her with these photographs of marigolds and classic red geraniums. She’d have loved that.

Last week I went into Toronto with a friend for a media event that took place in the Yorkville neighbourhood. While we walked about the area with our toddlers in tow, we admired the plantings of trees and flowers in the area. I had my camera on hand, so I took it out and captured some of the pretty sights. I especially loved the old-fashioned Victorian-style greenhouses out in front of the Teatro Verde shop on Yorkville Avenue.

I would love to have one of these in the back yard!

Even the public utilities hardware has been made beautiful…the artist is Bruni Neilson (2010).

A typical scene in this neighbourhood. Being in this laneway, I felt almost as though I was in some tropical location, not a busy, bustling city.

My neighbour and friend Terri, who lives across the way from us, grows some really beautiful roses. Terri’s rose garden is as neat, organized and orderly as the inside of her home is. She doesn’t follow any of the traditional “rules” that exist for growing and keeping roses, other than feeding them regularly and pruning them back in the fall. There are rarely any stray petals at the base of her plants. She deadheads her roses as soon as they begin to look unkempt, which is why her plants always look so beautiful.

I’ve only just begun to try my hand at keeping roses, with my first purchase this season, in fact, when I took Terri for her first visit to Kingsway Greenhouse in Oshawa. She bought two roses that day and I bought an English rose. One of the roses Terri chose was called ‘Hot Cocoa’.

A funny thing happened to one of Terri’s roses. Last summer she bought a new yellow rose and this year, was disappointed to see that the rose had died, with only the grafting stock surviving. The graft rose was a wild variety with small, creamy blooms. I thought it was pretty, but it wasn’t Terri’s style. She dug it up and brought it to my house. I’m still not sure if it will survive, but I found a spot for it back near the compost and potting bench.

This rose has a really unusual growth habit, the way the flowers come in clusters.

I’m really beginning to see the appeal of roses lately, and until now they have always seemed intimidating to me, as though only a “real” experienced gardener could have any kind of success with them. I think my garden needs a few more, and I think I have Terri to thank for my new found appreciation in these beautiful blooms.

One of my favourite flowering plants in our garden is this beautiful poppy. I don’t remember the name of it, and I really should dig through my unwieldy collection of plant tags to see if I kept the one for this beauty.

The blooms are so short-lived…I watch the buds closely each morning as they are approaching bloom status. Then suddenly one morning, they burst into bloom. The petals are clean and white with a pink edge and a very pale lime green throat.

The flowers last about day before they look raggedy and fade away, leaving the seed heads behind. This year I had two blooms on this plant. I keep hoping for more.

(Any poppy aficionados out there who know the name of this one? I’d love to hear from you!)

Have you ever fallen in love at first sight…with a plant?

I would normally completely agree that at first glance this is a silly question. However, it recently did happen to me when I fell in love at first sight with this Asiatic Lily, ‘Tiny Padhye.’ I saw her at Kingsway Greenhouse, where she was grown from a bulb on site in sterile soil. Doesn’t that sound romantic?

I was drawn to her white petals, seemingly splashed with a deep red stain that looks almost like blood. I knew she would stand out as unique in my garden.

Normally I stay away from Asiatic Lilies. The last time I had them in my garden they became overrun with lily leaf beetles, and as I am not a gardener who enjoys squishing insects, I decided to simply get rid of the lilies, instead of the beetles. When I saw this lily, I decided that Asiatic Lilies might be worth another shot in my garden.

Have you ever fallen in love with a plant and just had to have it?

“Everyone has a plant in their garden they wish they’d never planted,” said a fellow gardener to me over the weekend.

I thought about my own garden.

I thought about Campanula punctata ‘Cherry Bells‘ which comes up all over the garden, regardless of how much tearing out I do. I thought about Rheum palmatum, or ornamental rhubarb, which is certainly not a hassle in the garden the way Cherry Bells are, but is still not my favourite plant in the border. It just doesn’t seem to “fit into” the garden anymore.

Then I thought about Bronze Amaranth.

I planted some Bronze Amaranth seedlings in the vegetable garden a few years ago and made the mistake of letting them go to seed. I had planted them in the vegetable garden with no intention of actually eating any part of the plant; I merely wanted to add interest. And add interest they did…the plants get as tall, if not taller, than myself and their dark purple stems, leaves and seed heads are extremely striking in any part of the garden.

The next summer, hundreds of little burgundy seedlings made their appearance throughout the vegetable garden. I decided to weed them all out but a few, which I left in place for the same reasons as I had grown them originally the summer before.

I then made the classic mistake of a young gardener who has just begun to experiment with compost: I tossed the spent flowers into my compost heap.

This summer I have more bronze amaranth seedlings throughout the garden than I can pull. I added a few shovelfulls of compost to my barrel at the same time I seeded my carrots there, and there are hundreds of amaranth seedlings in with the carrot seedlings. At the foot of each post of my runner bean and pea tripods, a perfect circle thick with amaranth seedlings has appeared.

I am beginning to regret the introduction of Bronze Amaranth into our yard. And yet, I still plan to allow “just a few” to remain in the garden this year.

The Siberian Iris (Iris sibirica) is in full bloom right now. I love the way this plant looks just as it’s about to burst into flower. The buds are actually a deep red before the surprising purple blooms emerge.

I have this plant in my perennial border in full sun and it is one of the first perennials to come into flower in our garden.

Growth Habits of the Iris (I. sibirica or I. germanica)

Features: spring, summer and sometimes autumn flowers; attractive foliage
Flower colour: many shades of pink, red, purple, blue, white, brown, yellow
Height: 4″ to 4′
Spread: 6″ to 4′
Hardiness: Zones 3-8

(Source: Best Garden Plants for Ontario, by Liz Klose and Alison Beck, Lone Pine Publishing, 2005, p. 58.)