New Gardens in East York, Toronto

Adding Colour and Form to an Empty Canvas

I come across, occasionally, requests to plant gardens in newly constructed spaces which has its pros and cons. On the con side, the soil that's unceremoniously dumped in the garden by the contractor can be full of pieces of brick, glass and used coffee cups. On the other hand, if the contractor is kind and considerate, the new space (in this post, a raised bed) has brand new topsoil: 

East York Front Garden Installation Before 

I didn't want to show the front of the house, for privacy reasons, but the bed is located right below the front windows. New stucco can have an overpowering look so some short plants are needed to soften the house's appearance. I avoided planting shrubs which would hide the windows sooner than later so I chose shorter (3 feet tall or less) perennials which offer flowering throughout the season and give pollinators a reason to visit. 

 

East York Front Garden Installation After 

In the backyard, the client wanted to develop this small area below the deck which is also clearly visible from the backyard:

East York Back Garden Installation Before 

I wanted to show you more proof that, long term, landscape fabric is useless. The weeds you see have germinated on top on or grown up and through the black textile. I pulled his "rug" of weeds off and dug out the many deeply-rooted weeds in order to prepare the bed for new perennials. 

East York Back Garden Installation Before 

East York Back Garden Installation Before 

The existing soil was adequate in texture but I added more composted manure to give the new perennials a head start. The picture below shows gaps between the plants due to a small tree stump which wasn't dug out. The client also didn't get all the plants I suggested for this area as the garden center was short stock. Hopefully, she'll get the rest of the list this season to fill in the spaces.

East York Back Garden Installation After 

East York Back Garden Installation After 

East York Back Garden Installation After 

From Weedy to Wonderful?

A Front Garden Renovation in East York

Performing garden makeovers (miracles?) seem to be my specialty as I've done more than a few this season. Although the actual weeding can be tiring, it's very gratifying to see order emerging out of the chaos due to my two hands (and strong back, for now.) 

I recently was invited to renovate a small front garden in the Toronto neighbourhood of East York.  Take a look at this "before" picture of the main central bed in front of the house, looking down from the porch:

East York Toronto Front Garden Renovation Before 

As the saying goes, the space has "a lot of potential" which is a euphemism for "a lot of physical work is involved"  in getting the garden back to a clean slate. Given the amount of weeds which have grown unimpeded all season, this means methodical hand digging in order to remove all the weeds by their roots. (I don't use herbicides so weeding for me involves a long handled shovel.)

Our immediate goals (after discussing with the client) were to make the main front street bed presentable by removing the weeds, planting a few dozen daffodil, grape hyacinth and allium bulbs for next spring and laying down some cedar mulch.

After a long day, both beds next to the path leading to the front door were weed-free and ready to accept the new bulbs and future perennials. Lastly, I spread a layer of mulch in order to reduce weeding and watering requirements. 

Here are more before and after pictures of the small project from various angles around the sidewalk and front porch:

East York Toronto Front Garden Renovation After 

By the way, I left the bulb packaging on the beds so that the client can take some pictures or notes and have an idea what bulbs will emerge in what locations next April.

 Toronto Front Garden Makeover in East York Before 

 Toronto Front Garden Makeover in East York After

 Toronto Front Garden Renovation East York Before 

 Toronto Front Garden Renovation East York After 

 Toronto Front Garden Renovation East York Before 

 Toronto Front Garden Renovation East York After 

East York Toronto Front Garden Renovation Before 

East York Toronto Front Garden Renovation After

East York Toronto Front Garden Makeover Before 

East York Toronto Front Garden Makeover After 

I'll provide the homeowner a plant shopping list so that during next spring, she can get the perennials and fill up this prominently visible garden with lots of colour and form. So, yes, I'm hopeful that we can go from weedy to wonderful in a few seasons, now that the mundane but necessary task of clearing out the gardens of mature weeds is out of the way.

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 

A Front Garden Cleanup in East York

Small Front Yard, Large Potential

Having a house on a busy street can have its advantages but if the frontage isn't kept tidy...it may be known as "that house". You know, that house which the sanctimonious neighbours gossip about because, after all, if things are left to set to seed (literally) outside, it must be the same with the seedy owners inside.

Some homeowners do care about their local reputation while others don't give a flying fig and usually I'm contacted by the former who need to do something to re-establish some sort of baseline with their yards. This baseline doesn't necessarily mean new construction or new plants. I'm reminded of this "minimum standard" of a tidy front yard when a former client advised me during a garden cleanup that "we're not trying to re-create Versailles, we just want to show (the newly weeded and pruned garden) that someone gives a damn."  

East York Toronto Front Garden Fall Cleanup Before

I think the owner of this East York (an area in Toronto), similarly, just wants to show and prove to her neighbours and anyone walking or driving by her place set on a busy street that she does indeed give a damn about the front yard's appearance. 

East York Toronto Front Garden Fall Cleanup Before 

The front yard is very small (maybe 30 feet by 20 feet), composed of four small beds surrounded by turf and bisected by an interlocking brick paver path leading to the front door. It faces east and gets full sun until early afternoon. 

East York Toronto Front Garden Fall Cleanup Before

Toronto East York Front Garden Fall Cleanup Before

Toronto East York Front Garden Fall Cleanup Before

Toronto Front Garden Fall Cleanup Before in East York 

Pre-cleanup, the beds and paver path were full of weeds. One pumpkin plant had mildewed leaves and yielded one small pumpkin, which wasn't Hallowe'en worthy!

Toronto Front Garden Fall Cleanup Before in East York 

East York Toronto Front Garden Cleanup Before 

Post-Cleanup:

East York Toronto Front Garden Cleanup After 

The turf/grass is mediocre and weedy but the homeowner expressed an interest to remove all the grass and install random flagstone or some other type of hardscape. She's simply sick and tired of "mowing" the very small area of turf using a "weed whacker" (line trimmer). I can't blame her!

East York Toronto Front Garden Fall Cleanup After 

East York Toronto Front Garden Fall Cleanup After 

The garden beds next to the front porch hold a lot of promise. She could plant many full-sun pollinator-friendly perennials and introduce blocs of colour and texture. In other words, increase the house's "curb appeal" to the many onlookers who pass by for relatively low cost. 

Take it from me, there's minimal competition from her immediate neighbours for East York's "Front Garden of the Year" award, if such a thing exists, so it's a very low bar to cross over.

East York Toronto Front Garden Fall Cleanup After 

Toronto East York Front Garden Fall Cleanup After 

Toronto East York Front Garden Fall Cleanup After

Toronto Front Garden Fall Cleanup After in East York 

Toronto Front Garden Fall Cleanup After in East York

Tree of Heaven leads to Garden From Hell

An East York, Toronto Garden Cleanup

A character in a Robert Frost poem opined that "Good fences make good neighbors" and I find after living and gardening within a large and congested city like Toronto, this sentiment is often true. Small postage stamp-sized (people still use stamps to mail or even mail letters anymore?) backyards in which I usually work tend to focus the attention inwards towards (usually) a patio or deck close to the back door and the concept of a "borrowed view" is not appropriate or even desired.

Privacy is also often very important for many homeowners and since there are by-laws here concerning the maximum height of a fence you can put up, people often plant hedges at the base of their fences in the hope of someday walling themselves in from the noise and perceived unwanted attention of their neighbours.

And, yes, when it comes to gardening, "outdoor room" design, plant choices, etc., your tastes and aesthetics will naturally be a little (or a lot) different from your neighbours'. For example, you may have spent much time, effort and money to design, build and maintain your piece of Paradise in the back (or paid some company to do so). In short, you "give a damn about your garden" as one of my clients stated after I asked him why he hired me.

But what if your neighbour doesn't give a damn about her garden and a fence is useless in ensuring goodwill between adjacent garden owners, horticulturally-speaking?

Tree of Heaven Saplings in
an East York, Toronto Backyard 

From the street, Nadia's (my client's) home and her neighbour's look very average and unremarkable, like houses you pass by everyday without giving a second thought. She hired me to weed and tidy the backyard and as I was walking towards the back garden, I seen the above, looking into the neighbour's "garden" (there was no gate).

You'll have to use your imagination a little here and think of a narrow and long (easily 30' x 100') area completely covered by Tree of Heaven saplings and suckers, annual and perennial weeds and G*d knows what.


The picture above shows Ailanthus' distinctive large pinnately compound leaves which, frankly, stink of burnt rubber (to me) when rubbed or crushed. It's truly a pest: an fast growing and invasive tree that self-seeds and suckers readily in all soils and settings.

At first, I assumed the homeowner was deceased and the house empty of years but Nadia reassured me: "Oh no, she's very much alive."

And here's the view from Nadia's side looking over the fence into her neighbour's yard. The garden, too, is "very much alive":

Tree of Heaven Saplings in
an East York, Toronto
 Neighbour's Backyard 

And the culprit and the source of all these Ailanthus altissima saplings and suckers? It's this huge tree in the same yard:

Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima)
in an East York, Toronto Backyard

If you're on the lookout for a Tree of Heaven, you'll soon find the tree almost anywhere in the city: laneways, alleys, front gardens, back gardens, abandoned lots, at the base of buildings, anywhere! The tree produces a ton of winged seeds (samaras) which often stay attached to the tree over winter, drop in spring and germinate readily. More problematic is the relentless suckering the Tree of Heaven is well-known for which is not surprising as it's in the same family as sumacs (and often confused for them). While the seedlings are easy to pull out by hand, the suckers are not. Cutting a sucker or sapling down to the ground will only encourage it to re-sprout even more vigorously.

(For more details about this pest tree, here's a great link by the PennState Extension: Tree-of-Heaven)

Dealing with a Neighbour's Tree of Heaven during a Garden Cleanup

Nadia contacts me once a year to weed and tidy up her East York, Toronto back garden and while the severity of weeds can vary yearly, what doesn't change is the existence of Tree of Heaven seedlings and suckers growing in her garden. 2018's cleanup wasn't any different from 2017's visit and likely 2019's cleanup will be similar: pulling and digging out dozens of baby Ailanthus altissimas.

Here are some "before" pictures of the backyard cleanup:

East York Toronto Backyard
Summer Garden Cleanup Before 

Toronto Backyard Summer
Garden Cleanup Before East York 

 East York Toronto Backyard
Garden Cleanup Before 

East York Toronto Backyard
Garden Cleanup Before

Toronto Summer Weeding and
Garden Cleanup Before East York 

East York Toronto Backyard
Garden Cleanup Before

You'll notice in most of the pictures, Tree of Heaven progeny are growing quickly.

After the Cleanup:

East York Toronto Backyard
Summer Garden Cleanup After 

Toronto Backyard Summer
Garden Cleanup After East York 

 East York Toronto Backyard
Garden Cleanup After

East York Toronto Backyard
Garden Cleanup After 

Toronto Summer Weeding and
Garden Cleanup After East York

 East York Toronto Backyard
Garden Cleanup After

While it was gratifying to remove the weeds and, particularly, the Ailanthus seedlings and suckers for Nadia, it was also sobering to think that they will return in a year's time and for gosh-knows how long since there are no plans removing the giant parent tree next door.

Tree of Heaven, pffft!