MULCH ADO ABOUT SNOWFALLS

Protecting lawns, evergreens and other plantings from winter damage.

In Toronto we never seem to get enough snow.  No, we are not the greatest of participators in winter sports.  Après ski, that is another matter…still like skiers, we would welcome more of the white stuff.  Un-compacted, it is a superior winter mulch.  Under its white blanket, perennials, bulbs and many other plants lie safe and protected from the worst of the winter fury.

So, somewhat surprisingly, many perennials carry through the winter months better in the Snow Belt well north of Toronto.  And the worst period is yet to come.  As the frost comes out of the ground in March, the surface thaws during the day, only to freeze again at night. The resultant soil surface heaving, lifts plant crowns leading to the inevitable mass decimation.

So let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!  Well, on the flowerbeds and borders. Fine on the lawn too, as long as it is not tramped over regularly, as the deliverers of flyers and the like are wont to do.  Such compacted snow, turned to ice excludes air.  This destroys the plants below.  So does piling snow from the path and drive on to the lawn or surrounding evergreens and other shrubs.  Even if salt has not been used, the ice will do damage.

Nowhere else to get rid of the stuff?  Then spread it evenly over the lawn and nearby beds.  Use a gravel rake to disperse those heaps already accumulated.  Meanwhile, on the evergreen shrubs it may appear picturesquely as a Christmas card.  If you do not desire them permanently bent out of shape, record the scene with a camera, then use a corn broom to whisk the snow off.

Time for another seasonal gardening occupation.  Come inside and contemplate new, unexpected and interesting horticultural happenings.  According to Dr. Jeff Gillman, of the University of Minnesota, you’ve come to the right place to make those discoveries.  The Minnesota Nursery Growers Bulletin recently printed what, by his own admission, was a tirade against outdated and plain inaccurate advice.  Where to turn?  “Not [to] people who are on TV,” says Dr. Gillman.  “Read recent articles and go to informational seminars given by reputable people…who have a track record in the area of horticulture.”

What better place to visit than Niagara Parks and, in particular, their famed School of Horticulture.  Not only do Canadians know this; recently, educators from Japan also visited several times then used the school as a model to establish their own horticultural training school.  Significantly they passed over similar establishments at Kew, England, Longwood, USA and other in New Zealand and Australia.

The same Niagara Parks Commission designed and installed the Canadian Garden at Japan Flora 2000 on Osaka Bay near Kobe.  Out of over 80 gardens, Canada’s swept the awards available.  One of only two top prizes fell our way, 3 best prizes, 2 honours, 3 gold medals, 8 silver and 25 bronze.  The last four were all for plant use which was almost exclusively native perennials and woody materials.  The garden is now a permanent part of the Awaji Landscape Planning and Horticulture Academy… a Canadian in the orient.

Toronto’s Urban Forest

Flying into Toronto can be quite an experience.  No, we are not dwelling on the vagaries of Air Canada but on a much more permanent fact: the city’s three million trees.  It is far easier to render banshee wails over the demise of even a single city tree.  Street trees do not, unfortunately, live forever.  Parks Division crews are all to obvious when one must be removed.

Less obvious and rarely written about are the more than one thousand volunteers who, last year alone, planted another 50,000 trees to replace those lost and then some.  This is Toronto’s Tree Advocacy Program at work.  And it is not costing taxpayers a cent.  Corporate sponsors in the millennium year donated $800,000 to the planting of trees on public property.  The work continues year after year, unheralded and all to frequently unacknowledged by those it benefits most: Torontonians.

Complaining about tree removal, amongst other things, is almost considered a civic duty.  In fact recently the editor of a Canadian trade magazine, who should know better, accused Toronto of losing more trees than it was planting, which is just not so.  Much less popular is active participation in replacing those trees.  As for digging deep and donating funds for such…ever hear of it?  But where can you find out more?  As a private citizen or member of a club, society or similar organization, willing to get down and plant trees, phone 415-392-1339.  Corporations and others, who wish to make donations, contact 416-395-6196.  Do it now!  Spring is just around the corner and with it the planting season arrives again.  Let’s keep Toronto green and tree-mendous.

The Wonders of Wormwood

Absinth Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

When mail-line media ranging from The National Post to the San Francisco Chronicle commence to notice a common garden ornamental perennial and herb Artemisia, you can be assured something is most emphatically interesting about it. 

They were both beaten by a couple of years however, when The Korean Herald mentioned that, in Korea’s founding myth, a bear and tiger were given mugwort, another form of the herb, along with garlic and told to shack up in a cave for 100 days.  The tiger couldn’t take it but the bear could, thus becoming the wife of the founder of Choson.

Annual wormwood, A annua, has been used in herbal medicine despite causing allergic reaction.  It has been valued in treating colds, influenza, diarrhoea, dysentery and various fevers, along with night sweats and flatulence.  The U.S. Army has also shown interest, according to Stephen Foster and James A Duke in Medicinal Plants (1990) for quinine and/or chloroquinine-resistant malaria.

Native silver sage, A. canadense, according to the famed Richters herb catalogue, was used by “the Montana Indians as a general tonic, to restore hair, and as a dermatological aid.”

Needless to say it was in Old Europe and, in particular, France where the intoxicating principles were revealed.  Blended into the now notorious liqueur absinthe or Le Fee Verte, it was a favoured tipple of such as Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Picasso and Hemingway.  Some, at least were mentally affected by the potent potion.  Now, with reduced wormwood, it has become the drink of the “in crowd.”  Made in the Czech Republic, the herb extract may be reduced, but there is enough alcohol in it to intoxicate an elephant at fifty paces.  Possibly you won’t see the reputed Le Fee Verte, green fairy but very possible a pinkish pachyderm.

Play it safe, is the advice of City Gardening. Enjoy the culinary properties of the herb.  Again it was the French who discovered this centuries ago.  True tarragon, grown only from division, is Artemisia dracunculus sativa.  So what is that sold as tarragon in seed packages?  This is, in fact, Artemisia dracunculus dracunculoides, or Russian Tarragon, a vile and almost tasteless substitute masquerading as the real McCoy.

Fantastic Florals to Impress Every Valentine’s Recipient

Tips on selecting the right message and then ensuring it lasts several days at least.

The advice to “say it with flowers” may have originated in a florists’ advertisement, but it has been around long enough to become and adage.  It is also thoroughly good advice when it comes to that busiest time of the year for those same florists, Valentine’s Day.  Cut flowers have been called “living art.”  What better gift could there be on this happy occasion?

As with most of our principal festivals, the origins stretch back into the mists of mythic, pre-history times.  Token gifts were exchanged as spring approached signifying love and affection.  Come Christian times, attempts were made to link the celebration with a suitable saint.  The lucky bloke was St. Valentine of Terni who may, or again may not, have actually existed.

In the Victorian era (1837-1901), floral symbolism was popular among delicate young ladies of the emerging middle class.  The delivery of a bunch of red roses would cause them to swoon and their less lucky sisters to gnash their teeth in envy. To this day, red rose sales predominate on every 14 February.

Perhaps unabashed love is too strong for the modern male, threatened by feminists, scolded by sociologists and generally abashed.  Fresh from the Netherlands Flower bulb Centre come suggestions to assist in such situations.  Sending anemones, for example, conveys expectation and thoughtfulness; ivy means friendship and fidelity; jonquilla narcissi indicate ‘I hope to receive a verification of your love’; mimosa stands for friendship; purple lilacs testify to the first feelings of love and the red tulip reflects a fiery, pure kind of love.  Giving a little bunch of snowdrops connoting hope and joyful expectation, or a bunch of heavenly blue forget-me-nots that conceal a message of true love can make a less passionate avowal of one’s feelings.  Red tulips, say the Dutch, express the love of an individualist.  Or indicate your “hidden admiration” with a bouquet of delightfully scented jonquilla narcissi, while white lilies are associated with tender young love.

About the only person who didn’t appreciate receiving such tokens of love was the late George Burns.  “Stop with the flowers.  At my age flowers scare me,” he ordered in Dr Burn’s Prescription for Happiness (New York: Putnam, 1984).  He was at the time some 90 years young.

Alas, George Burns died prior to the advent of Viagra.  He never learned that the advantages of using it would prolong the benefits of cut blooms.  According to Judy Siegel-Itzkovic, writing in the authoritative British Medical Journal, “Viagra makes Flowers stand up straight.  One milligram of the drug (compared with 50 mg in one pill taken by impotent men) in a solution is enough to treat two vases of cut flowers from wilting for as much as a week longer than might be expected.”  This is hardly surprising, since botanically, flowers are plants’ sexual organs.  This might offer an entirely new perspective to presenting them on St. Valentine’s Day…

However, any and all reputable florists include a small package of flower preservative with every bunch or arrangement they sell.  Using it, as well as changing the water daily is at least as effective and considerably less expensive than resorting to Viagra.

Nor is it necessary to rely upon elaborate arrangements in the hopes of impressing one’s lady fair.  “Simplicity,” says guru Mike Stap of Holland’s International Flower Bulb Centre, “is still one of the favourite ways of using and arranging flowers, for both consumer and florist alike.”  It has to do with the ease of arranging and budget considerations, she adds.

Ah, yes, the cost is always the bottom line.  The few days before Valentine’s will find the media filled with horror stories about the cost of flowers.  Remember, we said it is the busiest time of the year for Canadian Florists.  The answer, as in so may garden related activities, is plenty of planning.  Roses especially, along with virtually any red flowers, should be ordered a week or even two in advance and the price agreed upon at that time.  Both florist and recipient will appreciate your thoughtfulness.

And oh yes, chocolates may have an aphrodisiac effect by reputation, but flowers are definitely non-fattening.

Horticultural Happenings

Toronto Field Naturalist Outings

Free guided walks; children welcome but please no pets; all are TTC accessible; dress according to weather, bring beverage, camera, notebook and binoculars.

1 February Allan Gardens: Exotic Flora – a ‘must’ for all gardeners and cabin fever sufferers; meet at 2 P.M. Main entrance to the greenhouses, south side of Carlton just east of Jarvis street.

8 February Centennial park: Exotic Flora – yet another ‘must’ for similar reasons to above; meet 10:30 A.M. at entrance to greenhouse east side of Elmcrest, north of Rathburn road; bring lunch.

10 February Pine Hills Cemetery: nature walk, with excellent collection of shrubs and trees to identify In Banter; meet 10:30 A.M. nw corner St. Clair Ave East and Kennedy Rd, bring a snack.

Toronto Field Naturalists Monthly Meeting

4 February, 2 P.M. High Park Restoration: an illustrated talk; visitors welcome; Northrop Frye Hail, Victoria University, 73 Queen’s Park Circle East

High Park Winter Walking Tours

11 February: photography in the park

25 February: identifying trees in winter

Meet 1:15 P.M. south of Grenadier Café; more information from 416-392-1748 or 416-392-6916

Richter’s free Seminars

Sundays at 2 p.m. 1 km east of Goodwood on south side of Hwy 47 (Bloomington Rd at Hwy 404); more From 905-649-6677 / www.richters.com

4 February: Aromatherapy Basics

18 February: Lemon Balm

25 February: sage for All Seasons

Also:

11 February Workshop: Romantic Herbal Gels $40; as with all Richter’s workshops pre-registration two weeks in advance is required; Limited space; all materials included in fee; commences 2 p.m.

AIIan Gardens and Centennial Park Conservatory Floral Displays

Spring Show – Mid-January to end of April Allan Gardens open Monday – Friday 9:00 A.M. – 4:00 P.M. Saturday, Sunday, and Holidays 10:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M.

For more information call 392-7288

CATALOGUES RECEIVED

Gardens North:  5984 third Line Road North, North Gower, Ontario K0A 2T0

Almost 150 pages make up Kristl Walek’s tenth anniversary catalogue.  Congratulations are in order for this wonderful woman who specializes in an incredible number of hardy perennials for northern gardeners, along with a more modest selection of “woodies,” as she calls them.  This publication is of immense value to the enthusiast and novice alike, as it contains cultural and descriptive information hard to find elsewhere.  This alone makes it worth the modest price of $4.00 It is dubious if any Canadian gardener who calls themselves such would not have this catalogue close to hand on their bookshelf.

Richter’s:  Goodwood, Ontario L0C 1A0 phone (905) 640-6677 fax (905) 640-6611; also online at www.richters.com

One of the most fascinating catalogues from the world-leader in herb seeds is also a great browse for all gardeners.  Richters free catalogue offers a positive plethora of herbs, many of them also of great ornamental value for both outside and indoors.  Included are many for ethnic cooking and health uses from places as far apart as Vietnam, Ghana and the Caribbean.  Unlike far too many catalogues, you can rely on the botanical names.  Very highly recommended and entirely free.

Veseys:  PO Box 9000, Charlottetown, PEI C1A 8K6 phone 1-800-363-7333 fax 1-800-686-0329; also online at www.veseys.com

Will it be a cooler, wetter summer than usual?  Or are you gardening in cottage country?  Or just interested in “Down East” varieties of vegetables and flowers?  Veseys are the long established firm to go to for their free catalogue.  Better yet, your order comes with another freebie: the Vesey Seed Planting Guide.  Besides very extensive selections of vegetables and annual seeds, there are also seeds for grasses, perennials and herbs.  Another highly recommended Canadian seed catalogue.  Also, from the same source, Veseys Bulbs catalogue, like the above free upon request.  Fifty full-colour pages of very competitively priced bulbs and perennials.  Of special note are their calla lilies, caladiums, lilies, Siberian iris and tree peonies.  For the adventuresome there are also the exotic and very dramatic foliage plants Alocasia and Colocasia that are sure to be the envy of other gardeners.

NEWS FROM A GARDENER’S VIEW POINT

City Gardening peers at the past month’s news from Canada and elsewhere

Landscaping

A garden whirlpool spa display in Virginia, USA is confirmed as the source of an outbreak of Legionnaires’disease that sickened 23 people and killed two of them.

A man in Dover, England, defies the courts and buries his wife in his garden after first wrapping her cardboard coffin in Christmas paper.

The Garden of Eden was located in eastern Turkey, according to California Biblical expert Michael Sanders after studying NASA photographs.

Something called a ‘novelty rock gardening set’ is revealed to bear the warning label:  “Eating rocks may lead to broken teeth”

Trees

The German ambassador to Macedonia and his wife are caught cutting protected firs for seasonal decoration.

A British archaeologist theorizes that Stone-Age Europeans ensured abundant supplies of their favoured food, acorns, by burning undergrowth around oak trees, which encourages larger crops.

The 5^th. Avenue Suites Hotel, Portland Oregon, offers a small Douglas fir tree in its rooms for guests to decorate.  After the season is over the trees are donated, minus decorations to the city’s Hoyt Arboretum.

Calgary plans to plant a tree for every baby born in the city.  Known as the Birthplace Forest project, the plan is for 12,000 new trees annually to make up a shortfall of 120,000 less than the 440,000 Calgary should have.

Waste product ‘crude tall oil’ from B.C. wood pulp is refined into phytosterol to be used in health drinks and foods as a cholesterol-reducing substance.

The U.S., lacking a national tree, is urged to correct this deficiency by the Nebraska based National Arbour Day Foundation.

Europeans collecting holly from the wild may be threatening the trees, says a Spanish scientist.

A man in Sunderland, Ontario died when the two-foot-thick tree he is cutting down falls on him.

Out in wild, wild west Alberta, a man pleads guilty of shooting a pruning teenager out of a tree he objects to being cut down.

Lawns

Ever looking for new ways to weasel out of work, Toronto’s Works Department, an oxymoron if ever there was one, is recommending to councillors that grass clippings be banned from garbage collection.

Flowers

Princess Anne insults a well-wisher’s gift of flowers and instructs Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie stop taking more flowers from others.  Unlike her brother Prince Charles, no flower lover, she also ignores her mother’s suggestion to “treat others as you would like them to treat you.”

97-year-old Bob Hope is recreated in flowers as one of the floats in the 112^th Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California.  The comedian says he will see it on television.

The Narcissus Awards are shared by all those columnists and feature writers, most of them women, who simply cannot complete a story without using the words I, me, my or mine.” Says Gillian Cosgrove, columnist, National Post,

Down in the Vegetables

Spud Wars over the banning of P.E.I. potatoes by the U.S. remains heated.  The combatants remain eye-to-eye with Canada’s federal agricultural minister threatening retaliation.  Mitch Murphy, P.E.I’s minister of agricultural, denounces the U.S. conditions to permit export as “unacceptable.” Compensation will cost $55-million.

Ottawa, though still finds time to approve a genetically modified spud over the protests of some federal officials that tests are “extremely poor.”  

5,443 kg of bagged onions, worth $2,100.00 are stolen from a Kamloops, B.C. farm warehouse.

Lycopene, the red pigment in tomatoes, protects against cancer of the mouth as well as the prostate and deduces the risk of heart attacks, various research teams report.

Fruit & Nuts

Now it is revealed that in WWII, the British sent agents into enemy-held territory armed with, amongst other weapons, explosives concealed in fruit and vegetables.

Natural Gardening

Hamilton bureaucrats are overjoyed at the success of their four-year program offering treated sewage to local farmers.

Herbs

Wormwood makes its re-appearance in the liqueur absinthe, long-banned for its effects on mental health, at least in British Columbia.

Wasabi, the green horseradish paste in sushi, protects teeth, say Japanese researchers, and so may cabbage and broccoli.

Garlic dumped from China and Vietnam threatens our garlic industry, the Canadian International Trade Tribunal decides, and Canada Customs and Revenue Agency impose dumping duties of $1.48 to $1.59 per kilogram on future imports from these dastardly commie countries.

Indoor Gardening

Minions at the Toronto nerve centre of The Globe and Mail are warned only to water their own office plants and leave the corporate specimens alone.  Professionals have been hired to take care of the latter.

A lawyer who slept through his client’s murder trial is described as being “no more sentient than a potted plant” at an appeal in which the name of the prosecutor is Julie Parsley.

Weeds

Describing the marriage of Goldie Hawn’s daughter, actress Kate Hudson, Shinan Govani of the National Post refers to her as “Dandelion-like”.

Bugs and Gardeners

Imported tree frogs as loud as lawn mowers threaten the peace of tourists and residents in Hawaii.  Officials experiment with a pure caffeine spray to give the dime-size pests heart attacks.

A soil fungus is threatening Fraser firs grown as Christmas trees in North Carolina

Good news for gardeners plagued by snails:  The Chinese recently launched some into space in preparation for manned space flight attempts.  The bad news: The snails came back safely.

Gardening in the City

“’In Canada, where property taxes are increasingly collected on the basis of market value assessment, the friction among neighbours can only increase:  Property owners will be punished as never before when their neighbourhood gets upgraded, say, by civic minded citizens who voluntarily plant rosebushes in common space.’  Says Lawrence Solomon in The Financial Post.  ‘Rather than being bastions of self-rule and the free-enterprise system, as their residents often imagine, community associations most suit those fleeing innovation.’”  As Mr. Adler explains, “these people often want to live in a controlled environment: They crave rules and order – the exact height of hedges, the angle of handrails, and when leaves must be raked – and an association provides that.” Lawrence Solomon comments on Outwitting Neighbours by Bill Adler Jr.

Toronto’s pilot program to compost downtown restaurant waste fails due to lack of participation but homeowners will be banned from adding grass clippings to their home garbage.

Three-quarters of the five billion tonnes of road salt stockpiled by Sifto in Goderich is already sold by early January

Whatever will they think of next? Toronto officials are considering street salting after a study shows it poisons plants

Indigo closes Cruickshank's Venerable location on Mt. Pleasant Rd north of Quinton in Toronto, a fixture since 1925, along with the much newer Oakville location, shaking the chattering class to its roots.

Travel

The latest edition of The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Directory is now available, giving details of private gardens open for visiting across the United States at just a modest U.S. $19.95 from www.gardenconservancy.org.

Toronto and Golden Horseshoe gardeners meanwhile can obtain their 2001 copy of The Gardener’s Journal and Source Book for $17.95 From 416-488-9523, which amongst much else, also lists local gardens to visit.

Science and The Gardener

United Nations talks at Neufchatel, Switzerland, aimed at bringing the world’s crop genetic resources under strict legal controls are supported by the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Predictably, the European Union reacts with howls of outrage.

Famed science visionary Sir Arthur C. Clarke, 83, predicts: “We’ll be able to synthesize all out food quite soon. All it will take is water, air and a few basic chemicals. Unquestionably, we are going to see the end of agriculture and the end of animal husbandry, so-called. That could happen in my life time.”

Bottom line is that the controversies raging over gene-splicing, or genetic modification (GM), are a complete hoax. GM is merely an extension, or refinement, of less precise and predictable techniques for genetically improved products with which consumer and government regulators have long been both familiar and comfortable. GM- derived food and other product are safer than those made with less precise techniques.” Dr. Henry I Miller, formerly of the U.S. Food and Drag Administration [Financial Post]

Art

A Renoir, Conversation with The Gardener, is one of the three paintings, collectively worth $45-million stolen in an armed Robbery from Sweden’s National Gallery in Stockholm and held for ransom.

Business

“It goes against the grain.” Says farmer Morris Freeston of Neilburg, Saskatchewan about the proposal that prairie farmers refuse to seed crops this spring.

Soaring natural gas prices will also increase the price of nitrogenous fertilizers, which is produced from the same source.

Environment

Washington, D.C. officials suggest that Britons and Europeans anxious to avoid mad cow disease (BSE) try an all-American alternative: genetically-modified Soya-burgers, according to Andreas Frew in New Scientist .

The Ottumwa Generating Plant, Iowa, commences supplementing coal fuel with up to 55 per cent native prairie switch grass (Panicum virgatum) in a test program. If successful, it will require 50,000 acres a year to grow the grass.

Health and Gardeners

The World Health Organization decides a meeting in Montreal to combat the dreaded weed, tobacco, is out and, instead, Warsaw will welcome World No-Tobacco Day this 31May.

A Saskatoon-based company specializing in fruit trees has won a $5.75-million federal contract to grow marijuana for Health Canada down an unused mine in Flin Flon, Manitoba.

”A tempest in a taco shell.” Dr. Peter Vadas, the head of the allergy and clinical immunology at St. Michael’s Hospital at the University of Toronto puts down the StarLink genetically engineered (GM) corn panic.

Mi-Chi, a drink largely composed of pineapple juice, has its U.S. label advising where it offers “Sexual Energy” redesigned for Canadians to indicate that it is “Tropical.” 

Heavy use of marijuana drastically lowers male fertility, researchers report at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Law and Gardeners

The United States Department of Agriculture will label all organic meat, vegetables and fruit to conform to standards set by the U. S.

The Canadian Medical Association’s lawyers instruct the Sierra Club of Calgary to stop claiming falsely on their literature that the CMA has expressed concerns about health risks from pesticide exposure.

Charges against a driver of over-imbibing kava herb tea and thus being unfit to drive are thrown out of court by a California judge, claiming lack of evidence.

A member of Canada’s famed Bronfman family residing in New Mexico is suing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency for the confiscation of the hallucinogenic “hoasca” tea from the Amazon rain forest, used in religious rituals by the United Beneficent Spiritual Central of the Vegetable – or O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal in Portuguese of Brazil.

By raising over $2,500 in wholesale value of tropical plants an Oak Bay, B.C. press baron’s wife reduces town taxes on her mansion by $24,000 a year as the province reclassifies the property as agricultural.

Quebec language Einsatzgruppen threaten an English-only web site that sells 99% of the maple syrup produced by a rural farm outside the province to English-speaking Canadians and Americans.

As of April, plastic bags cannot be used for the disposal of garden waste, rules Peel Region.  Such interfere with composting, hence rigid containers, open baskets or paper bags must be used instead.

Back to The City Gardening Archive Page