City Gardening

The Beach Garden Society sale is tailor-made for city gardens with hand-selected Connoisseur Collection plants and great bargains on member-grown perennials. Location: Adam Beck Community Centre, 77 Lawlor Ave. (north of Kingston Rd., west of Victoria Park Ave.) Time: 9 am – 11:30 am (or sooner, if all the plants are gone!). Special features: Beach Babies [...]

  I’m in love. The handsome specimen that’s caught my eye is perfect in every way. Long-lasting flowers that bloom in a rainbow of colours, evergreen foliage that looks good all year-round (it gets a bit tattered after our long winters, but what doesn’t?) and it’s perfectly happy growing in shade. Oh, you thought I [...]

At this time of year, talk with my fellow gardening pals invariably centres around our favourite gardening subject – soil. I can hear your groans now, and I know you wish I’d stop talking about dirt, but I can’t. And that’s because soil is so important to growing a good garden. There’s absolutely no point [...]

Although I enjoy spending as much time  as I can in the garden, I know that many of you just don’t have the time to tend to finicky flowers or vigorous vines. But you still want a beautiful backyard, right? Modern-day flowering shrubs just may be the answer for you. Shrubs have always been easier [...]

In the six years since it was initiated by the Stephen Lewis Foundation, the Grandmothers Campaign has raised more than $12 million for projects in Sub-Saharan Africa that support African grandmothers and their grandchildren orphaned by AIDS. The Toronto Island Grannies in Spirit group runs a bi-annual house tour on Toronto Island as a fundraising [...]

After spending just about every day last week at Canada Blooms, helping Charlie Dobbin with the plant material, attending two media events and chatting with the garden designers, you’d think I’d be all Bloomed out! Instead, I’m so impressed with this show that I just have to share my absolute favourite gardens, plants and people. So, [...]

Look up the word “numinous” and you’re well on the way to understanding what you can gain by unleashing your creativity. Landscape architect W. Gary Smith opened his recent lecture at the Toronto Botanical Garden with a detail photo of a raked gravel garden at Philadelphia’s Chanticleer. He described a magical moment when cherry blossoms [...]

The hubbub of the holidays may have distracted you from the dearth of winter gardening opportunities, but just in time, as the lows that follow the sugar rush from a feast of festive treats threatens to dump you into horticultural doldrums, here’s City Gardening’s annual list of ways to keep your green thumb growing through [...]

There’s a buzz in the air about local hero Clement Kent, a York University postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology in York’s Faculty of Science & Engineering and president of the Horticultural Societies of Parkdale and Toronto.  Kent founded the Pollinator Garden Project two years ago to teach gardeners, members of the public and school [...]