Garden news

I've always enjoyed planting bulbs with my kids. Now I enjoy bulb planting with my grandkids. And Jake, 8, is always very enthusiastic.There is so much we can learn by planting spring flowering bulbs in October. For starters, it is a very optimistic act itself: you are literally planting for the future, with spring in mind, so it's hard to...

Longwood Gardens, the magnificent 1,077-acre garden estate built by Pierre du Pont, is a wonderful place to visit any time of year. When I visited in March, the conservatory contained thrilling displays of orchids, echium, bromeliads and clerodendrum. But for the past forty years, the garden has been doing outstanding work hybridizing clivia. It was a breeding program started in 1976...

One of the joys of spring, especially on a warm, sunny, late April evening, is to sit quietly in the garden and watch the sun slowly go down as it sends glorious shafts of soft light through the new leaves on Japanese maple trees. I have tried to enhance this experience by pouring a glass of prosecco or by playing...

It has been years since I last walked around Park and Tilford Garden in North Vancouver. I stopped by with my grandchildren as we made our way home from visiting the new Polygon Gallery at Lonsdale Quay. We were all delighted at what we found at both the gallery and the garden. The gallery is a wonderful new exhibition space. The Susan...

Who knows why things always seem to look better when they are arranged in threes. I always tell people it has to do with Fibonacci numbers. Fibonacci was the 12th century Italian mathematician who figured out that a certain sequence of numbers somehow mirrors patterns that happen naturally in nature. The numbers are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21,...

People don't care anymore when they buy a clematis if it dies at the end of summer. They just want to have good flower impact on their patio, balcony or deck for a few months. After, they don't care what happens to the vine. This according to Rob Wein, one of the owners of Clearview Horticultural, the biggest grower of clematis...

October 6, 2017Today, I am delighted to announce the launch of our 15-day Italy Islands and Lakes Tour for May 6 to 20, 2018. THIS TOUR IS NOW SOLD OUT.There is no other tour like this being offered anywhere. It is one of a kind - unique in design, pacing and content.The tour will start in Lugano, Switzerland, where...

My time these days is divided between two activities - watching World Cup soccer and doing garden projects. It's a pleasant mix. In the garden, I decided to try growing Thunbergia alata, the Black-eyed Susan vine, up a metal spiral inside a plain terra-cotta container. It already looks quite good and I am hoping the vine will eventually scramble to the...

Arches, pergolas and tunnels create exciting transitions in a garden, inviting you to step into an opening that promises to transport you to a new space and new experience. These attractive, structural features also serve other functions. They get you to lift your head and look up, always a good thing to get visitors to do. Lifting the head and...

In the early 1990s, I suffered, as did most other young gardeners who were starting out on their first major gardening project, from a serious case of plant lust: I felt I just had to have all the great plants in the book. Of course, I ended up with a hodgepodge, a disjointed jumble of plants, some of which obviously...

Am I still having fun in the garden? Yes, gardening is still a wonderful pastime. And, hard to believe, I am still getting excited about new plant acquisitions and new planting ideas. This week, for instance, I saw for the first time a Tasmanian blueberry vine (Billardiera longiflora) in the garden of a friend on Salt Spring Island. This vine,...

Chelsea Flower Show, the classiest garden show in the world, will be held this year from May 23-27 on the famous Chelsea Hospital site next to the River Thames in London. You can find out all about it and how to get tickets at the Royal Horticultural Society site.

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...

What new and upcoming garden tours do I have planned for the remainder of 2018 and into 2019? In May, I will return to Italy for the ninth time to lead a very special Islands and Lakes Garden Tour, starting in Lugano and moving quickly to the Milanese lakes. You can see details here. From there, we will head to Sardinia...

Is your garden club having a plant sale this spring? Tell me about it and I am more than happy to provide a free forum here for your listing. The idea came to do this when I got an email from Jocelyn Wade, of Park and Tilford Garden, asking me if I was still compiling spring plant sale lists and...

Want to do a special planting for Canada Day this year? Here are a couple of plants that are being marketed this spring specifically to appeal to those gardeners who want to show their patriotism when it comes to celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday on July 1. Dahlia 'Canadian Celebration' is a striking white dahlia with red stripes that is expected to...

April 21 was my last day at The Vancouver Sun, after 38 years, 26 spent writing gardening stories. My last column was in the paper April 22. Today I'm thinking back over the 26 years of my career as a garden writer and remembering all the lovely gardens I have seen and fun times I've had interviewing talented gardeners. HOW IT...

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...

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...

Williamsianum Taurus Sappho PJM Ken Janeck Cinnabarium Impeditum Hotei Dora Amateis Rhododendron augustinii, lovely rhodo for any garden 10 OF THE BEST FOR YOUR GARDEN AND WHERE TO GO TO SEE MOREApril and May are prime months to see rhododendrons at their best. Since it has been such a cool, sunless spring, many rhododendrons have been slow to bloom. The good news is that the ones that did bloom were able...