The last few years I’ve grown tomatoes, they’ve come down with the blight (kind of the tomato equivalent of bubonic plague). What to do? I had dinner with some Italian friends, and we had a rousing discussion of how to prevent/cure tomato blight, which dissolved into conflicting “true stories” involving home remedies and nylon stockings. […]
The Eden Project
How cool is this? You know when, in sci-fi movies, an alien bacteria creates an inhospitable Earth, the heroes simply band together and create a biosphere-type orb out of plastic wrap that they can live in safely while repopulating the planet? Tim Smit, co-discoverer of The Lost Gardens of Heligan, who I’m beginning to think […]
Feed the birds
…Tuppence a bag… (now see if that lovely Mary Poppins song doesn’t get lodged in your head). It’s officially autumn. Crisp air greets us in the morning, the leaves are blazing red and orange, and the koi are looking a little sluggish in their pond. It’s also time to be thinking about feeding the birds […]
Adventure: Nitobe Memorial Garden
Yesterday my boyfriend Ben and I went to Nitobe Memorial Garden at UBC to check out a matcha festival. Considered to be one of the top traditional Japanese gardens in North America, Nitobe Memorial Garden honours the Japanese scholar, educator and diplomat Dr. Inazo Nitobe (1862-1933). Nitobe is meticulously designed and maintained, down to each […]
Mmm… rotting flesh
Plants that smell like rotting flesh to attract pollinators include the dragon arum (Dracunculus vulgaris), which has a burgundy leaf-like flower out of which flows a slender, black appendage. The plant is native to the Mediterranean, but this one “showed up one day” in the Bronx, New York, garden of Rosemarie Dieda. The plant was […]
The Lost Gardens of Heligan
In its heyday, Heligan Manor, the former seat of the Tremayne family, was one of the glories of Cornwall, England. Almost completely self-sufficient, it had a number of farms, quarries, woods, a brickworks, a flour mill, a sawmill, a brewery, and productive orchards and kitchen gardens. Its land extending over a thousand acres, it was […]
Do doll parts have a place in garden design?
Timmerman Daugherty, the artist behind the “permanent flowers,” as she calls them, (shown above), rescues abandoned items, deconstructs/reconstructs them, and gives them a good home. View her bizarre home and garden at her website, weirdgardens.com. “Bottle trees” (foreground in photo above), mosaic tables and sculpture, and yes, doll parts, play a prominent role in this […]
Don’t let your children run loose here
The Duchess of Northumberland’s controversial poison garden has been officially opened. Cannabis, opium poppies, magic mushrooms and coca – the source of cocaine – all feature at the centuries-old Alnwick Garden. The Home Office granted the Alnwick Garden Trust permission to grow the plants late last year. Poisonous foxglove, tobacco and wild lettuce, which can […]