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Garden Making

Inspiring ideas and information for great home gardens

TABLETOP_CENTREPIECE_SUCCULENTS_Karen-Chopp_for-April-23

Design tips and plant combination ideas for containers

Colleen Zacharias

Creating and designing a container garden is an opportunity to experience an outstanding spectrum of colour and texture. Moveable feasts, container gardens offer a luxuriant start to the growing season and the potential for eye-catching displays that can be enjoyed during the hottest months of summer and into the cooler temperatures of autumn.

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Against a backdrop of Skybound cedars, Swiss Stone pine shines in this Winnipeg backyard. Photo credit: John Leperre

Pines – evergreens for all seasons

Colleen Zacharias

The Pinus species is unique among conifers. Long-lived trees, their distinctive needles are grouped in bundles called fascicles. Evergreen conifers provide a beautiful backdrop for other plants in the landscape.

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Wide planting beds are easier to design because they provide space for focal points, such as birdbaths or columnar trees.

Create your dream garden from scratch

Beckie Fox

Confronted by empty yards front and back? Here’s your detailed guide to creating your dream garden from scratch.

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Two tall cedars act as punctuation in this large garden, and also signal where the entrance is to the vegetable garden on the other side of the hedge.

Punctuation in the garden

Karen York

Punctuate your garden to create a compelling narrative. Here’s how to use trees and plants as exclamation marks, periods, commas and other signals.

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Penstemons with red foliage

Judith Adam

For diversity in foliage colour, Judith Adam appreciates red foliage plants such as ‘Husker Red’ and ‘Dark Towers’ beard tongues (penstemons).

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When to prune spring-flowering shrubs

Judith Adam

Although spring-flowering shrubs such as lilacs can vary in their bloom times, there’s far less leeway about when to prune spring flowering shrubs.

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Heat-proof lobelias

Judith Adam

A second generation of breeding has produced heat-proof lobelias. Lobelias have intensely blue cascading flowers for hanging baskets or as an upright form.

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Ginkgo trees capture attention

Judith Adam

Judith Adam is getting started with a collection of ginko trees. Ginkgos have been around for more than 150 million years.

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Seeking enthusiastic pollinators

Judith Adam

When the flowers come out, clouds of pollinators descend — bees of several kinds, small and large wasps, various flies and even some butterflies.

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Gooseberries

Gooseberry plants are easy to cultivate

Stephen Westcott-Gratton

Gooseberries are one of the easiest fruits to cultivate successfully. Gooseberry plants are compact, easy to grow and hardy.

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Pawpaw is small tree with a beautiful, pear-shaped form and hardy to Zone 6. (Photo: Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Rural Affairs)

How to grow a pawpaw tree

Lorraine Flanigan

Culinary popularity is making the pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba) the next big thing for backyards. Linda Grimo thinks the tree is ideal for urban landscape.

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food to grow

Chive blossoms (Photo by Carol Pope)

5 bee-supporting perennial edibles to grow

Carol Pope

These 5 perennial edibles grow without fuss, look gorgeous, add fabulous flavour and health-boosting goodness to your meals. And their flowers support bees.

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Bee on kale bud (Photo by Carol Pope)

6 beautiful kales to grow

Carol Pope

When people ask Carol Pope how her garden is growing, she sometimes joke that it’s not so much a garden as it is a “kale yard.” Here’s six kale cultivars to consider growing.

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6 secrets to abundance in the edible garden

Carol Pope

Here are six secrets of the best choices for powerhouse producers that will provide you with easy, yet exquisite, edible garden fare all summer long.

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container gardening

Creating a spring container

Beckie Fox

If you’re keen to start gardening, but your soil is too cold and damp for digging, consider potting up a spring container instead. Depending on the weather, a few spring containers planted with beautiful, cold-tolerant plants now will give you several weeks of colour.

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Myrtle is an easy topiary to maintain.

How to make an elegant topiary

Beckie Fox

A touch of formality is not out of place in most gardens. Trimmed cones and spheres of foliage — classic topiary — are especially suited to containers.

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Tall blue salvia, coleus, double impatiens and English ivy. (Garden Making photo)

Perfect container plants

Beckie Fox

When shopping for container plants, it helps to have a list of favourites that you can always count on. Here are Beckie Fox’s suggestions.

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Events for gardeners

May 20
May 20 @ 10:30 am - May 22 @ 6:00 pm

Ottawa Horticultural Society Spring Plant Auction

May 21
7:30 am - 10:30 am

Plant Sale

May 21
8:00 am - 1:00 pm

Ancaster plant sale

May 21
9:00 am - 12:00 pm

Credit Valley plant sale

May 21
9:00 am - 12:00 pm

Durham & District Horticultural Society Plant Sale

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