Making snowflake flowers (or flower snowflakes)

A lily-flowered tulip was my first model for a snowflower

If you need cheap, cheerful fun for a chilly day, there's nothing easier than making paper snowflakes. Few crafts are so inexpensive – or so sure of success. All you need is a sheet of paper, sharp scissors and your imagination – which can get added inspiration from the garden.

When it comes to snowflakes, I am what our dad would have called a dab hand. Usually, I go for intricate ice patterns. Once, I made a King Tut flake on request. Here, I've tried organic floral shapes. But, you can't go wrong with a snowflake.

Guidelines for making a flurry of snowflowers:

These work for making any kind of snowflake. The key secrets: Sharp scissors; sharp creases.

IMAGE ONE: Top left: Take a sheet of bond paper (scrap paper is fine) and sharp scissors. Sharp scissors make the most accurate cuts. Top right: Fold the bottom edge up to meet one of the long sides. Align edges closely, and fold as closely to the tip of the corner as you can. When everything is lined up, make a sharp crease. Bottom left: Cut off the excess strip. (Save it to make three tiny snowflakes. No waste!) Bottom right: You'll have a triangle, with a fold on the long edge. Now, fold it in half, neatly matching fold to fold and open side to open side. Make a sharp crease.

IMAGE TWO: Top left: As the folds make things thicker, I find it helps to score the corner that will be folded first with a fingernail. Then fold the triangle in half, again matching folded side to folded side. For this fold and the next one, the open edges will be at the top. Top right: Scissor handles are useful for  sharpening the crease. Run the handle along the folded edge on a flat surface. Bottom left: Score the corner for the final fold, then again fold so that the folded edges meet. Bottom right: Cut off the excess triangle, using the cut edge as a guide. (Or, you can leave this corner on for a different effect.)

IMAGE THREE: Now you can begin cutting out snowflakes – or snowflowers. The more paper you cut out,  the airier your snowflake or snowflower will be. For this one, I tried using a shamrock shape. As you can see, I rather botched the taller version of the leaf, and my cuts are a bit messy. But so what? As you open your snowflower, fairy dust magically transforms it into something you didn't quite expect. Don't worry about being exact.

IMAGE FOUR: Here you see what happens using a different strategy – leaving more paper on the form, and cutting your patterns into alternate sides. Cutting a pattern into the folded point gives you a corolla in the centre of the flower. See the fringed effect of making many, tiny wedge cuts into the top edge? Now, go on, experiment and have fun. After you're done with them, they can all go into recycling. Snowflakes are meant to be ephemeral, aren't they?

Toronto Botanical Gardens Open House 2012

Autumn at the Toronto Botanical Garden

Joining the Toronto Botanical Garden was one of the best garden gifts I've given to myself – to preview how good it can be, check out tomorrow's TBG Open House (Dec. 8, 5:30 to 9:30 pm).

The TBG gardens are beautiful in any season – ignore the parking lot reno for the moment. Yet, viewing the gardens is free, always. The best part of the gift is what's inside that pretty wrapping.

The Edwards Lecture crowning the evening is a case in point. Dan Benarcik, horticulturist at Chanticleer in Pennsylvania, talks about his 25 Top Plants for All-Season Splash. Topics like this usually draw capacity crowds to the Edwards Lecture series, and it's free for members – $20 a lecture for non members. Two lectures a year would pretty much cover your membership fee. But there are more benefits – these are just a few:

Garden subscriptions? Trellis, the TBG's informative magazine, will arrive in your mailbox. Garden-themed gifts? Members get 10% off in the gift store. Events, year round? Tomorrow, before the Edwards Lecture, Sonia Day signs her latest book The Untamed Garden. It's lots of fun; a lusty look at our love affair with plants, and beautifully designed. Have Sonia inscribe yours for your beloved. Love reading? Not all garden info is wikipeded. Explore the 10,000 volumes in the Weston Family Library. It's free for public use, but only members can bring books home. Like learning? Many, many classes year round – already reasonably priced and, again, members enjoy a discount. Have kids? The TBG loves kids, and kids just love the TBG. Family memberships are available.

Click here to play Santa with a membership for your favourite gardener. Or, like me, maybe for yourself. Again, I'm not being paid to say this. I'm just a believer.

The Toronto Botanical Garden decks itself out for winter

In spring, the Toronto Botanical Garden blazes with luminous bulbs

As spring turns to summer, the Toronto Botanical Garden turns it up a notch

Elf-sized gardens to charm your kids

How cute is that!? Photo courtesy of Janit Calvo, the mini-garden guru, of Two Green Thumbs

You don't have to be a kid to love little. Adults are as likely to be as passionate about dollhouses, for example, as children are. Just look at the Kensington Dollshouse Festival in London, England, which has been drawing mostly grown-up fans from all over the globe for 25 years.

These days, little is big in the garden world, too. Miniature gardens are hot. Janit Calvo, a Toronto native now permanently transplanted to Seattle, has been leading the mini-pack since about 2001. She describes Two Green Thumbs, which she runs with her husband Steve, as the world's smallest garden centre. Their site sells everything you'd need for a miniature garden*, there's also a selection on their Etsy page, and Janit writes about all things small on her Mini Garden Guru blog.

Another holiday-themed miniature garden from Janit Calvo, Two Green Thumbs

To get kids excited about growing things, suggest to Santa that a miniature garden would be a cute way in. You can create one together – in a terrarium, an indoor dish garden or, if you choose well and are bitten by the mini-bug, perhaps even outdoors.

Two Green Thumbs ships their accessories and special miniature garden growing media to Canada (*everything but plants, though their miniature plant knowledge transcends borders). For accessories in Toronto, the Little Dollhouse Company, one of North America's oldest suppliers, also offers a decent range  to explore in person. [Update: Janit confesses this store was her childhood inspiration.]

For plants, use your imagination looking for tiny things over the winter. Potted thyme would make perfect shrubbery, and Richter's Herbs is open daily from 10 am to 4 pm, if you're up for a country drive. Or look for tiny houseplants or terrarium plants such as baby's tears – or wee cacti or succulents. Just remember that any plants you combine should need the same growing conditions. And, as for any living thing you bring home, be sure mum and dad are willing to assume ongoing care. Elves can't always be trusted.

Other people's photos rarely appear on Toronto Gardens, but these are an exception. Thanks, Janit. Full disclosure: we get no benefit from any link or mention here – we just think it's a neat idea you might find interesting.

Christmas by candlelight at Allan Gardens

Today is the grand opening of the Allan Gardens Christmas Show. From 10 am to 5 pm daily till January 8th, with candlelight viewing on Saturdays and Sundays from 5-7 pm, you can wander through the conservatory's winding walkways, wondering at the wuvwely... okay, I'll stop.

The Christmas flower show is a family tradition with us, and late Friday, just before closing, Sarah and I caught them putting the finishing touches on the 2011 show.

Today's opening, Sunday, December 4, 2011, is a special day, with carriage rides, carolers, hot cider and the freshest view of the poinsettias, cyclamen, fragrant paperwhite narcissus (which smell much more pleasant in a large conservatory, we find, than in the enclosure of your living room), and more. The amaryllis are now in bud, and will open over the course of the show.

There's no admission charge for the opening today, but they welcome contributions for the food bank.

This year's Christmas Tree is a "fauxpiary" of succulents, and is sure to be a popular backdrop for a family photo. While we were there, a bystander asked me to take her picture. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then just one more.

So: When the weather outside is drizzling, and the kids indoors are grizzling, there's only one place to go... to the Show, to the Show, to the Show.

No matter what your faith, the Christmas Flower Show at Allan Gardens is a great winter getaway in Toronto

Gifts for tree-huggers

On first hearing about Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees by Nancy Ross Hugo and photographer Robert Llewellyn (Timber Press) I positively salivated. For dendrophiles, the book's beautifully rendered cover image promises a new level of beauty and intimacy.

First, though, a confession: I'm not just a dendrophile (tree lover), I'm a treek (tree geek). I photograph them, study them and give them an occasional hug. I'm a volunteer LEAF Tree Tender, and try to steal time on Tuesdays at 2 pm EST to join the #treechat on Twitter. I have also been overheard (by wary bystanders) having one-sided conversations with trees. That's kinda treeky.

So, when I received a review copy of the book, I was over the moon. Over. The. Mooooooon. Seeing Trees lives up to its promise, and then some. And it isn't just for treeks; it's for anyone fascinated by the natural world.

We talk about devouring books. This book is so rich and delicious, however, I've been savouring it as slowly as dark chocolate. Nancy Ross Hugo's writing style is charmingly conversational and her ideas are not to be rushed. And Robert Llewellyn's images beg to be poured over in minute detail.

The first of its three sections talks about how to observe trees. Seeing trees really comprehends more than the visual; it's seeing with every sense. Hearing, smelling, touching, yes, even hugging. The next section dissects trees by their components – leaves, flowers, fruit, buds, bark – equipping you to see them more clearly. Finally, the authors provide intimate portraits of ten common trees.

Liquidambar, photographed in Seeing Trees

I'll bet there's someone you know who would delight in finding Seeing Trees under the, er… tree. And, if they're like me, the perfect companion to it would be the new Dirr's Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs, also from Timber Press. I didn't receive a review copy, but Oh! how I hope Santa is reading this blog.

Michael Dirr is the Tree God in my book. That's me hugging my tattered 1990 copy of his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants in an article about garden book faves last winter on the Seasonal Wisdom blog. I regularly refer to Dirr's Tree & Shrub Finder app on my iPhone. Dirr's knowledge of woody plants is, now literally, encyclopedic, and his writing style is opinionated and often entertainingly curmudgeonly. From what I've read from other reviewers, his new Encyclopedia is all these good things, plus updated species and cultivars and a ton (or tonne) more pictures. Santa, are you listening?