Windowbox by Sunface13 on Flickr. I remember the first time I saw window boxes worth coveting. I was 20 years old, backpacking through Europe. Although I wasn’t yet a gardener, I couldn’t help but fall in love with the perpetual, ageless villages with their cheery window boxes spilling over with geraniums. The window boxes were […]
Pothole gardens
What the? Flowers in the road! Image via PeteDungey.com. Look: pothole gardens! Not sure how I missed this unique guerrilla gardening/art concept when it first popped up on the interwebs several years ago, but it’s awesome. It seems people plant potholes for various reasons. UK artist Pete Dungey planted a series of potholes across England […]
Now Harvesting: mid-May
I’ve decided to introduce a regular weekly feature on Heavy Petal called Now Harvesting. I hope to share with you what I’m eating out of the garden every week until winter, or until the garden is completely empty. For my own sake, I think this will be a great way to look back on what […]
Cedar Cottage Garden Spring Fling
Tomorrow! Join us at the Cedar Cottage Community Garden for our annual Spring Fling event • Plant sale • Live music • Kid’s activities • Garden tours • Workshops (including “What to plant now,” led by yours truly). 11am-2pm, Victoria Drive at Hull Street, Vancouver (map)
Seven tips to make gardening “away” easier
Gardening at home, with easy access to seeds, tools, and water? Easy. Gardening several blocks from home? A bit more work. Gardening several blocks from home when you don’t have a car and there’s no water source near your garden? Call me lazy, but that sounds like a lot of work. Having gardened at several […]
Square foot update
In March, I wrote about the creation of my newest garden space, a raised bed planted using the square-foot method (of planting in 1′ squares). I’m happy to report that the garden, so far, is a success – turning out early producers spinach, radishes, and arugula. Left to right, top to bottom: ‘Easter Egg II’ […]
Garden-themed birthday party
For Lila’s second birthday, we had a garden-themed party. Of course. What two-year-old doesn’t prefer gardening to Dora or dinosaurs? (Actually, Lila is way more familiar with turning the compost (she loves worms. Parenting success!) and picking greens than she is with cartoon figures. She still refers to her preferred (Dora-branded) toothpaste as the one […]
Ferns and ephemerals
Hello. I’d like you to meet Shooting Star, aka Dodecatheon hendersonii. This sweet little thing is one of the native wildflowers blooming in my backyard “woodland bed” right now. Like many of the spring ephemerals (so called because of their fleeting nature), it’s not exactly a show-stopper (but just look at how it wows en […]