Peek A Boo, I See You!

A Beaconsfield Village Front Garden Reveals Itself (With My Help)

Garden Rescue Hero (trademark, just kidding) comes to save the day! Luckily for me, the size of this central Toronto garden in the Beaconsfield Village neighbourhood is very small. Let's just say, my heavy duty loppers came in very handy with this cleanup.

Beaconsfield Village Toronto front yard
summer garden cleanup before 

All the various shrubs were unpruned for several seasons and gave the homeowners, neighbours and pedestrians that unintended wild Amazonian look.

Beaconsfield Village Toronto front yard
summer garden cleanup before

The picture below wonderfully shows a type of grape vine (wild or cultivated) that is using the large burning bush as some sort of arbour. The grape was also growing up into the small-sized maple which is the dominant tree in this tiny space.

Toronto Beaconsfield Village front
yard garden cleanup before 

A closeup below of the "forest floor" showing a mixture of annual weeds and Siberian Elm saplings.

Toronto Beaconsfield Village front
yard summer garden cleanup before 

A type of wild rose (perhaps a shrub rose) which obviously hasn't been pruned for several seasons and menacing the neighbours enjoying their bench. But this is Toronto, no one ever sits this close to the sidewalk!

Toronto Beaconsfield Village front
yard summer garden cleanup before

Order and scale have been restored!

Beaconsfield Village Toronto front
yard summer garden cleanup after 

Besides weeding, I pruned the two rear burning bushes by about two or three feet down so that they didn't look so monstrous. I also cut off one or two small side branches of the maple (you can see its trunk in the middle of the picture above) which were blocking access to the front door and the along the sidewalk).

Beaconsfield Village Toronto front
yard summer garden cleanup after

I cut back the grape vine and wild rose to about three feet. The entire garden gave a big sigh of relief after this cleanup. I know the clients did!

Toronto Beaconsfield Village front
yard garden cleanup after 

Now we have space to grow nice things or, at least, to have a layer of cedar mulch or wood chips laid down to reduce weeding tasks.

Beaconsfield Village front yard
Toronto garden cleanup after 

I knew there was a garden in there somewhere!

A Backyard Cleanup in East York: the Unglamorous Side of Gardening

Fine Gardening? Well....

I come across all sorts of definitions of what customers believe gardening encompasses. For the most part, it means weeding, pruning and planting. You know, the horticultural stuff you'd expect. But occasionally, I'm hired for more mundane "property maintenance" tasks which may cover garbage pickup. I don't mind. as long as things are not hazardous to retrieve. And I don't deal with pet poo!

This short post covers weeding part of a small property in East York. No roses here, unfortunately, but if I'm solving a client's problem, the lack of flowers or shrubs isn't a big deal. Her back "yard" is more driveway and patio than actual garden beds (there are two raised beds but nothing in them.) 

As the "before" pictures immediately below show, a general cleanup was in order.

East York Backyard Summer
Garden Cleanup Before 

East York Toronto Backyard
Summer Garden Cleanup Before 

Toronto Backyard Summer
Garden Cleanup in East York Before 

Toronto East York Backyard
Summer Garden Cleanup Before

Afterwards.........

The client has no intentions of planting anything in the raised beds although they do receive a fair amount of direct sunlight. She prefers to spend her money in keeping the front gardens respectable but, eventually, the sight of tall weeds and garbage out of her back window was too much for her; hence, I was contacted.

My biggest challenge here was trying to no twist an ankle navigating the pile of old bricks to get to the clumps of mature Dog Strangling Vines. And there were many nails, broken pieces of tiles and other construction debris to avoid as I was weeding the patio.

As you can tell, I rarely work in pastoral estates. And that's fine. All that turf is unnerving!

East York Backyard Summer
Garden Cleanup After

East York Toronto Backyard
Summer Garden Cleanup After 

Toronto Backyard Summer
Garden Cleanup in East York After 

Toronto East York Backyard
Summer Garden Cleanup After