Happy 2nd Birthday to "garden muses"!

This Toronto gardening blog turns 2!

A big wet kiss goes out to all my readers who, I hope, have enjoyed reading my "garden muses" blog as much as I've writing it over the past year. If you're not open to the kiss, then enjoy a piece of my birthday muffin vicariously:

Two years and counting....

Keep visiting: I really don't know where my posts will take me!

By Paul Jung, author of "garden muses: a Toronto gardening blog"Google Google Find us on Google+ Find us on Google+

Allan Gardens Conservatory 2013 Easter Flower Show | part one

Well, at least it's blooming here in Toronto!

Inside of course. 

Winter is sloooowly leaving us and we may reach double digit (Celsius) temperatures next week. I'm seeing a flood of florist mophead hydrangeas in supermarkets and  hardware stores in blue, pink, white and variations. Easter is around the corner so Easter lilies are ubiquitous as well. Outside, tips of tulips, crocus and daffodils are poking up.

The Allan Gardens Conservatory in Toronto exhibits five types of flower shows each year, free of charge. Since the focus is on plants (annuals and tropicals) and not interlocking brick or McMansion boulder arrangements, I wonder why anyone would rather go to Canada Blooms than this inner-city horticultural jewel. True, the area is kind of sketchy (nice Harveys down the street, wink!) and the city staff don't make eye contact with you but you're there for the plants, not to be accosted by hot tub and hot sauce salespeople.

I digress.

During my visit today, the mass plantings of tender hydrangeas and Easter lilies were not fully in bloom yet so I'll have to go back in a week or so. In the meantime, please enjoy these pictures of  hydrangeas, daffodils, cyclamen and a blooming rhodo.

Wishing you a happy Easter for those who celebrate (and a good long weekend for those who don't!)

Variegated lacecaps, blue mopheads and variegated English ivy

White mopheads, blue variegated lacecaps and variegated English ivy

Blue lacecaps with white florets

A blooming (Catawba?) mauve rhododendron

Poet's Daffodil (Narcissus poeticus) at 
Allan Gardens Conservatory 
Easter Flower Show 2013

A composition of deep blue (and fragrant!) hyacinths, pale blue agapanthus, egg-yolk yellow primula, nestled among asparagus fern (?)
A contrast of  colours and textures

The pink is much more vibrant in real life: the halo around the yellow just kills me!

This should satisfy the delphinium masochists out there

Same grouping as above from the other side of the bed: the pink cyclamen cheers things up

Your spring container?

Down one path...

From the other side: you can imagine the smell coming off this drift of blue hyacinths!

A simple pastel palette, perfect for Easter

By Paul Jung, author of "garden muses: a Toronto gardening blog"Google Google Find us on Google+ Find us on Google+

Orchid Fever | book review | Eric Hansen

A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy

Source: http://amzn.to/ZfSa4A

There is something distinctive about the sight and sound of a human body falling from the rain forest canopy (p.  4.)

After reading this first sentence of Eric Hansen’s Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love. Lust, and Lunacy,  you get the feeling that this book isn’t just a “how-to” instruction manual on orchid identification and care. Orchid Fever does go over how growers look after their prized possessions  but Hansen is much more interested on how orchids affect collectors, growers, judges, “smugglers”, and seemingly normal people in bizarre, humourous, and, at times, tragic ways. In other words, how “orchid people” inevitably get the fever.





[A digression: Gardeners are prone to obsession: obsessed with collecting plants (often of the same species), obsessed with moving plants around, thinking about a new garden design, finding fault with others who “don’t get their vision.” I became one of these poor afflicted creatures after I inherited my junk-strewn backyard and slowly but surely dreamed about and gathered an embarrassing number of hostas. I saw minute but apparently important differences in leaf size, shape, colour and  flower fragrance among the thousands of varieties; differences not visible to my spouse or others on the “outside”.  Thinking back, it does seem silly and irrational but plants do these things. They cause a certain unreality, if you’re a collector, about the hows and whys of absolutely needing just one more daylily, rose, Japanese maple, or whatever you entrances you. Basements become makeshift and de facto greenhouses and yards become nurseries and farms.  There’s an unsavoury taste to all this hoarding but let’s be honest, many gardeners have felt this.]


Orchid Fever ‘s chapters are small vignettes starring a particular orchid and various supporting characters, locales and events showing the “ill” effects this orchid has on people, Hansen included. In the chapter “The Orchid Judges”, Hansen describes the haughtiness and pettiness shown by “expert” orchid judges during a flower competition and compares such boorish behavior with the understated and modest love demonstrated by a father-daughter orchid grower team. It seems that he, himself, is not immune to the seductive nature of orchids and their growers:

It wasn’t long before I noticed a young Chinese woman [named Teresa] with long black hair strolling down the main aisle of the exhibition. She was tall and slender; with fine features. Watching her pause to examine the plants in other booths, I got the sense that this was someone who had spent a lot of time with orchids. Teresa showed me one of her favorite orchids: Cymbidium sinense variety Faichow Dark. The plant blooms in February near the Chinese New Year, and it is often associated with that holiday. The small, dark purple flowers were intensely fragrant, giving off a warm, sweet, feminine scent that lured me back to the flowers several times. 'A naughty flower, no?' Teresa said, smiling. 'Like a perfumed dream,’ I replied. Teresa had the sort of dark, bottomless black eyes that you can fall into if you are not careful. (p. 121)

In another chapter titled” The Fox Testicle Ice Cream of Kemal Kucukonderuzunkoluk [sic]” describes the author’s visit to a Turkish ice cream maker to sample a frozen delicacy called salep made from ground “Fox Testicle” orchids (Orchis provincialis). According to Hansen, salep is a delicious concoction made from the orchid “flour”, sugar and milk, whipped together using metal rods in the Turkish tradition. The dessert, usually eaten with a knife and fork, is chewy and apparently is an aphrodisiac and has many other numerous health-enhancing properties. Bringing home some flour created this awkward and potentially tragic moment:

From Maras I flew back to Istanbul and then to New York, where I stood in line to clear U.S. customs. Suddenly I remembered the clear plastic bag of white salep  powder I had bought in Maras. Just as I realized that it looked exactly like a one-kilogram bag of heroin, I was motioned to the inspection counter. The officer rummaged through my suitcase and lifted out the bags of white powder. ‘Well, what do we have here?’ he asked. ‘Dried orchid tuber powder for making fox testicle ice cream,’I explained.‘Fox…testicle...ice cream?’ ‘A Turkish delicacy.’ The officer digested this info for a few minutes. He looked at me, looked at the bag, and then with a barely audible grunt of disgust, he tossed the packet of white powder into the suitcase and waved me through.” (pp. 98-9)

I had feverish thoughts throughout in this book. Hansen shows us glimpses of utter jaw-dropping beauty, vindictive politics and other shabby human behaviour, phantasms labeled as “orchid smugglers” and “orchid savers” popping in and out. The themes of seduction, lust and subliminal sexuality also run rampantly through Orchid Fever which is not surprising since members of the Cypripedium, Paphiopedilum, Bulbophyllum, Dendrobium, Cattleya (just to name a few) groups of orchids have evolved large and fragrant flowers (which are essentially sex organs) to attract pollinators. (How can anyone not  see human genitalia in many orchids? Many are named in dry botanical Latin for this reason, e.g. Cattleya labiata). Ironically, the pollinators that have had the greatest impact on orchids through habitat destruction and test tube propagation are humans.

Moth orchid (Phalaenopsis hybrid) 

Moth orchid (Phalaenopsis hybrid) 

Moth orchid (Phalaenopsis hybrid) 

Cattleya labiata var. semi-alba

Moth orchid (Phalaenopsis hybrid) 

Have orchids evolved over millenia to attract us to do the work bees and spiders normally do in the wild?  The attraction is strong and it's there. Through his entertaining travels, Hansen tells us the stories of individuals who, from an outsider’s perspective, have lost their minds by growing, collecting, protecting and loving orchids in their own peculiar ways. We’ve been warned of the passion and madness that these plants can cause.

Think about this the next time you see a gorgeous and beguiling Phalaenopsis orchid beckoning you from the garden centre shelf.

Orchid Fever | book review | Eric Hansen

Paul Jung reviews "Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy" by Eric Hansen

Through his entertaining travels, Hansen tells us the stories of individuals who, from an outsider’s perspective, have lost their minds by growing, collecting, protecting and loving orchids in their own peculiar ways. We’ve been warned of the passion and madness that these plants can cause. Think about this the next time you see a gorgeous and beguiling Phalaenopsis orchid beckoning you from the garden centre shelf.

Written by: Eric Hansen

Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy

Date published: 02/07/2001

4.5 / 5 stars

Toronto gardeners in the zone

Plant hardiness zones can answer the question "Will this plant survive in my garden?"

You’re in the garden center and see this plant that is begging to jump on your cart. You know that there’s a little label stuck somewhere in or on the pot outlining the plant’s common name,  botanical name (who cares!), and whether it “likes” sun, shade, or something in between. Then you see something along the lines that your new baby is “recommended for zone 6/5/4/3” and you wonder “what is this zone nonsense?”

To help growers of crops and ornamental plants, American Canadian agricultural authorities have divided and colour-coded the country up into climatic zones in which certain plants are assumed to be able to survive. Here's the Canadian plant hardiness map produced by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada:

Plant Hardiness Zones of Canada

Survival factors include the area’s  historical (typical) minimum winter temperatures, number of warm days per year, number of sunshine hours per year, soil type, volume and persistence of snow cover, and wind velocity and direction.  A plant’s “hardiness” (ability to survive) is then given a zone designation and corresponding number and map location  in  which experts believe a certain plant should survive in. The higher the number, the higher the minimum winter temperatures (and conversely, the lower the zone, the lower the expected minimum winter temperatures.)

The Toronto area is rated, using the Canadian system, in the 6 zone (American zone 5) so you should feel secure buying and planting perennials, shrubs and trees with a rating of 5 or lower. (Most annuals, herbs and vegetables we grow in the GTA don’t have a zone rating or a rating that is 8 or higher. This means that they will not survive a typical Toronto outside.)

Well, so what?

Remember that these zones were created by plant scientists (i.e. humans) so they’re really best guesses about a plant’s survival in a specific geographic area, all things being equal. Of course, all things not being equal, don’t be shocked that a perennial labeled for zone 4 doesn’t make through a particularly harsh winter or that a “tender” plant somehow does. A deep and persistent layer of snow really “pushes” the zone higher for many perennials and shrubs in our area.

Zone designations are not perfect (because the folks who dream them up are not, just saying) but instead give you a good, quick and easy to understand (hopefully) indication whether that expensive and trendy plant you just need to buy before your neighbor does will likely live and thrive. Zones are more like probabilities not absolutes.

For me, it’s better to think of growing plants in Toronto (or your particular area) within a range of zones that can be taken advantage of (“pushing the zone”) if you want to work extra in creating “less harsh” growing conditions by covering plants up for the winter, growing them along a south facing wall for us in the northern hemisphere or covering them with an extra deep layer of leaves in the fall to act as a protective mulch. Or you can be conservative, not get involved with all this pampering, and stick with plants with 3 or 4 designations. Boring, yes, but less heartache and pain on the credit card.

Toronto gardeners love to push the zone, earning bragging rights, and occasionally pushing back against their Vancouver/Victoria cousins. You can too but just remember that when it comes to a number on a label called the “hardiness zone”, plants will die (and thrive), zones be damned!

Sex and manure: the missing link now revealed

Why this Toronto gardener won't think about composting the same way

File this post under, literally, scatalogical humour or simply, WTF, but this is a gardening blog after all and an irreverent one at that. (There are way too many how-to-grow-this-plant blogs out there. I refuse to add to the tedium.) Anyway, I can't make this stuff up.

I'm a big fan of composting: either doing it yourself in your backyard with some sort of contraption (bin, pit, pile, whatever you have handy) or diverting your organic green waste via the municipality's recycling program (if offered in your area.) So it was with a tinge of curiosity, disapproval and arousal that I re-discovered about the benefits of composting offered in the calendar (and video!) below:

Apparently, the Fertile Earth Foundation in Miami wondered aloud

How many people think about their poop as often as we do? How often do you ponder your #2? It tells us a lot about our health and what we need to eat, if we are dehydrated and so on. Plus, did you know there are safe ways to turn even our waste into Humanure? Yes, that is composted human poop! Your poop could be turned into to super rich black gold! Ok, maybe we're grossing you out. Let's change the subject. How often do you think about sex? Or beautiful women? This project is a tasteful synergy of those 2 things: The Ladies of Manure  2013 Calendar.

Now, don't start flaming me for bringing this non-profit organization's eco-friendly message to your collective conscience (something about not shooting the messenger.) I think we can all agree that while the goal of composting your coffee grounds and apple cores is noble, using sex to sell the message is cynical and unsettling to most people. (One can't say unsuccessful though as the Foundation has raised over $5 000 to date.)

Which got me thinking about sex and gardening, off the top of my head. There's always been an uncomfortable association in the West between the two topics, going all the way back (for believers) to Adam and Eve. To add human waste in the mix, metaphorically, is really too much for some tender gardeners. Since I'm from the East (China) where fertilizing with human manure is still common and not taboo, the concept isn't gag-me gross or mind-blowing.

I didn't think someone had the "vision" to incorporate three human needs (to excrete, to pro-create and to garden) in a calendar so either kudos or arrows to the creator.


By the way, this is what our fair city's recycling and waste containers look like if you're curious:

Source: Source: insidetoronto.com

A little less sexy, I'd say!







By Paul Jung, author of "garden muses: a Toronto gardening blog"

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The 2013 Perennial Plant of the Year™ is....

Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’ (Variegated Solomon's Seal)

It took me 2 months to get this out to you, loyal reader, but the Perennial Plant Association (which determines these kind of things and actually trademarked that designation) has listed the "winner" for this year:

Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’
(Japanese Solomon’s Seal)

I have the common non-variegated version in my zone 5ish backyard that receives full sun for half the day. My clump of Solomon's Seal has grown faithfully and slowly over the years in an area that has rich amended soil with average watering. Nothing spectacular, just does its thing with the arching stems and tubular white flowers dependably. I also find it somewhat susceptible to slug and snail damage so you want to place a sacrificial hosta nearby!

Here are the cultural requirements for Solomon's Seal  

A classic (i.e., over-used) combination I see for the shade garden is Solomon's Seal, a big blue hosta like "Elegans" and Japanese Painted Fern. 

Do you grow it (variegated/non-striped version) and what do you think about P.o "V" as this year's winner?