The Toronto Gardener's Journal, 20th Edition

A confession: until the 2012 Toronto Gardener's Journal arrived today, I hadn't known the story behind its beautiful cover girl – an iris; each year a different view.

Perhaps I've been asleep. Ssomehow I missed both the detail – and its significance. Just as the daffodil has come to represent cancer groups around the world, the iris has for years been the floral symbol for those with schizophrenia.

Here, the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario tells the story of how that came to be… starting with Vincent van Gogh, his iris painting, and the therapeutic benefit he found in art-making.

The Toronto Gardener's Journal author and publisher Margaret Bennet-Alder showcases the iris for her son David, who developed schizophrenia as a university student but now acts as the indispensable computer expert for her book.

Hard to believe it's been 20 years. Even if you don't use this book as a garden journal, it's packed with useful weekly garden tips and regional garden-related information. I often find myself turning to the Toronto area frost maps, for example. And the resources section is exhaustively exhaustive.

Perhaps there's a Toronto gardener with a wish list in your life? This would be a welcome gift. It's available online through the link in this post. You can also buy it through Book City and Sheridan Garden Centres, or order it through many fine garden retailers in the Golden Horseshoe area.

Birgit Piskor, gardener and sculptor

Victoria sculptor Birgit Piskor

Here's the inspiration I promised when I wrote about concrete garden projects last week: works of imagination – all of them carefully crafted of concrete – by Victoria, B.C., sculptor, Birgit Piskor. And here's the bonus. Not only is Piskor a gifted sculptor, she is also a gifted gardener.

In July, I enjoyed a guided tour of Birgit's garden through Joan Looy's (highly recommended) Victorian Garden Tours. Victoria is known as the "City of Gardens," and Joan can put you behind the garden gate of some of Victoria's best private gardens. Birgit's, for example, was named Canada's best urban garden in 2005 by Canadian Gardening magazine and was also the feature of an episode on the Recreating Eden television series. It remains a very special garden.

Birgit works in what was her childhood home, a cottage on a small urban lot in Victoria's artsy James Bay neighbourhood. On our way to her gallery, set in what would have been her living room, we pass under the branches of the spruce tree planted by her father. When she returned to live in the house, she transformed the garden with a true passion.

And, somehow along the way, without any fine arts training, she discovered she was a sculptor.

The sculpture she's standing in front of in the portrait was her very first piece. Concrete's properties hooked Piskor then and she has since grown in originality of expression as well as in mastery of the medium. Her work now appears in collections around the world. For the past several years, she has supported herself solely as an artist.

I hope Birgit's story inspires you to try something new as much as it inspired me. Or, perhaps you'll be inspired to order a little bit of Victoria for your own garden. The link near the top of this post takes you to Birgit Piskor's online gallery. For more, here's a link to a 2010 interview with Birgit.

Walk along the pathway to her gallery, past colourful foliage and over a small carpet of inlaid beach stones

One of Piskor's figures rises from a cascade of flowers. Hard to believe the sidewalk is a few steps away.

A trio of sinuous abstract forms rises from misty grasses. Piskor's materials allow her works to weather outdoors.

This concrete planter of succulents sits right beside her front door. Note the fluted shapes. 

Inside the gallery, a sculpture finished in gold-leaf echoes the leaf and flower shapes outdoors.

A (deceptively) simple project to try to emulate. Note the bubbly texture of the succulents, repeated in stone pavers.

One of Piskor's mysterious wrapped figures in her exuberant garden, which uses the vertical  plane to compensate for her small lot. Victoria's Mediterranean climate, with cool, dry summers, makes dense planting more feasible than it would be in Toronto. If I tried this, I'd be overwhelmed by powdery mildew.  Here, the bright palette glows in the sunshine.

A cluster of undulating urns makes a backdrop for a simple sedum

Too busy to garden? Take a lesson from lawns

The Microgarden, in all its Fall Frowsiness

If you have a busy life, you can't afford a busy garden.

Take it from M.I.A.-me. My garden this fall is payback for a neglectful summer. The beds that looked charmingly cottage-y back in June could now be used in a dictionary to illustrate the word frowsy.

I'm taking a lesson from lawns

There's a reason for the lawn's longevity as a garden design template. Simplicity. The lawn has been the "little green dress" that looks presentable in most situations. Add a couple of accessories – a tree, a container or two – and it can usually pass for a garden.  

Basic maintenance of a lawn is also relatively uncomplicated. Just add water and mow.

Now I'm not a lawn advocate; in fact, my last tiny patch of grass will be disappearing soon. Instead, I draw the busy person's attention to two concepts I'm striving for myself: 1) Simple design, and 2) Uncomplicated maintenance.

Mass planting for a sunny spot, from the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Simple design

The lawn is a monoculture; that's a mass planting of a single kind of plant. Once you rise above turfgrass, though, that design strategy is a little extreme. Yet we can learn from it.

Simplify your design by planting larger groups (three is good; five is better) of the same plant. Limit your palette to just a few plants. Repeat them in various parts of your garden. In short, plant more of less. Give anything that doesn't work away… or compost it. I'm doing that now in the Microgarden.

Mass planting for shade, from Government House in Victoria, B.C. Hostas, astilbe and ferns all need similar care.

Uncomplicated maintenance

That means no fusspots needing special care that you don't have time or energy for. Choose them for their happiness together, in your kind of garden, and for your kind of life.

No time to water? Choose drought-tolerant plants. Don't like pruning? Pick plants that don't need that kind of attention. Away every summer? Create a spring and fall garden and forget anything you won't be there to enjoy. And stay far, far away from busy-making self-seeders or rampant spreaders, unless your cunning plan is to let them run riot – a strategy best left to those with time on their hands.

If only I could "simplify" away all the morning glory seeds!

Life, and gardening, made simpler

Like Henry Ford's Model T cars, with lawns you can have any colour you like – as long as it's green. While the photos above show that you can have more colour than that, accept that your simple, uncomplicated garden will come with a necessary degree of compromise.

It might not be as flowery as you'd wish, for as long as you wish, but…

Sorry, hon. You have a busy life. You can't afford a busy garden.

Take it from me.

Another rainy day, another century

Coal wagon stalled on muddy Ashdale Avenue, a photo by Toronto History on Flickr.

When you consider this photo, taken just over a century ago, you realize that Toronto isn't much beyond its infancy. This is on Ashdale Avenue, just a few blocks from where my home would be built -- a couple of decades after this shot was taken.

The photo can be found on the Flickr Toronto History page, among others such as Leslie Farm that underline the city's rural history. If you live in the old City of Toronto, it's likely that your house is set on the muddy field of a former farm, perhaps one that looked like this.

That's something to think about on a rainy day.

Via Flickr:
Photographer: William James
1908
City of Toronto Archives
Fonds 1244, Item 24

Contest alert: Concrete Garden Projects

Reykjavik's soaring Lutheran Hallgrimskirkja, tallest building in Iceland

Icelanders build cathedrals out of concrete. Striking, creative and – most crucially in that seismically excitable area – resilient ones. That's why you shouldn't turn your nose up at this adaptable, inexpensive material when it comes to the garden.

I've been itching to make some garden art out of concrete since attending a presentation at our local garden club a while back. Hypertufa planters have also been on my radar – planters or troughs made lightweight through a mixture of concrete with perlite or peat moss.

Well, now Timber Press has just published a how-to book with 100 pages of inspiration followed by a 40-page workbook with all the instructions. It's Concrete Garden Projects: Easy & Inexpensive Containers, Furniture, Water Features & More by Malin Nilsson and Camilla Arvidsson. Those Nordic folks (these gals are from Sweden) understand the value of concrete thinking.

Whip over quickly to the Timber Press site and enter their no-purchase-necessary contest and you might win a copy of the book – along with the moulds used to make some of the planters. The contest ends Friday, October 21st (that's tomorrow, as of this writing). Good luck, and I hope you try some concrete projects yourself.

To give you more inspiration, I have another concrete story I'll be posting soon.