Late July 2000

Charles Caccia is a Liberal Member of Parliament from Toronto.  He is also, according to the Financial Post, a “green whacko” (editorial writer Terence Corcoran wields his pen with all the skill and zeal of an expert swordsman).  One of Caccia’s more extraordinary beliefs is that plain ordinary gardening- “ornamental horticulture” in a $20 phrase- is simply cosmetic.  As the writer and engineer Neville Shute once said: “A politician or civil servant is still to me an arrogant fool till he is proved otherwise”.

The benefits to be obtained from gardening are considerably greater than those obtained from the likes of Caccia.  Wayne Roberts, the Pest Management Information Co-ordinator at Landscape Ontario (the professional association of this province’s horticulturalists), recently listed practical benefits of the profession and hobby of gardening.

Plants, he pointed out:

         Modify air pollution

         Absorb carbon dioxide

         Trap particulate matter

         Supply oxygen

         Prevent soil erosion

         Modify microclimates

         Reduce noise

         Reduce stress

         Filter ground water

Furthermore:

         Gardening provides psychological and physiological benefits.

         Healthy, well-maintained turf, free of flowering weeds, also reduces problems with  allergens and potentially fatal bee stings.

         Home lawns and sod-covered fields help reduce injury to children and others engaged in athletics or other outdoor activities.

Even disregarding all of this, the benefits of beautifying and area surely should be paramount.  But then, under the dreary grey socialist world embraced by Caccia, aesthetics are held to be unaccountable.  A big bouquet of ragweed to you, Chuck, and a special Pink Flamingo Award.

Seventy years ago, Lucy Maud Montgomery was writing from the manse in Norval, northwest of Toronto, bemoaning the lack of rain.  “We are having a bad drought,” she wrote, “aggravated by the extremely hot weather.  There has been no rain since the first of July, and my garden is dying, after all my hard work and its early promise.”  So don’t feel guilty about leaving it late as you hurry to the nearest garden centre for a garden sprinkler.  Much to your amazement you will find an attractive display with “LEGO” labelled in prominent lettering.  Uh?  Come again?  The company that manufactures these well-constructed aids to irrigation was established as long ago as 1906.  Based today in Netanya, Israel, they sell the famed irrigation technology of their home base to over a hundred countries.  So, with a friendly nod towards Denmark, sorry, but as usual gardeners got there first.  Neither you nor the creator of the beloved Anne of Green Gables have had problem with the weather that exceed those experienced two years ago by Jeffrey Kearsley, of Erin, Ontario.  Mr. Kearsley, and avid snowmobiler, was killed while trying to drive his snowmobile across a field on July 1998.

It takes a very heavy and prolonged downpour to provide a half-inch of water to the garden every three days.  Yet that is the amount required to keep the most plantings healthy.  Put another way, a tree planted this spring should be getting two 5-gallon buckets of water at three-day intervals.  An oscillating sprinkler with a built-in timer is the preferred application method; adjust to water for an hour at a time every third day, in the early hours of the morning.  Containerized plants out of its reach will need to be watered by hand, as often as twice a day in hot, windy weather.

This month, Toronto hosts the 34^th World Vegetarian Congress under the sponsorship of the Toronto Vegetarian Association.  Their hope that the rest of us here in T.O. would “adopt and maintain a healthful ethical and ecological vegetarian lifestyle” may have received a setback at least in the fresh salad and fruit department.  As reported by the Toronto Free Press last month, Torontonians may be very literally getting their own back as the city’s sewage sludge is sent forth to farmer’s fields across the province by our all-wise and intelligent bureaucrats and environmental activists.  Bon appetit, fellas.

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