Independent Garden Centres in Toronto

Cornus kousa 'Summer Fun' from Reeves last year

We've had a lot of hits to our blog recently looking for the now sadly closed Reeves Nursery, which we wrote about when it opened on the Danforth in our east-end neighborhood last spring.

Makes me think that we are sorely in need of another independent garden centre in the east end of Toronto, Danforth latitude. While the big box places have good prices, you can't beat the quality of well-cared-for stock, and the knowledge base you get from shopping at an independent garden centre.

While Reeves is no longer with us, in the east end, try the delightful East of Eliza on Gerrard Street at Woodbine, Green Mountain on Coxwell at upper Gerrard and East End Garden Centre on Queen Street East near Greenwood. There is also Bill's Garden Centre at Pape and Mortimer.

If you are in the west end, Fiesta Gardens is worth the trip as well, with unusual perennials, trees and shrubs. Or Plant World on Eglinton near Royal York Road.

I'm sure there are some I've missed. If you have some good garden spots near you, let us know in the comments.

Mark your calendars: Through the Garden Gate 2011

No need to choose between your garden voyeur fix and your favourite dad in 2011. For the first time in I don't know how long, Through the Garden Gate, Toronto's biggest garden tour, does not fall on Father's Day.

Every year highlights a different part of Toronto, and Swansea Village is this year's destination – it's just west of High Park, of which some of the gardens you'll tour have enviable views. Shuttle buses will ferry you from cluster to cluster, and Master Gardeners stationed in every garden can answer your plant and gardening questions.

If you're serious about gardens, the two-day pass (only $10 more than the ticket for a single day) is always worthwhile. That way, you can take your time looking around – and perhaps even revisit your favourites. Trust me, five hours pass quickly with 22 (not 24, apparently) gardens to see.

So mark your calendar for the weekend of June 11 & 12, from 11 am to 4 pm. But do get your tickets early (call the Toronto Botanical Garden at 416-397-1357 or click this link to buy tickets online), as numbers are limited. I expect that the demand this year will be greater without Father's Day as a potential conflict.

The Toronto Botanical Garden does good things for Toronto and its citizens all year round – notably for less-fortunate city kids who might otherwise suffer nature deficit. Even the TBG's programs for adults offer excellent value for not too many bucks. Through the Garden Gate raises a big chunk of the money needed to do all that. And it takes you into some wonderful gardens in the process.

Bee, my love, for Earth Day 2011

Study nesting box for wild solitary bees

Something special arrived in our back yard on Earth Day 2011: a nesting box for wild cavity-nesting solitary bees such as mason (Osmia) and leaf-cutter bees (Megachile). It's one of 220 scattered in private and public spaces, including green roofs, around the city, as part of a York University study of Toronto's wild bee population. In fact, though, 15 North American cities all tolled will be participating.

Today, a most earthily appropriate day, PhD candidate, Scott MacIvor, came to our garden to install my bee hotel in a sunny-ish spot. It's close to our cedar shed, where we've hosted carpenter bees (Xylocopa) companionably for many seasons*.

So, we'll watch to see who sets up house before Scott returns to pick up and study the residents come fall (and set them free again next spring). I haven't seen any mason bees around before, but have seen evidence of leaf-cutter bees. Both types nest in existing cavities such as the hollow stems of plants, which the tubes in the bee box mimic. Hope they all come to roost.

Scott installs my nesting box

By coincidence, I've also received a sample of another bee nest box from Armstrong & Blackberry Horticultural Products, which I will also be installing – the more the merrier, according to Scott. This box kit comes with plastic disks to cover the tunnel openings to keep out parasites; after pesticides, the biggest threat to the bees' survival. As York's quota of free bee nests for the study is full, buy your own bee box through the link above.

You might like to. Solitary bees are not stinging bees unless very frightened (such as if you clutched one in your hand), and they're vitally important as pollinators, more so than honeybees for some food crops. Tomato flowers, for instance, need to be vibrated at bumblebee-type frequencies in order to release their pollen, fertilize the flower and make fruit. If you want tomatoes you need buzzing solitary bees.

*As an aside on carpenter bees: While I'm a bee-leaver, I've spoken to a few who are less than enamoured. Carpenter bees, unlike masons and leaf-cutters, drill tunnels as nests. Less problematic in temperate climates, where cold winters keep populations down, in a microclimate here, or in warmer climes, large populations of nesting carpenter bees can structurally weaken the wood where they nest.

While carpenter bees do not live in colonies, they do return to nest in their birthplace. If they can't use the tunnel where they were born (they'll sometimes fight over this), they'll drill another nearby. This aggregation of solitary tunnels can seem like a colony. If you have many carpenter bee holes in your deck, you might not particularly care whether it's a colony or not.

A twofold solution is a) to paint the untreated wood and repaint it regularly, and b) to install a block of unpainted, untreated wood, on a stake, such as weathered cedar (note my shed) that the bees might prefer – then to move it to a field in late fall, so that will the birthplace they return to. Note that they'd rather reuse existing tunnels, as tunnelling is hard work. So filling up their old holes actually encourages them to drill a new one.

Carpenter bees are excellent pollinators. Let's try to live with them, Earth Day and every day.

We need our parks, and Parks People need us

 Historic industrial space becomes an innovative park at the Brick Works

Despite the grey skies, a sunshine of ideas bloomed at the Toronto Alliance for Better Parks Summit last Saturday – ideas about the importance of parks to people, and importance of people to our city's parks. Where better to do this than at the Evergreen Brick Works, one of Toronto's most innovative public spaces.

We're blessed with parks in Toronto; about 1,600 of them. Half of us visit a park at least once every week. Yet, many of our parks need fixing – a matter that hasn't been high on the fiscal agenda. People, and the people we elect, tend to take parks for granted.

If you have a park nearby, it might have a Friends of... citizens' group trying to make it better. Park People is a new advocacy group that wants to bring groups like this together (and together with the powers that be) to help each other speak up – and get others to step up – for our parks. This inaugural Parks Summit was Park People's first initiative. Judging by the packed room (my daughter and I were lucky to get tickets), it's a group whose time has come.

Art around the park offers a window onto its ravine setting

The keynote speaker was Tupper Thomas, who was put in charge of bleak and benighted  Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, back in 1980. Over 30 years, she helped bring the park from near-death to one of the best parks in New York – a place that the entire community feels ownership and pride in. Her story and enthusiasm were inspiring.

Tupper Thomas' high-level message: this could only have happened because there was an alliance of three essential groups: the public and private sectors – and the people.

The people. That's you and me, as the next four speakers made clear. All were volunteers in their communities, just regular folks, who'd summoned what the moderator called the "rebel impulse" to entice their neighbours into their parks: with pizza nights at the Christie Pits; open-air skating rinks in Scarborough; a lively weekly bazaar in Thorncliffe park; campfires and hot chocolate for skaters in Greenwood Park. They gave people a reason to meet you in the park.

Restoration of the Don Valley is part of the program

With people actually using them, their parks became like town squares, gathering places. And not only did they meet each other, said Monica Gupta of Friends of Christie Pits Park, in getting to know their neighbours, they also came to know their neighbourhoods.

When our kids were small, the playground was often where we'd meet the parents of other children. Nowadays, I see this when visiting the dog park with Sarah; you meet other dog owners. Give people reasons to come to our parks, and they'll find community.

"Be the change you want to see in the world," wrote Mahatma Gandhi. That was the biggest message I took home after the summit: the importance of grass-roots action by people like you and I.

Meet you in the park? (If you have a few minutes before then, click through to this Parks People Flickriver for a collection of wonderful Flickr images of parks around the city and around the year.)

A birdhouse at the Brickworks shows a little love. In the background, a novel green wall sculpture is a huge map of Toronto made of rusted steel, illustrating the city's network of waterways (the growing bits) and thoroughfares.

Calculator For Seed Starting Indoors & Outdoors

I always let out a whoop of delight when I see the first seedlings poking their heads up.

Spring has sprung! You may be going crazy wondering where to start if you are planning a vegetable garden by growing from seed. Help is at hand.

Some vegetable seeds you baby a little by starting indoors, like warmth-loving tomatoes. If ever a plant said, "Please buy me a greenhouse," tomatoes are it. Other, cold-hardy vegetables fare better when you start them right in the ground. And if you are growing certain veggies, like spinach and peas, you can sow them right now, in early April. Or even earlier, in March.

Check out this Old Farmer's Almanac handy online calculator for sowing dates, customisable to whatever location you're in. For seed starting in Toronto, you couldn't ask for a better help. Their calculator bases their statistics on US locations, but many Canadian locales correspond quite well. Instead of zip code, just fill in your province abbreviation: Ontario=ON. Check the Farmer's Almanac Seed Planting Date Chart out here. It's definitely a page I am bookmarking for long-term quick reference.

Book Review: "No Guff Vegetable Gardening"

Sarah and Helen tag-team for a She Said/She Said review of No Guff Vegetable Gardening by Donna Balzer and Steven Biggs (all illustrations used here are © Mariko McCrae).

Sarah: My first impression was, Wow, I love these illustrations! The graphic designer in me really appreciated Mariko McCrae's fun, whimsical drawings. It sets a friendly tone that made me want to dive in right away. The masked bunny is charming and that's the cutest fungus gnat I've ever seen. Plus the colours are just vibrant, and the watercolours in the charts were quite lovely.

Fungus Gnat with larvae bundle  

Helen: Yeah, the illustrations definitely give the book a fun personality. And the authors follow it up with interesting ways to present dry information – like when they suggest that soil mycorrhizae, the tiny fungi that colonize on plant roots, are like the plant's pets. It's a cute conceit that illustrates the relationship between the two quite graphically.

Sarah: The actual info is very solid, yet with heaping dollops of humour. I liked they way they summarize each topic with a two-voice He Said, She Said approach. They acknowledge that different gardeners choose different methods, depending on their garden set-ups and personal preferences. As Stewart Smalley would say, That's OK.

You might like the science experimenty fun of saving your tomato seeds, like Steven, for example. Or, like Donna, you just might prefer the less-icky method of buying seeds each year. The anecdotal structure also points to the truth that there's sometimes no perfect expert answer. Or that answers are forever debatable.

Helen: On the other hand, I can see how that it might be a bit confusing for a beginning gardener who's looking for absolutes.

Sarah: But that's how the book starts – by debunking some of those gardening "truths"—what they call "guff." They emphasize that there is no one answer to gardening problems or techniques. You can break the rules, and it doesn't mean you're a bad gardener. I think that beginning gardeners especially, would benefit by the encouragement of Donna and Steven's flexible approach.

Helen: Provided people do read from the beginning and aren't tempted by the cute pictures to skip and skim. But you're right. One of the "common truths" these days is that there are no absolute answers. So much of gardening success depends on things beyond our control, like the weather this season.

Sarah: Being a soil nerd myself, I liked the way the book starts with the soil, getting into the scientific nitty gritty of what makes a good soil. Bacteria and fungi and soil inhabitants get a good going over here.

Helen: Yes, this section is a great example of how the authors' conversational tone and fun graphics make information easier to digest. The book would be good for parents to introduce gardening to very young gardeners. Their Recipe for Yummy Soil and comparing organic matter to eggs in baking – they're useful, concrete yet novel analogies. At the same time, I found plenty to appreciate as an experienced gardener.

Sarah: As far as actual graphic design goes, the book verges on the kooky.

Helen: Verges?

Sarah: Okay, it's completely kooky. It's outside the box and breaks a few design rules. While I enjoyed the funky freewheeling design—it makes a nice change—at times it could have been a bit more restrained. I found some sections confusing.

Helen: I agree, and if the book has a fault this is it. The landscape format works against them at times, putting a lot of competing stuff on the page. It might be hard to find your way back to refer to it again.

Sarah: Although there is an index in the back. Putting on my book designer hat: I liked the fun, funky, friendly typography. It matched the illustrations. However, they used so many fonts, sometimes it was a challenge to know where you should start reading or what went with what. And in the He Said/She Said portions, the X chromosome lost out, as Donna's opinions in the fine script font were much harder to read.

Helen: So besides the illustrations, the accessible language and the neat explanations, what did we like?

Sarah: I liked the creative lists, like Early Growers, Must Haves, Harvest After Frost, Posh Squash and Veggies to Make Guests Say Wow. They're helpful ways to make your vegetable selections. Plus I liked their opinions about whether certain veggies are worth it. Some plants are just easier to grow, and they offer substitutions for the fussier ones.

One they both say Nay to is corn. Donna says, Waste of Space and Steve says, A Non Starter in the Raccoon Republic of Toronto. That got a rueful laugh from me. Oh, how we (don't) love raccoons here. Forgot to mention, that in addition to the illustrations, the book has many photographs as well of vegetables, gardens and insects.

Fun illustration detail from Pests and Diseases

Helen: I liked the at-a-glance tables, like how to plan succession crops, or their sweet versus not-so-sweet methods of staking tomatoes.

Sarah: The authors include a weblink http://www.gardencoacheschat.com for more details, a great way to add value to the book. You can download an ebook preview there, and get more info about the content and authors.

In sum, I think this book belongs in any gardener's library. It provides an excellent overview of the key principles of vegetable gardening, with tips on growing specific veggies. It felt like a long, enjoyable chat with two experienced gardeners who have a wealth of knowledge and humour to spare.

Helen: What she said.