Botany

Amaryllis can be purchased as potted plants already growing or as bare bulbs to be potted up at home and presented as  ready-to-grow gifts. [...]

Plant just enough bulbs. This might be considered the "Goldilocks" tip. Plant too few bulbs and the look is sparse. Plant too many and face over-crowding. Refer to bulb packaging, catalogs or websites for suggested spacing. [...]

Some of summer’s fanciest flowers start the season as unassuming brown blobs. [...]

  A full spring garden is not as common, as evident, as the summer garden. But they are a wonderful panacea to the long, cold winter. I found one within a kilometre of my home in LoEllen Park. Ruth Doucette has a authentic spring garden. The first wave of spring in the merry month of [...]

The days are getting shorter and leaves are turning to autumn colours. Gardeners know this is the time of year to think about next spring. Planting tulip, daffodil and other spring-blooming flower bulbs now will brighten the post-winter landscape. One does not have to be a master gardener to have a colourful spring garden. These [...]

When we moved to an old farm property in Wanup, we brought from our former garden cherished roots, all with their own stories: daylilies, bellflower and peonies, delphiniums, columbine and phlox, seeds of poppies and Queen Anne’s Lace  and, most precious, a clump of wild orchids that had moved several times from their original home [...]

Very few Canadians pronounce poinsettia (poin-set-ee-uh) the correct way. Generally, we call the beautiful plant “point-set-ah. It doesn’t really matter. They are the most popular Yuletide plants sold in Canada and it would not be Christmas without them. About 70 million are sold each year in North America. Their botanical name, Euphorbia pulcherrima, means “very [...]

One of the first times I met Kari Hodge we had a discussion about moss. When I got to see her garden I was delighted at the wonderful use of local mosses. It is all natural, of course, but what is of interest is that the moss at one level is secondary to all the [...]

“Potted amaryllises excel as small-but-stellar holiday gifts,” says Sally Ferguson of the Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Centre in Danby, Vermont. “These easy-to-grow winter-bloomers produce surprisingly exotic flowers, yet are still unknown to many people, even many flower sophisticates and gardeners. The bulb is huge, the flowers are huge. They grow and bloom for weeks on [...]

As you drive down a hill from either direction and round the corner, your head will turn to the colours in Inga Woitowich’s garden. Initially it will likely be the grey-white of the huge limestone-like stone terraces. These large buttresses are actually made by Brown’s Concrete but, unless you look closely, they have the appearance [...]