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.

It’s Still Just Dirt – the Tillsonburg News, March 19, 2014
by Penny Esseltine

June and Roy Stewart live about 15 minutes south of Tillsonburg and on their property they grow vegetables in a very large space as well as all kinds of flowers. June grows most of the plants from seed. She says she started this about 20 years ago because it’s cheaper to buy seeds than to buy plants.

June starts the seeds in flats on tables in her basement using Pro-Mix as the growing medium. The Stewarts buy Pro-Mix by the bale at Underhill Farm Supplies. June says she uses two to three bales of this each year to fill about 12 flats for flowers and 12 for vegetables.

Right now she has lights on all of the time, a mix of fluorescent tubes and incandescent bulbs. They warm the room until the seeds germinate. After that she will have the lights on about 12 hours and off about 12 hours each day to simulate natural light. The flats are covered with plastic domes which keep the condensation in. If the flats seem dry she mists them using a watering can. The lights are positioned 12” to 18” above the domes.

June has already planted seeds for mauve and purple petunias, trailing and upright lobelia, eggplant, burgundy beans, honey snack carrots, bolero peas, radishes, Spanish onion, Brussels sprouts, dwarf marigolds, corn, and late cabbage. Around the first of April she will move them into the greenhouse that Roy built. Seeds for tomatoes, peppers and onions will be started right in the greenhouse. Then gradually all of the plants will be moved outside into the gardens around the 24th of May.

Sometimes, June says, she has trouble with plants damping off or rotting below the ground. She went on the internet to see what is recommended to prevent this and chamomile tea was one of the suggestions. Before planting seeds this year June wet the Pro-Mix in the flats with chamomile tea.

Petunias, peas, and beans are some of the easiest seeds to grow June says. Blue poppies are very difficult. June says she has tried blue poppies four times with seeds she brought home from Kew Gardens, from Scotland, and from the Stratford Garden Festival. The last blue poppy seeds June tried came from Horticultural Society friends Marian Smith and Joan Massicotte. No matter where the seeds have come from June says she hasn’t been successful with blue poppies yet. Sometimes carrots and parsnips can be difficult. “For two years in a row”, June says, “I have planted parsnip seeds right into the ground but they never came up.”

This year June is trying eggplant. Her granddaughter is getting married and would like baskets with gourds and purple eggplants for the decor.

June says that about half of the seeds she plants she has harvested from her garden the previous year, and the other half she buys, often through seed catalogues from Stokes, Veseys, McFayden’s, or the Ontario Seed Company (OSC).

Some of the seeds that June bought this year are Crazy Daisy Chrysanthemums, heliotrope and loose-head flowering purple cabbage.

Among the seeds she has harvested are coneflower, ligularia, lavatera, lupins, datura, castor beans, ornamental beans, Korean bellflower and non-climbing clematis.

If you are harvesting seed in the fall June says to make sure that they are dry. “Seeds that are brown are ripe but if they’re white they’re not.” Put the seeds in pill bottles with a little bit of silica to keep them dry.

With everything that June grows from seed she has enough plants to fill her flower gardens as well as a vegetable garden that Roy estimates measures about 100 yards one way and 20 yards the other. June says that she plants the rows fairly far apart so that Roy can keep the weeds down between the rows with a gas-powered Rototiller. For the flower gardens Roy brings in a truckload of mulch to keep the weeds down and the water in.

For the Horticultural Society’s Annual Garden Auction on May 20 June is growing hibiscus trionum seeds called Simply Love. The flowers will be white with a chocolate purple centre.

June says what she enjoys most from planting seeds is that it’s just fun. “It’s fun to watch the plants grow and you get a whole lot of plants.” For those who are looking to venture into the world of growing plants from seed June’s advice is to “start small.” Roy on the other hand says, “don’t.” Both agree the success in growing seeds in really a matter of “by guess and by gosh” although temperature and sunshine are especially critical at the greenhouse stage.

Next Meeting
The Tillsonburg Horticultural Society will meet on Tuesday, April 1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Senior Centre Auditorium at the Tillsonburg Community Centre. Our guest speaker is landscape designer and horticultural consultant Denise Hodgins who will talk about “Strangers in Your Lawn and Garden”.

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

It’s Still Just Dirt, February 2014
by Penny Esseltine

“Right now lawns are sleeping under the snow waiting to come alive,” says Jim Galbraith talking to the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society earlier this month. Jim is Manager of Landscape Services, Facilities Management, at the University of Western Ontario, and we all know that they have lovely lawns there. “Lawns are an important part of our green world,” Jim says.

Here, for all of us who labour to grow grass with anything from poor to mediocre to lush lawn results, are just 10 of the tips that Jim says will help us make lawns that are “thicker, healthier, and greener than our neighbour’s.”

In the Spring

1. If you roll your lawn, roll it when the soil is dry. Rolling your lawn in the early spring when it’s wet compacts the soil and sets the stage for bad growth.

2. Aeration can improve compaction in your lawn. Aerate your grass when it is actively growing, between May and early June (or between Labour Day and mid-October). Don’t rake the plugs off the lawn. Just let them break down.

3. “Soil structure is the most important element in a healthy lawn”, Jim says. Adding a layer of soil to turf is called top dressing. Apply top dressing immediately after aeration. This can be hard work.

4. First aerate, then top dress, then overseed. Use perennial rye grass to overseed in the spring. At just $4 to $5 a pound you can fill a fertilizer spreader with it and away you go. Perennial rye grass is drought tolerant and will come up in three to five days. Generally use one half to one pound of seed per 1,000 square feet of lawn.

5. “Try not to be the first person in your neighbourhood to mow your lawn in the spring,” Jim says. “Be the last and mow at a height of two to two and a half inches.”

Throughout the Summer

6. Never cut more than a third of the height of the grass at a time. As the temperature gets hotter, raise your mowing height to three inches. Avoid cutting your lawn in the heat of the day (between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.) and be sure to keep your lawn mower blades sharp. Mow when rain is forecast.

7. Mulching is the best way to return grass clipping nutrients to the soil as fertilizer.

8. If you irrigate, water early in the morning or late at night. How much should you water? Jim says if you water to fill a tuna can every five to seven days that’s good. “A little stress will help the roots to go deeper,” he says.

In the Fall

9. The very best time to fertilize is Labour Day weekend. Use a slow release fertilizer which lasts for six to eight weeks. “It will give your grass steroids for the winter,” Jim says.

10. Overseed with Kentucky Blue Grass which Jim says is the nicest looking variety of grass. “This is the cadillac of grass seed,” he says. “It germinates in 30 to 35 days and you might think it isn’t coming up but you will see it next spring for sure.”

Jim invites us to take a walking tour of the UWO campus in the summer. Check out the grass but enjoy too the Arboretum (where most of the trees are labelled), the Beryl Ivey Garden in the centre of campus, and the Art Gallery which has a nice sitting area. There’s an excellent Walking Tour brochure available. Visit Western on the web at www.uwo.ca.

The next meeting of the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society is set for Tuesday, March 4 when Hetty Teuber from Silverthorn Landscape Supplies in St. Thomas talks about Hardscapes in the Garden. Start time is 7:30 p.m. in the Senior Centre Auditorium at the Tillsonburg Community Centre. Everyone welcome.

For additional information about the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society check out our website at tillsonburghorticultural.ca.

It’s Still Just Dirt, January 2014
by Penny Esseltine

Nothing beats winter more than the promise of warm weather ahead and that’s just what Lynn Bisschop brought to the January Tillsonburg Horticultural Society gathering with her presentation on Hostas. Lynn owns Shades of Green Hostas, a garden centre just south of Aylmer.

Lynn tells us that there are 43 species of hostas and from these there are now more than 8,000 different varieties. Hostas are native to Japan, Korea and China. Lynn says they can survive in a variety of habitats including woodlands, marshes, grasslands and near rivers and streams. “Hostas are shade tolerant,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean deep dark back of the garden shade”. Generally full sun to part shade suits them fine.

Hostas can be propagated by division or by tissue culture in a lab. “The odds of mutations are much higher with tissue culture,” Lynn says, but tissue culture provides the means to keep up with gardeners’ increasing demands for hosta plants. Some hostas are more difficult to propagate than others and that’s when the cost goes up. Lynn says she has spent 10 years working at splitting a hosta called Gunther’s Prize. She says it’s a difficult one.

Gardeners use interesting terms to describe hostas. Leaves can be wavy or bumpled, rippled or seer-suckered. Flowers can be tubular or bell-shaped in shades of lavender and white. Stems are called legs. But it’s in naming different varieties that word play really shines.

From the species called Sagae a family has grown to include varieties like Big Hobber, Clifford’s Forest Fire, Fat Cat, Kiwi Skyscraper and Liberty. From Blue Mouse comes Mouse Ears, Itty Bitty, Church Mouse, Mouse Trap, Mighty Mouse, and many, many more.

Blue Angel is a great big blue hosta that can measure seven feet across. Beckoning is like Blue Angel but the centre goes yellow. Earth Angel’s margins are yellow. With Guardian Angel the centre is misted.

The names of hostas that have been derived from Striptease are especially fun. There’s Lady Godiva, Full Monty, Gypsy Rose, Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, Risky Business and again, a whole lot more.

A hosta called June is one of the most popular hostas year after year, and Empress Wu is touted to be the biggest in size. Both Elvis and Stephen King have hostas named for them. Lynn says one of her favourites is Heavenly Tiara which is green with a wide white margin and it comes from a line that includes Golden Tiara, Diamond Tiara and Diamonds are Forever.

If you would like to see for yourself what any of these hosta look like visit Lynn’s website at www.shadesofgreenhostas.ca. Photos are displayed alphabetically and the chance of you finding the hosta you are looking for is extremely good.

The Hosta of the Year for 2014 is called Abiqua Drinking Gourd. It’s a dark blue-green hosta with seer-suckered leaves that form deeply cupped foliage. It’s medium sized, about 22” high and 46” across. Near white flowers bloom in mid summer.

In other hosta news, the Ontario Hosta Society will be holding its annual one-day Hosta Forum on Sunday, April 6 at the Glencairn Golf Club in Halton Hills. For info about this visit their website at www.ontariohostasociety.com.

And speaking of websites, be sure to check out the totally revamped Tillsonburg Horticultural Society website at tillsonburghorticultural.ca.

Take the Yawn Out of Your Lawn is up next when the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society meets on Tuesday, February 4 at 7:30 p.m. in the Senior Centre Auditorium at the Tillsonburg Community Centre. Our guest speaker is Jim Galbraith from the University of Western Ontario. An annual society membership costs $15 and it’s just $2 for non-members to attend each meeting. Everyone is welcome.

It’s Still Just Dirt, Tillsonburg News, December 2014
by Penny Esseltine

The Guelph area Christmas Joy Home Tour raises money for Hope House. Supporting 1000 people per month with food provisions for their families is just one piece of what Hope House does. Staff and volunteers also coordinate edu-kitchen classes, operate a clothing bureau, deliver 400 Christmas hampers, and they filled 770 backpacks for children in need at the start of the school year. The home tour gains widespread support from area retailers, designers, decorators, caterers and food businesses, florists and garden centres and it attracted more than 1,200 visitors in 2012.

In this (its ninth year) the Christmas Joy Home Tour was the primary destination for the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society’s festive season coach tour. Christine Nagy coordinates tours for the society and she says she chose this event because it has an excellent reputation and it’s early enough in the season for members to get great ideas for decorating their own homes. The self-guided tour featured eight unique properties and our group had only enough time to visit five of them.

We started at a lovely new home in Salem and the festive decor in the open-concept living area included collections of white birch branches throughout. One large branch suspended between corner windows over a spa bath supported large coloured Christmas balls hanging on satin ribbons over the bath. An unusual bouquet of pussy willows topped the Christmas tree.

In Elora we toured a home with bright green and red floral arrangements outside featuring hydrangeas spray-painted red and hanging baskets covered in deciduous leaves hot glued in layers to create natural rustic looking containers. Inside an amazing collection of books, art and red accents filled every room. Bejewelled, ornate hair clips held cloth napkins in the dining room and the lush fresh floral centrepiece filled the middle of the table almost from one end to the other. Through French doors the second floor balcony overlooking the pool and river was dressed and decorated for the festive season every bit as much as the house.

Many considered an original stone farmhouse built in 1891 the highlight of the home tour. It was lovingly restored and renovated through the past 11 years using period materials like barn board for walls and two inch thick kitchen flooring from an 1800’s granary. With its exposed stone walls, high peaked ceilings, old beams and original plank floors the home really didn’t need to be decorated for Christmas to enthrall visitors. Six urns spaced across the front of the property featured interesting red metal art Christmas tree shapes with mixed greenery and lighted branches.

Two homes on older streets in central Guelph were the last we toured. Copper-coloured ribbons and magnolia leaves in evergreen arrangements decorated the wrap-around porch of a two-storied home built in 1903. In the dining room tall vases with small pinecones in the bottom supported even taller amaryllis stems with pure white blooms. Serene candles perched in long stemmed goblets and the Christmas tree was tastefully loaded with decorative owls, white berries, fur wreaths and Christmas balls formed from the ring cut ends of many, many tree branches. Huge silver candleholders and cedar branches dressed the top of the piano and red cardinals with pine, red berries and white birch decorated the mantle and the stairway bannisters.

The large front porch of the 1872 limestone house known as Rose Bank was absolutely full of urns, wreaths, lanterns and sleighs decorated with cedar, boxwood and magnolia branches, pine cones and both large and small woven grapevine Christmas balls. The Italianate style rear courtyard featured multi-coloured Christmas lights woven through cedar rope, red dogwood stems in crocks and a rather large miniature train festooned for Christmas. The interior designer/home owner here advises that lace, pearls, dried flowers and copper are huge elements in decor this year.

In addition to the Christmas Joy Home Tour our group enjoyed lunch and shopping in Elora, a fine group dinner in Guelph and the great camaraderie that comes with spending an entire day out and about with horticultural friends. We arrived home with decorating ideas to try out for ourselves and we’re fortunate to be able to share them with you here along with all our good wishes for you and yours at Christmastime.

If you’re looking for something new to connect with in 2014, consider the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society. Our January meeting is set for Tuesday, January 7 starting at 7:30 p.m. in the Senior Centre Auditorium at the Tillsonburg Community Centre. Kicking off the year is guest speaker Lynn Bisschop talking about hostas and lilies. An annual membership in the Society costs $15. Everyone welcome.

For additional information about the Horticultural Society visit our website (currently in the process of being rebuilt) at www.tillsonburghorticultural.ca. If you’re interested in the Christmas Joy Home Tour in 2014 keep an eye on their website at www.christmasjoy.ca.