Refreshing the Tired Garden
It’s Still Just Dirt – The Tillsonburg News, June 2014
by Penny Esseltine

Carlo Balistrieri is Head of Horticulture at the fabulous Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington and who better to tell us about refreshing the tired garden then someone who is responsible for 250 acres of cultivated gardens offering amazing garden experiences.

Carlo says, “Looking fresh at a familiar place is one of the hardest challenges of gardening.” Gardens tire through the natural process of aging, from weather or cataclysmic events, and through neglect, which Carlo says is the most common reason.

Gardens should include three layers, Carlo says. These include a tree layer, a shrub layer (the middle layer in the garden that anchors trees to the ground), and a herbaceous layer (ground area perennials and annuals, also bulbs, vegetables, and fruit). “The herbaceous layer is what most people consider when refreshing the garden but don’t forget the trees and shrubs.”

Carlo has a couple of tricks for assessing your garden.

Trick #1: Squint as an exercise when looking at your garden. Details will disappear and you’ll see forms, shapes and texture.

Trick #2: Take pictures, but not always in colour. Colour is a distraction. It pulls your eye all over and you don’t see structure and design.

Start with the easy stuff.

• Clear beds out, rake, never leave corpses. Carlo says some plants just deserve to die. Sometimes this is the best chance for improvement or refreshment in the garden. “People may, he says, “over estimate the value of what they have.”
• Edge. According to Carlo this is the great forgotten art of gardening. “Sharp, deep, clear edge gives dramatic demarcation. Things are in their place.”
• Prune. A lot of people are afraid to prune. Follow the four Ds – take out the dead, diseased, damaged and dishevelled. “Lift the skirts of conifers (3 to 4 rows) so you can see amazing bark and new garden space.”
• Pop a little colour in your garden. Plant containers in the garden. Plant annuals in your perennial garden. “Bulbs are the best bang for your buck,” Carlo says

As you continue to think, plan and assess what to do to refresh your tired garden, Carlo offers these tips.

• Do familiar things in new and refreshing ways.
• Art in the garden is the lowest maintenance way to refresh a garden.
• Plant in new combinations.
• Plant to extend the season. Crocus for early season interest. At RBG they plant 200,000 crocus and it’s a spectacle.
• “Some things are sacrosanct,” Carlo says. “Don’t fool with outstanding trees, drifts of minor bulbs, or huge established clumps of ferns, ancient or otherwise.”
• Limit your plant palette. Pick winners with long seasons of interest.
• Limit the number of hardscape materials. These include paths, walls, fences, gates, garden art and ornaments.
• Simplify.
• Garden for your lifestyle.
• Create an identity or theme.
• At the end of the day, do one little extra thing to improve the place.

For additional information about the Royal Botanical Gardens visit rbg.ca and for information about the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society visit tillsonburghorticultural.ca.

Let’s Get Planting
It’s Still Just Dirt – The Tillsonburg News, May 21, 2014
by Penny Esseltine

Historically, May 24 is the start of the safe time to plant all of your annuals outside in the garden. Annuals are a great addition to any garden. They add colour in all seasons from spring through to frost. And they really mix well with perennials and shrubs.

Among the wide variety of annuals available locally, impatiens have always been my favourite. These plants are sometimes upright, as tall as two feet, and sometimes low and sprawling but always with plenty of colour. Colours that include almost everything in the floral spectrum and some varieties are even bi-coloured. Best of all, they bloom well in shade.

However, in the past few years a fungus called impatiens downy mildew has wreaked havoc on these plants (both shade and double shade varieties) in Southwestern Ontario and lots of areas in the United States.  Matthew Fenn, manager or Tillsonburg Garden Gate on Simcoe Street says, “impatiens look beautiful while the weather is cooler but by mid-July, as temperatures climb, they just die. Within 48 hours the petals and leaves will fall off and you’re left with what looks like matchsticks.” Matthew says because of the downy mildew fungus they are not selling impatiens at Garden Gate this year. He says, “It’s not a service to be selling them right now.”

Impatiens downy mildew started here two to three years ago and had been sporadic, but by last summer it was affecting pretty much all impatiens plants. The spores can live for years in soil. They also travel in the air and spread between plants through the water on the leaves. Matthew says it doesn’t affect other varieties of plants. “Even New Guinea impatiens have been immune from downy mildew because they are grown from cuttings rather than from seeds.” You can still plant New Guinea impatiens in your garden in both part sun and shade.

Matthew says flower breeders are working now to develop a variety of impatiens that is resistant to downy mildew fungus. These breeders are mainly in Holland, as well as some parts of the United States like California, and South America. He says, “They will conduct trials in different parts of the world and once they have successfully bred an impatiens downy mildew resistant strain we will see impatiens in garden centres again. Right now we can’t do anything at the customer or garden centre level. But yes, impatiens will make a comeback.”

“In the past,” Matthew says, “people would buy several trays of impatiens at a time to plant in their gardens.” Altogether at Tillsonburg Garden Gate they would sell two to three thousand flats a season. “It was a good part of the bedding plant business. And not a day goes by,” says Matthew, “that people aren’t asking where the impatiens plants are this year.”

The #1 annual that Matthew recommends to replace impatiens this year is wax begonias. He says they put on a really good show colour wise, they like part sun to shade, and they take less water as well.

His #2 recommendation is petunias. He says, “They come in a multitude of colours and there are newer varieties such as wave petunias that don’t require as much deadheading.”

When I asked some Horticultural Society members what they would be planting instead of impatiens they agreed that begonias are a great choice. Some others on their list included fuchsia, caladium, coleus, and annual vinca.

Whether you’re planting window boxes, lining your sidewalk, or spicing up your perennial garden, make the most of annuals that are available this year. Annual plants complete their entire growing cycle (from seed, to flowers and back to seed) all in the course of a single growing season. That season is upon us. Let’s get planting!

The Tillsonburg Horticultural Society will meet next on Tuesday, June 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the Senior Centre Auditorium at the Community Centre. For more information visit tillsonburghorticultural.ca.

It’s Still Just Dirt – The Tillsonburg News, April 23, 2014
by Penny Esseltine

Anxious, eager, excited to get planting? It’s still too soon! But what we can do now is use this time to analyze and amend our garden soil so that our plants will have a better chance of success this year.

Denise Hodgins is a London-based landscape designer and horticultural specialist and when she came to talk to the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society earlier this month she gave us a quick and simple way to figure out the texture of garden soil.

How to analyze your garden soil
Take a large clean mason jar and put a cup and a half of soil from your garden in the jar. Fill the jar with water and “shake the dickens out of it,” Denise says. Sand will start to settle on the bottom in about a minute, Silt will settle above that in anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours and then clay will settle on top of that. Lastly, Denise says there may be some organic matter on top. You can wait until the water clears completely which may be as many as three days to get finer results, but if half of your soil composition is made up of sand you are in good shape.

Sand can be very course, course, medium, fine or very fine and similarly silt can be course, medium, fine or very fine. It’s the top layer of very fine silt that makes clay and too much clay in your garden soil is not a good thing. Denise says the problem with clay is that it dries out in the heat of the summer and makes it hard for plants to grow. “You and I can’t dig in a clay soil garden in July because it’s too hard.”

Luckily, in both of my samples I ended up with one inch of sand, just over a half inch of silt, about one quarter inch of clay and then some sticks and stuff floating on top of the about three and a half inches of water.

However, “If you do have clay soil,” Denise says, “be sure to dig a hole three times wider and three times deeper than the rootball of the plant that you are putting in the garden. Then mix in one bag of top soil and one bag of compost.” This will help to amend your soil and make it good garden soil for your plants to grow in.

What about compost?
Denise says, “you can never, ever, ever put too much compost on your lawns and gardens.” You can make your own compost in bins in the backyard or you can buy bags of compost at garden centres. Businesses that sell bulk garden materials like mulch and gravel or stone will often sell bulk compost too.

To kick start your own compost bins in the spring Denise recommends pouring two kettles of boiling water over the contents. You can also add a layer of shredded newspaper and then a layer of soil on top of that. “Worms love newspaper,” Denise says. This will get them moving through your compost bins.

“Earthworms are our friends,” Denise says. “They like moist soil and lots of organic matter. They make tunnels in the soil that allow plant roots to spread out without a lot of effort.”

Spring lawn care suggestions
With regard to spring lawn care Denise says:

• Don’t rake the thatch out of your lawn. It holds moisture in to feed your lawn throughout the summer.
• Put compost in your fertilizer spreader. Open it up wide and put a light layer of compost on your lawn.
• Add one teaspoon of dish soap to a kettle of boiling water and pour it on large anthills at dusk when the ants have come home for the night. Be careful not to use antibacterial soap because it can also kill good bacteria in the soil. Sunlight soap is good.

Let’s get planting

Denise advises that things will be late this year after our especially cold and abundantly snowy winter. “It will be toward the end of April before plant material arrives in local garden centres, she predicts.” But the end of April is pretty much upon us and with our newfound soil analysis and amendment measures in place, let’s get planting.

There will also be lots of annuals, perennials, shrubs, trees and garden materials for sale at the horticultural society’s 8th Annual Garden Auction on Tuesday, May 20 in the Lions Auditorium at the Tillsonburg Community Centre. Doors open at 5:45 p.m. and the live part of the auction starts at 6:30. All welcome.

For more information about the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society visit our website at tillsonburghorticultural.ca.