My garden tours are a big hit
Over the past eight years, I have led 20 garden tours around the world. My first tour was a cruise around Italy and to Croatia, starting in Rome and visiting Florence and Sicily and Venice and seeing some spectacular gardens on the way - Villa d'Este outside Rome, Boboli garden in Florence, Villa Cimbrone in Ravello and the botanical...
Never tire of doing this fun project with paperwhites
I’ve been growing paperwhites in glass vases for more than 20 years.
I remember buying a bag of these amazing little bulbs for the first time to do a project with my daughter Aimee when she was about 11.
This week, I...
I see a plain fence and I wanted it painted black
My friend Rob Cannings and his wife, Joan, have a fabulous garden in Victoria. They have been working on it for many years.
It is special not just because of the wonderful variety of plants with different shapes and textures and sizes but also because it is a very dragonfly friendly garden.
But there’s a reason for that. Rob is...
Six garden wonders that continue to inspire and delight
The six wonderful garden projects featured here have inspired and delighted us for years. They are still among the most creative, original, artistic works of landscaping the world has seen.
I don't think it's going too far to call them six of the top garden wonders of the world. Let me know if you know other projects worthy of...
Sorry St.Petersburg, I was wrong, you have lots of cafes, wine bars
Oh dear, I must apologize. How wrong was I to say I couldn’t find any outdoor cafes and wine bars in St. Petersburg. I was just not looking closely enough. Mea culpa. Mi dispiace. Прости (pras-Tee)
I must have been walking in all the wrong parts of town. I can’t explain why I got the impression that coffee shops and...
Protected: How to use your garden to give kids wonderful memories
How do you get kids excited about gardens and gardening?
I’ve written about this many times before and I always seem to come back to the same old ideas.
Planting bulbs is good, mainly because it is easy and the children remember doing it when they see the results.
But this is not something I've ever talked about doing for spring-summer....
It’s Italy in spring 2025 for a classic tour of timeless destinations
My next garden tour will be a wonderful 12-day trip to Northern Italy from April 27 to May 9, 2025.
Milan's Galleria.
The tour is designed with lavish three day stays in four great cities in Northern Italy. We will start in Milan before going on to Verona and Parma and ending in Genoa. The plan is to visit other destinations...
Time to love those cherry blossoms
It's time to stop and notice the cherry blossoms. That's the message the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival is trying to get across this month.
The month-long festival started March 30 and run to the end of April. It's a wonderful opportunity for all of us to pause and take notice of the glorious cherry blossoms blooming all over the Lower...
Check out this lovely urban oasis in downtown Vancouver
It’s surprising how many people still don’t know about the peaceful Cloister Garden tucked away between towering Cathedral Place office block and Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver. It's a gem worth discovering.
This lovely, secluded enclosed space, with its formal architectural lines, neatly clipped boxwood hedging and simple flat expanse of...
David Austin introduces more beautiful roses
Austin roses has introduced several new varieties over the past few years, including Sir Walter Scott, Desdemona, Roald Dahl, Bathsheba, The Ancient Mariner, Olivia Rose, The Lady of the Lake, Poet’s Wife and Imogen. To see them all go to Austin Roses UK site.
“Our new roses each make their own special contribution to the diversity of our collection. Whilst all...
Into gardens of New Delhi and on to Chandigarh
We came to India for many reasons. Most of us wanted to get a more intimate, personal, first-hand experience of the country rather than relying on what we had read or been told by others.
However, many of us came with some negative expectations. We had accepted that we were likely to find streets crowded, after all we were well...
Our beautiful cities tour 2024: Berlin to Prague to Vienna plus Bratislava
My next garden tour-adventure will be a 13-day Beautiful Cities Tour from May 17-29, starting in Berlin, then moving on to Prague and concluding in Vienna with a side trip to Bratislava in Slovakia.(AS OF JAN. 4, THIS TOUR IS NOW SOLD OUT)This tour will be a fabulous trip to some of Europe’s most beautiful, historic and culturally delightful...
Erikson’s garden is a treat to visit with world-class collections
Pam and Tom Erikson, of Erikson’s Daylily Gardens and Perennials, will host their 18th annual Open House on July 6 and 7 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Erikson’s Daylily Gardens and Perennials
The gardens will be in bloom with over 2,500 varieties of daylilies, 650 varieties of...
Two great plants for terrific summer colour
Two plants I am making bold use of this summer for striking colour are Cleome ‘Señorita Rosalita’ and Browallia ‘Illumination Blue.’
I've used both in emphatic plantings in containers and I’ve used the purple-pink flowered cleome to again create a serpentine drift through a perennial border. It worked so well last year,...
BEST OF BRITISH TOUR 2015
In May, 2015, I led a 10-day tour to England. This adventure was promoted as The Best of British Tour and was a little different to previous tours in that the itinerary was entirely based on day trips in and out and around London.
The idea of staying in one hotel for the duration of the tour allowed us the...
Wonder of germination: It’s all about the will to thrive and succeed
Germination is one of the great mysteries of life. Yes, we see it working. Yep, we have lots of science on the process.
But the reality of a seed springing to life, forcing its way out of the ground, showing a steely determination to succeed, an energy and will to live and grow and become something more than it...
Philadelphia Flower Show was again a knockout
Philadelphia Flower Show, the world's oldest and biggest garden show, was again a huge success this year with the theme, Holland: Flowering the World, a homage to Dutch horticultural expertise.
It was the third time I have attended the show and again it packed a magical artistic punch with sensational, artistic floral displays and great individual show gardens.
For the Dutch theme,...
Why not plug gaps with great plants you already have
If you're anything like me as a gardener, you have probably hugely over-planted your garden.
At one time, you might have thought - as I did - that you needed every lovely plant in the book. As a result, you bought too many, planted too many, planted too closely and overfilled the space available.
Now this does sound like a problem....
Can you repeat that – it looks so good, just keep doing it
Visual repetition always catches my eye. I love it when it is done well. In the garden, it is a very clever way to create rhythm and add impact.
On Beatty Street in Vancouver this week, I found this repetitive planting of variegated Carex ‘Ice Dance’ grasses used in a series of rectangular concrete planters placed to divide the...
In his 80s, Umberto’s still one of Canada’s great greenthumbs
It’s always a pleasure to visit my pal Umberto Garbuio at his home in Burnaby Heights and to see how his beautiful garden is doing.
The white wrought-iron entrance gate beyond the row of clerodendron trees still has its quaint, swivel wooden sign saying “Hi”on one side and “Bye” on the other...
