Gardening with Candy Venning
5 Big Backyard Strategies for Maximum, Small Yard Enjoyment.
SUBMITTED BY CANDY VENNING 1) Great access – from your house to your yard. Many of the older houses were built when outside space was more for hanging laundry or growing veggies than the spa-like oasis we expect of a garden now. Many houses often have odd access to...
10 Front Garden Design Guidelines
(followed next month, with design tips for backyards) by Candy Venning Going grassless or losing the lawn? Awesome! Skip the boxwoods; they’re not native, they’re all starting to succumb to box blight and there are other choices. Try for a 70% native mix (Liatris,...
NATIVE PLANTS FROM SEED: NEED TO KNOW
By Candy Venning shared with permission from The Halton Master Gardeners Page Winter sowing is an easy, low-cost method to grow native plants from seed that require a process called stratification*. It can be useful for propagating most native perennials/shrubs/vines....
PLANTY TO DO IN JANUARY
SUBMITTED BY CANDY VENNING Wooot woot! This stimulating time of the year is prime time to pore over the online Dahlia & seed catalogs, I mean, what else ya got goin’ on??? Dahlias have been one of my favourite cut flowers, they’re stunning in a garden, easy to...
Gardens and Other Comforts
By Candy Venning Did you find solace in the garden this summer? Was it the buzzing bees, the wind sighing across branches, the birds you had never seen before or the tide lapping in the bay? Perhaps the simple act of working with your hands in the soil, coaxing plants...
Gardeners’ Cheeky Checklist
by Candy Venning The end of the gardening season is in sight, a relief in some ways but as always, a little sorrow mixed in. Put down that mocha-chaca-spice-latte whatsit and pull up yer booties for a final fling round the yard, it’ll give you a satisfied grin to go...
BULBALICIOUS, BOUNTIFUL JOY BUCKS
SUBMITTED BY CANDY VENNING I just purchased approximately 18,000 fall bulbs, I don't live in a castle so no, they're not for me. Fortunately, as the buyer for all my garden clients, I can pick all my favourites and watch them come up in gardens around the city. May I...
GARDENING IN THE NORTH END
SUBMITTED BY CANDY VENNING What a spring we’re having! Hot, cold, panicky, rainy with a chance of Covid? The following is a point of view with some collected observations loosely grouped around gardening. As a landscape designer I’ve never, ever been so busy creating...
7 steps towards supporting nature with your garden
This spring we longed for nature like never before, quiet streets meant clearly hearing birdsong. With more time to notice each flower, you may want to know how your little or large, patch of urban garden can contribute, here’s my top seven ways. 1) Birds: planting...
Gardening
‘Desperate times call for desperate measures’ seems to be the refrain dancing around most of our heads, at least some of the time. Combine that phrase with ‘stay at home’, add a bucket of springtime enthusiasm and you’ve got yourself a recipe for garden mania with a...
