A Leslieville, Toronto Spring Garden Cleanup

A New Client, A Similar Job 

It's been a busy month so far with more spring cleanups on the way. This post covers a recent job back in a neighbourhood I often visit: Leslieville. The properties here are usually small in area and therefore easy for me to work by myself. 

I'll start with the cleanup in the backyard. As you can probably see in the pictures to follow, I pruned a lot of last season's growth:

Leslieville Back Garden Spring Cleanup Before

Leslieville Back Garden Spring Cleanup After 

Toronto Leslieville Back Garden Spring Cleanup Before 

Toronto Leslieville Back Garden Spring Cleanup After

Toronto Leslieville Garden Spring Cleanup After 

Leslieville Back Garden Spring Cleanup Before 

And in the front, I tidied up a very small bed:

Leslieville Front Garden Spring Cleanup Before

Leslieville Front Garden Spring Cleanup After 

Note the still small Colorado Blue Spruce to the right. I strongly recommended to the owner that this small tree need to be removed sooner than later. It's not a dwarf, You can easily imagine how massive this spruce will be. Simply the wrong tree for the wrong spot.

A Toronto Pollinator Garden: A Leslieville Front Garden Makeover

If I Build It, They Should Come

Who or what are "they"?  In some gardens, these would be insects, birds and other animals while in other gardens, such wildlife isn't encouraged or even actively discouraged to drop by. I prefer to build and work in gardens that are alive with activity and are visually interesting so row upon row of boxwood hedges don't do it for me.

I help create "oases" for bees, butterflies and other species which are always foraging for their daily meal among a desert of either non- or poorly-productive landscapes. ("Oases" is a grandiose word so perhaps "buffets"?)

I've received many requests this spring to plant pollinator gardens. The message seems to be getting out to more Toronto homeowners: by planting native species, both our animal friends benefit with food and habitat and garden owners don't have to continually worry about spraying for the usual ornamental plant pests and diseases.

Another enlightened client has realized these benefits by hiring me to convert their small (tiny but typical) Leslieville front garden into a functional, resilient and attractive space. The garden faces west and receives full sun all day as there are no nearby trees or west-facing buildings to cast shade.

Here's a "before" picture showing the space:

Toronto Pollinator Friendly Leslieville Front Garden Before 

The enclosed part is obviously small but, unfortunately for me, completely filled with Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica) that has travelled here and, for lack of a better word, infested the exposed soil areas from the hedge to the fence. So in order to prepare the bed for the new pollinator-friendly perennials, I had to hand dig it all out or as much as I could since some of the bulbs are tiny.

I added some composted cow manure as the soil texture was mediocre, transplanted and applied a thin layer of mulch to reduce weeding and watering needs.

Here's a similar view from the front landing looking down a few hours afterwards:

Toronto Pollinator Friendly Leslieville Front Garden After

Pollinator-attracting perennials include the usual suspects: Echinacea, Liatris, Agastache and others. Since they are getting full sun, it now is up to the homeowner to water regularly to help get these small one gallon-sized at least through the first summer.

More "before" and "after" pictures from various angles:

Leslieville Toronto Pollinator Friendly Front Garden with Native Plants Before

Leslieville Toronto Pollinator Friendly Front Garden with Native Plants After

Leslieville Toronto Pollinator Friendly Front Garden Before

Leslieville Toronto Pollinator Friendly Front Garden After 

Toronto Leslieville Pollinator Front Garden After 

Toronto Leslieville Pollinator Front Garden After

I've built it so we'll see if they come....

 

A Leslieville Front Garden Makeover

Garden Makeover or "Resurrection"? You Decide...

Everyone's busy, that's just a fact of modern life. For many homeowners, looking after the garden is low on the list of priorities. Very low. I'd say, for some, visiting the dentist is likely more enjoyable than getting out there on your knees weeding in the summer heat. In my case, it's easier for them to pay me to have my rear up pulling at unwanted pieces of vegetation.

So I'm guessing that someone would probably be very busy and/or uninterested with garden maintenance or neighbour's opinions to let the front garden to look like this:

Leslieville Toronto Front
Garden Summer Cleanup Before 

(Please note: I'm not criticizing or judging anyone specifically as my own front garden is horrible.)

It's not an uncommon scenario: you'll walk by well-kept (or at least minimally-kept) gardens, one after another, down the street and then stop and notice a front yard that's "gotten away." Based on the "before" pictures in this post, you could say that the weeds have gotten away and out of hand:

Leslieville Toronto Front Garden
Weeding and Makeover Before 

Leslieville Toronto Front Garden
Weeding and Makeover Before 

Leslieville Toronto Front Yard
Summer Cleanup Before

Here's the view from the front porch:

Toronto Leslieville Front Garden
Weeding and Makeover Before 

And from the sidewalk towards the house:

Toronto Leslieville Front Garden
Weeding and Makeover Before 

I was contacted by "Jane", the homeowner's sibling (I'll call the owner "Jack" and his sister "Jane") who has done the weeding for her brother in the past (now that's a good sister!) but had reached a point this summer of no return. I don't blame her, I'd feel a little tired pulling out very mature and deep-rooted weeds like Canada Thistle, Prickly Lettuce and Goosefoot (to name a few) year after year.

Jane wanted the front garden weeded, mulched and planted with new low maintenance perennials. So that's what I did....

A Garden "Resurrected"

Firstly, I wanted to credit my sister-in-law Angela (not a pseudonym) for coming up with her phrase of a "garden resurrection." She has seen many of my garden cleanup and makeover projects over the years through social media and on one occasion after I weeded and "renovated" a garden that needed a little TLC (sarcasm), she remarked "that wasn't a garden cleanup, that was a garden resurrection!"  I don't know if gardens can be brought back from the dead or not and this Leslieville (a trendy east Toronto neighbourhood) front garden is anything but dead given the lush growth of the weeds; therefore, I'll stick with the more commercial and less-religious idea of a garden makeover.

I dug out all the weeds by hand with my trusty and slightly rusty long handled shovel, transplanted many "lower maintenance" perennials like Threadleaf Coreopsis, Purple Coneflower, and "Autumn Joy" Sedum and spread many bags of mulch.

Here are the "after" results:

Leslieville Toronto Front Garden Summer Cleanup After

Toronto Leslieville Front Garden
Weeding and Makeover After 

Toronto Leslieville Front Garden
Weeding and Makeover After 

Leslieville Toronto Front Garden
Weeding and Makeover After 

Leslieville Toronto Front Garden
 Weeding and Makeover After 

Leslieville Toronto Front
Yard Summer Cleanup After 

Yes, it does look like a sea of black dyed mulch (it is) but given Jack's (remember, the homeowner) inability to weed (he's very busy at work), the mulch should reduce but not eliminate the amount of weeds germinating. Lastly, I asked him to water occasionally with the hose since I didn't design an xeriscape.

I fully anticipate that whatever new weeds which manage to emerge will grow unimpeded as Jack will not do anything about them. The silver lining would be that pollinators love thistle flowers so it's not all downside about nature trying to reclaim things again! Like all makeovers in life, the work is never truly over.

Leslieville Summer Front Garden Weeding

Summer 2019 Rolls On and the Weeds Follow in Step

After a relatively cold and wet May, it's truly feeling like summer with temperatures soaring into the mid-high 30s (Celsius) and humidex readings into the 40s this week! With higher temperatures and copious amounts of rain, the weeds naturally have exploded in growth. Which means many business requests for me. A virtuous circle as it were. 

Let's face it: few of us (myself included) want to be out in furnace-like conditions pulling or digging out little (and not so little) bits of unwanted vegetation when our summers here in Toronto are so short. I would be mortified to show you my backyard.

This post brings us back to, Leslieville, a neighbourhood I visit frequently in Toronto's east-end. I weed this client's front yard annually (yes, really, once a year!) It's very small but usually jammed pack full of weeds when I arrive.

Leslieville Toronto Summer Garden Cleanup Before 

Leslieville Toronto Summer Garden Cleanup After

Leslieville Summer Front Garden Cleanup Before

Leslieville Summer Front Garden Cleanup After 

I transplanted some extra common-as-nails variegated hostas  after removing the weedy grass, as shown above.

A variety of annual weeds fill the 
garden bed near the front edge

Leslieville Toronto Summer Front Garden Cleanup After 

Toronto Summer Garden Cleanup in Leslieville Before

Toronto Summer Garden Cleanup in Leslieville After

Toronto Summer Garden Cleanup in Leslieville Before

Toronto Summer Garden Cleanup in Leslieville After

Toronto Leslieville Summer Garden Cleanup Before

Toronto Leslieville Summer Garden Cleanup After

Leslieville Toronto Summer Garden Cleanup Before

Leslieville Toronto Summer Garden Cleanup After 

I recommended to the client that she place some mulch down to reduce the amount of grass and other wind-borne weed seedlings from popping up again. If you ask me, one of the top five "worst" weeds I encounter is grass or turf growing in flower beds. Strangely, no one around this house is growing a lawn (too many trees, too small a frontage) so it's a bit of mystery where the grass seeds are coming from!

A Spring Leslieville Garden Cleanup

A Whole Lotta (Matted) Leaves...

With apologies to Led Zeppelin, it certainly feels like the autumn of 2018 again as the leaf raking continues! I've returned back to my client, Marli's, back and front gardens in the east-end Toronto neighbourhood called Leslieville for a spring cleanup.

In the backyard, as shown in the pictures below, a massive Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum) casts its shade (and leaves) over most of the area. The perennial beds usually have a nice 3 inch layer of leaves keeping the dormant plants protected over a harsh winter (a thick and persistent layer of snow also helps reduce the damaging effects of periodic freeze-thaw cycles.)

There's very little colour in the gardens at this early part of the year (a witchhazel would help!) but many spring blooming bulbs we planted over the years like tulips, hyacinths and alliums are popping up.

Leslieville Toronto Spring Back Yard Cleanup Before

Leslieville Toronto Spring Back Yard Cleanup After

Toronto Leslieville Spring Back Yard Cleanup Before

Toronto Leslieville Spring Back Yard Cleanup After 

Leslieville Toronto Spring Back Yard Cleanup Before 

Leslieville Toronto Spring Back Yard Cleanup After

Leslieville Back Yard Spring Cleanup Before

Leslieville Back Yard Spring Cleanup After 

Leslieville Back Yard Spring Cleanup Before

Leslieville Back Yard Spring Cleanup After 

Leslieville Back Yard Spring Cleanup Before 

Leslieville Back Yard Spring Cleanup in Toronto After

Here's the front yard, pre- and post-tidy up:

Toronto Leslieville Spring Front Yard Cleanup Before 

What's noteworthy, from a garden maintenance aspect, is that one shouldn't correlate the size of a garden with its care requirements. Often the surroundings play a great role with the amount of weeding, raking, etc.. Marli's front garden is a typically small Leslieville area (maybe 20' x 30') and is anchored by "lower-maintenace" shrubs like smooth hydrangeas, a "dwarf" mugo pine and a Korean lilac (also "dwarf" in name only as I had to prune it hard last summer.) 

It's a very exposed site, faces north and receives full sun for most of the day. It seems all the leaves from the park across the street funnel into this pocket garden due to the prevailing north and north-west winds (an exaggeration admittedly.) The pine and two woody lavenders sited next to the sidewalk make perfect leaf and garbage collectors, naturally.

There are also many pedestrians coming and going and more than a few have no regrets about littering. So besides raking out many leaves, I collect all sorts of coffee cups, cigarette butts, candy wrappers, etc. which have emerged out of the ice and snow.

I guess I'm performing a spring "cleanup" you hear about when the city asks its citizens, as part of their civic duty, to go around with trash bags and gather up all sorts of nasty things found in ravines, laneways, etc. around this time of the year.

Somehow, the glamorous concepts of trash collecting weren't covered in "hort school" many years ago!

Toronto Leslieville Spring Front Yard Cleanup After

Toronto Leslieville Spring Front Yard Cleanup Before Gardening Company

Toronto Leslieville Spring Front Yard Cleanup After

Leslieville Toronto Spring Front Yard Cleanup Before

Leslieville Toronto Spring Front Yard Cleanup After

Leslieville Front Yard Spring Cleanup Before 

Leslieville Front Yard Spring Cleanup After