Volunteer at the Toronto Botanical Garden

Who gives haircuts to all those Piet Oudolfian grasses at the Toronto Botanical Garden? In large part, it's done by teams of volunteers. And you could be among them.

On Tuesday morning before class, I saw a team of about six people busily at work in the entry garden at the TBG. Sandra Pella, the horticulturist in charge, told me she works with a regular group of volunteers through the growing season, who commit to a morning a week.

If you have time, it would be a great way to be hands-on outdoors as you gain experience in these fascinating gardens.

Find out more about the TBG's volunteer program on this page. Whether you're volunteering indoors, in the garden, or working with kids in the TBG's programs, you'll complete the same application found at the bottom of that link.

Find our missing spring at Allan Gardens

Our visit from the Galloping Gardener resulted in her great post on Allan Gardens – and inspired me to drop by myself in search of Toronto's reluctant spring. And there it was, in all its splendour!

In fact, it was gearing up for the Easter Show next weekend, when the lilies will be trumpeting their fragrance over a display at its peak. Be sure to visit early, as the spring-seekers are sure to be out in droves.

Here's my slideshow preview.

Look who I found under a cabbage leaf

Only two Toronto neighbourhoods with garden-themed names come to my mind. One is Rosedale, north of Bloor Street edged on the east by the forested slopes of the Don Valley. Its winding streets are lined with grand, historic mansions. Rosedale got its name from the profusion of wild roses that once grew on the hillsides there.

Then, almost cheek-by-jowl to Rosedale, south of Bloor Street, is Cabbagetown. Its name came from the fact that in Victorian times, the original residents – mostly poor Irish immigrants – used every scrap of land, even their front gardens, to grow vegetables. Cabbages (and the smell of them cooking) were the most obvious, hence the pejorative Cabbage Town.

The world has come full circle, as front-yard vegetable gardens are making news, even in front of fancier homes. Cabbage Town has become Cabbagetown, said with pride of place. With its pretty Victorian cottages, it's now a desirable place to live, yet still down to earth and a little rough around its edges.

In this appropriately garden-themed area yesterday, I met up with peripatetic British garden blogger – Charlotte, The Galloping Gardener – for a glass of wine at The Cobourg on Parliament Street. It's a thrill to give a virtual relationship a face and voice. We caught up after her visit to Niagara Falls – although rain did a big Niagara act just as she and her husband arrived. Sorry, Charlotte. We'll aim for better weather next time you visit.

Charlotte's prose and photos make you yearn to visit the gardens she writes about. She has been impressed with the gardens she's seen in Canada so far – which are often under-appreciated. Never a hero in our own country, eh, Canadians?

Our Cabbagetown meeting reminded me of one of our mum's expressions: that babies come from "under a cabbage leaf." I'm hoping that under this cabbage leaf is the infancy of a long and rewarding friendship.

Canada Blooms Brush with Fame! Yep, Martha Stewart

Various blurry heads of Garden Writers Association members, with cameras (mostly hidden), as well as the famous head of Martha Stewart


Brush with Fame, Part One:

While at the Garden Writer's Association Lunch at Canada Blooms, one of the highlights was a visit from Home & Garden Goddess Martha Stewart. (Read about how our hero Mark Disero finagled that visit here.)

Lunch was over and we were part way through the presentations when we got a call for "everyone to take their seats." There was general hubbub around the door, and Martha Stewart appeared, looking fabulous in jeans, apron and fancy boots. Of course no one took their seats, but instead rushed towards the blinding light of Martha.

She really did look lovely by the way. And how amazing is it for a person to look poised and friendly when swarms of people are pointing at you with their cameras, while looking at you with open-jawed amazement.

She simply said, "I heard there was a gathering of garden writers here, and couldn't let the opportunity pass, I had to come and say hello to all of you." She stood there for a while and posed for pictures with Garden Writer organizers, while we looked on with goofy smiles on our faces. I was a little bit in the back and did hold my camera up and did get that perfect snapshot of the top of Martha's head.

I must add that Martha, while not only looking elegant and surprisingly down to earth, gave off quite a positive energy. She seemed...well, like a nice lady, and it was lovely of her to pop in and say hello to us.

Martha's picture of this green wall panel, shown on her blog, is much nicer than this one I took. Plus, hers is in focus.
 

Brush with Fame, Part Two:

A week has passed, and I accidentally stumbled onto Martha's blog. She had done a little blurb about Canada Blooms, with a slide show. The main focus for her appearance at the show was her launch of garden tools and furniture for Home Depot. I was flicking through her pics of the products and the show, noticing that a couple of the pics were of crowds pointing Martha-ward with cameras. I guess she has a sense of humour about her own fame.

Now here's the part that made me jump and utter an involuntary yip. You may remember my recent post of my experience at Canada Blooms as a set-up volunteer. I wrote about a green wall panel that I and another volunteer, Jackie, assembled. (Should mention here that the panel and entire exhibit I worked on was designed by Michelle Reid, City of Toronto horticulturalist.) Our panel contained mostly top-heavy echeveria and grasses that were bigger than we would have liked. Well, lo and behold, there was our wall panel in Martha's Canada Blooms slide show! You coulda knocked me over with a feather (of which there were many at Canada Blooms 2010).

If I'd known that Martha was going to be seeing it and adding its picture to her blog I'm thinking it would have been even harder to get those roots to go into those teeny little pockets. I couldn't have taken the pressure!

Fair Trade in the garden: Ten Thousand Villages

On my way home from having my hair pruned the other day, I popped into Ten Thousand Villages on Danforth and noticed they were all kitted up for garden season. If you're shopping for garden pots or decor this spring, browse around their fair trade goods and shop with a healthy conscience.

That lovely brown-on-brown Chulucanas vase at left above, for example, was made by artisans in Peru.  You can read about the principles of fair trade here, but the general idea is fair treatment, fair pricing, and economic opportunities for disadvantaged people.

Ten Thousand Villages is a non-profit program of the Mennonite Central Committee, and has been practising fair trade since 1946, long before fair trade became trendy. The storefront and online retailer is a member of the World Free [oops!] Fair Trade Organization (formerly IFAT, the International Fair Trade Association). There is also a branch in the USA, which you can access here.

I have no association with any of the organizations above, but am a strong supporter of the idea of fair trade.

A few more images from the shop:

The topic is tropical (houseplants, that is)

Words are funny things. They come into the language, and change shape and meaning over time. Most of us know what it means to call someone ruthless. Fewer would describe someone as full of ruth. Ruth (pity and compassion) has slipped out of common usage.

In the gardening world, we call houseplants tropicals, yet even experienced Northern gardeners sometimes forget the true meaning of that word. Tropical. You know: where it's bright, hot and humid.

Above, my friends, is a picture (from the Dominican Republic) of one of the more ubiquitous indoor plants, a weeping fig or Ficus benjamina. Yes, that's one tree stretching across the entire street. In fact, it's duking it out for space with a Norfolk Island pine, or Araucaria heterophylla, rising behind it at my estimate to 50 or 60 feet tall.

In case you still don't recognize the ficus from countless office atria or your local big-box houseplant section, a close-up of the leaves is shown at right; you can see the trunk from which this branch stems way in the background.

In their natural state in the tropics, the things we call "houseplants" grow to the size of trees. Not just the Ficus benjamina here, but Ficus elastica (rubber plant), Shefflera (umbrella plant), Monstera (the climber commonly though incorrectly called split-leaf philodendron), and many more. 

As for most of these plants, our pal benjamina likes it tropical (hot and humid) – with an accent on humidity. Our oft-overheated Canadian homes can deliver the "hot" over winter, but humidity – the key to their successful culture – is harder to achieve. Yet, you can help it along in a couple of ways:

One: pretend you're hosting it at some ritzy tropical resort, and give it a regular spritz of water. Evian not required.

Two: rest the pot on stones above a tray of water, so evaporation moistens the surrounding air. However, never let the pot sit with wet feet. Overwatering and poor drainage are the fastest ways to kill almost any houseplant. Let the top couple of inches of soil dry out between waterings (it should feel dry to the touch, but not so dry that the soil pulls away from the sides of the pot!), and leave a gap of air between the base of the pot and the water level in the tray

F. benjamina likes light, as you can imagine from the first picture. However, due to its need for moisture in the air, it should not get direct sun from a window during the hottest part of the day, or it will get sunburn.

It also needs consistency, so keep it out of hot or cool drafts. If you move it outdoors in summer – which it likes, if done correctly – be gradual about changes in temperature, light or air circulation. (Usually, you'll notice this dislike of change in late summer when you bring it back indoors – and it promptly loses all its leaves.) Outdoors, you might have to water it more frequently, though still let the soil dry out between waterings, and top up that tray of water.

My last word on this tropical topic is about feeding. After letting your houseplants diet over the winter, in February or March when the sunlight begins to strengthen you can begin feeding your houseplants. Give them a dilute meal of 1/4 strength fertilizer with every watering, and you won't have to mark any feeding dates on your calendar.

Improbable Magic of Flower Shows: Canada Blooms

I really could title this blog post Pay No Attention to those (thousands of) Gardeners Behind the Curtain. I'm talking about the people who put garden shows together. The masses of people.

However I must start by acknowledging my perennial pet peeve about garden shows; then tell you how joining in with flower show worker bees has given me a new, positive perspective on garden shows in general.

I've railed against the unreality of garden shows in the past, on this blog, mostly for the way plants and flowers are put together that would never be together in real life: The artifice, the improbable vistas. I would sigh when I saw a cineraria next to a chysanthemum, or a hosta growing next to a hyacinth. Sometimes I would even groan. Softly. Helen, my usual Canada blooms companion, and I would constantly be saying to each other, "Of course, that would never happen." The plants are forced in greenhouses, like Lego pieces, free to be arranged in any way the designer sees fit.

All these crazy pairings. The garden purist in me was bugged because they were a lie. It bothered me that new gardeners would see these things and might want to recreate them in their own gardens. That they would be disappointed. Misleading advertising, I complained.

Yet a few days ago I found myself in a work crew at the Canada Blooms site wearing a hard hat and steel toed boots. Yes, another garden show was being brought into being in a cavernous warehouse space. What was I doing there, you ask? I was stuffing salmon coloured gerbera daisies right next to a Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola' grass in a sono tube. Yes! And not only that, afterwards I stepped back to look, and saw that it was good. The salmon and the lime green were perfect together. We cheered. Was this part of the plan? Not really. It was an impromptu design decision. Something hadn't worked out. The grasses were all by themselves and needed some colour.



I was part of about twenty employees and volunteers who were working on the City of Toronto exhibit. Michelle Reid, the designer, maintained with grace the controlled chaos during the set up and planting session. Everyone was working on a little piece of the project. Some were filling bins with soil, or stuffing empty pots into the base to take up room, some were planting herbs in a checkerboard pattern, others were running to find hoses and containers of water. Others were hoisting massive kumquat trees into huge upright planters.

Michelle handled the task of keeping the urban agricultural themed project on track, managing the volunteers and the workers. Her overall design of edibles and ornamentals was extraordinary, and taking shape surprisingly well, and quickly - the colour scheme of purples, oranges and pinks was divine - but there were surprises. Plants didn't arrive as expected. Some don't arrive at all. So impromptu designing comes into play. The plants ordered for the living wall section were a bit too big: Way too big and floppy to fit neatly into the small pockets of the planter. So, you gotta improvise. Fix it somehow. Try this over there, hmm, maybe this will work. We had visions of pieces of echeveria crashing out of the green wall to the floor during the show.

Where were the plants? All the plant material is boxed in cardboard and piled a distance away from the exhibit area. Boxes and boxes of plants. Flats of tulips, piled high on carts. Worker bees have to fetch plant material, cadge a rolling cart, figure out which plants are in which boxes. There's a whole lot of schlepping going on. Where was that wheelbarrow anyway? Pulling a cart while not being run over by a forklift or a backhoe is a necessary skill in a flower show set up.




The project co-ordinator for the city was down on her hands and knees with me, planting 4" pots of herbs in close 12 frame checkerboards. "Why should everyone else have all the fun?" she said.
It's tricky work, especially when the exhibit is half planted and you have to climb up onto a 4 foot bed and balance between the already planted material while adding new things. Make sure you don't step on those freshly planted herbs with your steel toed boots. Your stupid hard hat keeps falling down over your eyebrows, better twist the little doohickey at the back to tighten it up. But not so tight that it gives you a headache.

Multiply this amount of hard effort and last minute creativity with the number of exhibition gardens and that's a lot of people coming together to make something extraordinary. Purely for the sensation of seeing it all together for that short period of the show. Less than a week.

And while it's true that what you end up with are not really gardens at all, but more like garden versions of flower arrangements. Yes, they aren't real, but they are alive and beautiful, for the time being. So, go to the show, and be entertained, amused and delighted. But don't expect to put gerbera daisies next to grasses in your real Canadian garden, no matter how much you might want to.

GGW Picture This: Awakening... the garden

Other than a little huddle of snowdrops bowing under a March rain, there isn't much Awakening yet in my garden. So to find a subject for a March entry for the Gardening Gone Wild Picture This Contest, I raided the archives.

This little Pulsatilla vulgaris or Pasque flower – photographed in my sister's garden at the end of April last year – seems to be opening one bleary but hopeful eye as it rises from its bed of leaves. It says Awakening to me.

This spring bloomer used to be called Anemone pulsatilla, and you can still occasionally find it sold under that name. Like anemones, it's a member of the Ranunculus or buttercup family.

Pulsatillas always seem to invite a closer look. I love the fuzziness of the leaves and petals (really, they're sepals), which also give it the look of a nestling bird. The gold stamens hold the promise of sunshine. After blooming, the flowers are replaced with fluffy seed heads similar to Clematis, which are also buttercup cuzzes. They're a lovely addition to the spring garden... awakening soon, I hope.

Fuel up for the big dig

A quick but timely post specially for us east-enders: Celena's Bakery has opened on Danforth near Woodbine. I can write about this in a garden blog with good conscience for two reasons:

One: See what's on top? Rosemary! A fresh sprig tops Celena's surprising and delicious Rosemary Raisin Bread. We have been back for seconds. The Roasted Garlic Sourdough (See? Garlic!) was also a hit at our table.

Two: Did you know that weeding alone burns 6 calories per minute? That might not sound like much, but you haven't seen my weeds. (Ha ha!) Now think: digging, weight-lifting buckets of mulch and bags of manure, hauling all those plants home from the nursery. You'll need a lot of energy to do good things in the garden.

Celena and Richard Cambridge launched their business a month ago, and celebrate the bakery's Grand Opening this weekend, March 13 & 14, 2010. Buy a coffee or hot chocolate on Saturday and Sunday, and get a free cookie. Take it from me, Celena's cookies are a delicious way to fuel up for three hours of weeding (your mileage may vary).

And this is a completely unsolicited endorsement.

Snowdrop Alert, March 2010

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you... snowdrops! Finally.

In sooth, they made their appearance in my garden on Sunday, but I was too imprisoned by a school project to do anything about it. But even March 7th is two weeks later than last year, despite the city's lack of snow.

Welcome snowdrops. We're glad to see your smiling faces.

Technique Tips: Pruning Weeping Mulberry

Oh, what a tangled web we weave... when we don't know how to prune a weeping mulberry (Morus alba 'Pendula'). You can see this popular weeping standard tree all over the city – and when not wearing its cloak of green, the tangled, haystack-headed results of improper pruning are only too evident.

Therefore, when I do happen upon a weeping mulberry that's even close to looking the way it's meant to look, I put on the brakes and hop out with the camera. Voici:

When I point out the good from the bad, I've had people say to me in disbelief: That's the same kind of tree? Why, yes, by gum, it is – only with some attention to pruning. With spring on its inevitable way in, the next week might be one of your last chances to prune, as it's best done during dormancy. Otherwise, cut branches have a tendency to bleed.

Naturally, when pruning any trees or shrubs, the first rule is to cut out any dead and/or crossing branches. The same thing applies with the weeping mulberry. But there are also more specific techniques, and they're easy, once you know how. The weeping Camperdown elm (Ulmus glabra 'Camperdownii') should be pruned in a similar fashion.

The tree above isn't perfect, by any means. At some time in its past, the caretaker allowed one of the vertical branches to remain, and if this keeps up the tree can become too tall and difficult to reach for pruning. You can see the runaway vertical branch rising from the centre of this tree form. 

So that's the second rule for pruning the weeping mulberry: cut off any vertical or upward-growing branches.

However, let's talk about what they've done right here. Do you see the open form of the tree, compared to the first example, with its branches cascading in a waterfall pattern? Here's a closer look.

The lower branch shows what correct pruning can produce over many seasons. See how the branch seems to make a series of little bridges?

Below is a shot of what typical branches would have looked like before the cuts. I'll give you a nice big image to make the tangle clearer.

Can you see the type of branch forms where you would make a cut to produce those little bridges? In this case, I've circled possible cuts on the same branch – you'd make one or the other. Cut close to the joint, without leaving a stump.

Can these trees be saved? Perhaps – over time. The job is complicated by the volume of untrimmed branches from past seasons. When pruning, it's rarely a good idea to cut out more than one-third of the branches at a time (some shrubs are exceptions, but I won't go into them here).

A weeping mulberry is in fact a prostrate or ground-hugging shrub that has been grafted onto an upward-growing trunk. If you cut back your weeping growth too far, you risking having the species in the standard or trunk take over.

The best scenario is to start building the form of the tree while it's young. And if you have a young or young-ish weeping mulberry, you have a chance. So... read this and weep.

[UPDATE: Since posting this, a few people have written to us to ask for advice on pruning their own weeping mulberry. We should note that the art of pruning is something that can't be done remotely from photos. Also, it can be difficult to rehabilitate a mature tree of any kind if it hasn't been well-trained from an early age. If you have a mature tree that needs serious attention, and you don't want to attempt it yourself (which you should never attempt if there's the chance of injury to you or your tree), our best advice is to contact a local certified arborist for consultation and/or service. Tree people do it best.]