Musings by Paul Jung, the owner of a small Toronto gardening services company, who uses organic and ecological gardening techniques without relying on herbicides, pesticides and gas-powered machines.
"Canada Blooms is an annual world-class festival that connects people to the joys and benefits of nature through experiences with gardens and flowers, by promoting, educating, inspiring and celebrating all aspects of horticulture...(sic) "
After spending about 90 minutes on opening day; however, I didn't make the connection. However, if one replaces "horticulture" with "landscape construction" in the preceding quote (mission statement?), I'd wager that connections were more likely to be made.
Reviews have been mixed, as usual, according to the Canada Blooms Facebook page. If a hybrid Flower-Home Renovation Show (which Canada Blooms has become in spirit, if not de facto) isn't your thing, there's still time to drop by the Allan Gardens Conservatory for its annual Spring Flower Show which finishes at the end of March.
Here are the rest of my pictures I took a couple of weeks ago at the Conservatory--a quiet place devoted to flowers and foliage.
100% flowers and foliage(or just about), 0% vendor booths.
Spring container Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Yellow and white daffodils Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Yellow and orange daffodil Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
White and orange daffodil closeup Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Daffodils and "Fleur en Vogue" cyclamen Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
"Vanguard" Crocus Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Crocus "Vanguard" Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Crocus vernus "Vanguard" Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Coral tulips Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Peach tulip Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Peach tulip petals in detail Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Primula acaulis (pink primrose) Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Red Schizanthus (Poor Man's Orchid) Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
White Schizanthus (Poor Man's Orchid) Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
"Fleur En Vogue" Pink Cyclamen persicum Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Red tulips and "Fleur En Vogue Purple" cyclamen Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Blue Florist's Cineraria Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Dietes iridioides (African Iris) Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
March is turning out to be shi*ty (sorry to offend) month, literally. Temperatures are above zero and walking around downtown Toronto is depressing. As the snowbanks melt, incredible volumes of spent cigarette butts, dog excrement and crushed coffee cups emerge to the surface. The garden beds are, of course, rock solid and will be so until late April but I hope to see some crocuses and snowdrops soon outside. For now, I'm enjoying these blooms on display at the local Conservatory.
The hyacinths were in full bloom and their scent wafted throughout the display section. I like their strong odor--it's a smell I definitely associate with spring.
Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show yellow and white daffodils
I have 40 pictures that I'll break over this and another post to make things manageable.
By the way, a local paper, the Toronto Star, recently printed a short article about the Conservatory's increased attendance due to the harsh weather over the winter: Allan Gardens gets boost from bad winter
That's good news since greater attendance should mean greater or stable funding by the city (there's no entry fee so the operations are funded through our taxes, I guess) but bad news for me, personally, as all these pesky guests are getting in the way of my picture taking!
Just kidding, I love them all...
Drifts of crocus, hyacinth and cyclamen Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Grape hyacinth and daffodils Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Peach tulips Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Peach tulips backlit Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Pink hyacinths Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Pink Schizanthus (Poor Man's Orchid) Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Red tulips Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
"Vanguard" crocus Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
"Vanguard" Crocus vernus Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
White and orange daffodil backlit Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
White daffodil Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
White daffodil detail backlit Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
White daffodils Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Yellow daffodil Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Yellow double daffodil Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Zonal geraniums (Pelargonium x hortorum) Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
The next two plants are not part of the Spring Flower Show, per se, since they are not hardy and are found in another section of the Conservatory dedicated to "tropical' (to us) plants on permanent display. I was lucky to catch the African Iris (Dietes iridioides) in bloom and had to show you.
African Iris (Dietes iridioides)
Agapanthus africanus "Albus" (White Lily of the Nile)
The main entrance of the Conservatory leads into the "Palm House" and if one looks way up, you'll see the metal framework supporting the large dome and cupola. Palms and bananas frame this shot.
A different perspective for you to consider...
Allan Gardens Conservatory Palm House dome
Want to see more spring blooms? Here are some links from the Spring Flower Show in previous years:
which you can take a look at. The gardening (or garden-related) books which really interest me have stories with unusual characters and their relationships with plants. Gardens are often just stages on which these characters perform their plays. The types of books that absolutely disinterest me are the gardening "how-to" ones, especially "how to grow vegetables and/or fruit as organically and cheaply as possible." Now, not to come across as a curmudgeon, I understand for the majority of newbie gardeners who are taking the plunge with their shovels and wallets into the wild and woolly world of growing fresh food will find such information useful. Education is always a good thing, especially if one learns that "gardening" can encompass more than growing turf and using bags of weedkiller and synthetic fertilizers. I just can't fathom reading two hundred plus pages about this--not very entertaining.
What I did find interesting is a book I recently borrowed from my city's public library titled "Pleasures of the Garden: A Literary Anthology" edited by Christina Hardyment (2014, The British Library, London.)
During last month's abysmal weather, the various poems, letters, magazine articles, and excerpts from essays and novels in this book transported me to warmer climes across the centuries. I heard my version of the voices of Homer, Pliny the Younger, Voltaire, Gertrude Jekyll and many others extolling the virtues of this plant or criticizing the hubris of that gardener. It's reassuring to read that people were catty about what grew over their neighbour's fence many centuries ago! Things haven't changed that much...
One particular passage caught my eye. It was written and published recently (well, relatively) and has a tone that is somewhat wry and ironic to 21st century readers. It's an excerpt from A Summer in a Garden written by an American amateur gardener and (professional?) humourist Charles Dudley Warner. He was a contemporary of Mark Twain and as you read the passage, it's not too difficult to pick up Twain's voice in Warner's writing.
A Summer in a Garden reports on Warner's gardening at his place called Nook Farm, near Hartford, CT. You may find the language a little outdated, sexist, and overtly religious but try to find the humour in what he writes about. (Put in context, I imagine his readership was likely composed mainly of other white, affluent males in Connecticut like himself!) It's part practical gardening advice and part Sunday sermon but more than a few of Warner's observations are amusing, witty and uncomfortably accurate if you're slogging away in the garden. After all, human nature and Mother Nature haven't changed appreciably over the centuries.
After reading what follows, it's very possible that you'll think about weeding in a different way!
Here's Warner's passage from Hardyment's book, pages 148-150:
"The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to man after he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown wild-oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind of all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or of looking on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to come back to him as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground, and stay there. To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch their renewal of life, this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.
However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.And there is a great pleasure in working in the soil, apart from the ownership of it. The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the World. He belongs to the producers. It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it be nothing more than a head of lettuce or an ear of corn. One cultivates a lawn even with great satisfaction; for there is nothing more beautiful than grass and turf in our latitude. The tropics may have their delights, but they have not turf: and the the world without turf is a dreary desert. The original Garden of Eden could not have had such turf as one sees in England.
There is life in the ground; it goes into the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred up, goes into the man who stirs it up. The hot sun on his back as he bends to his shovel and hoe, or contemplatively rakes the warm and fragrant loam, is better than much medicine. The buds are coming out on the bushes round about; the blossoms of the fruit trees begin to show; the blood is running up the grapevines in streams; you can smell the wild flowers on the near bank; and the birds are flying and glancing and singing everywhere. To the open kitchen door comes the busy housewife to shake a white something, and stands a moment to look, quite transfixed by the delightful sights and sounds. Hoeing in the garden on a bright, soft May day, when you are not obligated to, is nearly equal to the delight of going trouting...
The principal value of a private garden is not understood. It is not to give the possessor vegetables or fruit (that can be better and cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience and philosophy and the higher virtues, hope deferred and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation and sometimes to alienation. The garden thus becomes a moral agent, a test of character, as it was in the beginning.
The first pleasant thing about a garden is, that you never know when to set it going. If you want anything to come to maturity early, you must start it in a hothouse. If you put it out early, the chances are all in favor of getting it nipped with frost. And, if you do not set out plants or sow seeds early, you fret continually;knowing that your vegetables will be late, and that, while Jones has early peas, you will be watching your slow-forming pods. This keeps you in a state of mind. When you have planted anything early, you are doubtful whether to desire to see it above ground, or not. If a hot day comes, you long to see the young plants; but, when a cold north wind brings frost, you tremble lest the seeds have burst their bands. Your spring is passed in anxious doubts and fears, which are usually realized; and so a great moral discipline is worked out for you...
The most humiliating thing to me about a garden is the lesson it teaches of the inferiority of man. Nature is prompt, decided, inexhaustible. She thrusts up her plants with a vigour and freedom that I admire; and the more worthless the plant, the more rapid and splendid its growth. She is at it early and late, and all night; never tiring, nor showing the least sign of exhaustion... There is no liberty in gardening. The man who undertakes a garden is relentlessly pursued. He felicitates himself that, when gets it once planted, he will have a season of rest and of enjoyment in the sprouting and growing of his seeds. It is a green anticipation. He has planted a seed that will keep him awake nights; drive rest from his bones, and sleep from his pillow. Hardly is the garden planted, when he must begin to hoe it. The weeds have sprung up all over it in a night. They shine and wave in redundant life. The docks have almost gone to seed; and their roots go deeper than conscience. Weeds have hateful moral qualities. To cut down a weed is to do a moral action. I feel as if I were destroying sin. My hoe becomes an instrument of retributive justice. I am an apostle of Nature. This view of the matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the days and the weeds lengthen. The hoe is an ingenious instrument, calculated to call out a great deal of strength a t a great disadvantage. Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back,-- with a hinge in it."
This collection of classic garden writing presents the garden as place of solace in our busy world, a retreat for lovers, and even an earthly paradise. Bringing together a wide range of voices from across the centuries and around the globe—from Pliny in first-century Italy to Robert Louis Stevenson in nineteenth-century Hawaii—Pleasures of the Garden features fiction and poetry, memoirs and letters, all in celebration of gardens
Toronto has gone through a really rough winter and your garden beds are showing it!
A spring garden cleanup is in order to get your garden off to a great 2015. I'll help with your gardening needs by:
removing leaves and debris from your garden beds left over from last fall
pruning away the dead stalks and leaves from old perennials
gently turning over and cultivate the soil in your garden beds, adding new compost or topsoil as necessary to rejuvenate the soil without chemical fertilizers
removing any annuals from last year
pruning shrubs and small trees for diseased, dead or crossing branches
edge, with a spade, your garden beds to create a crisp and tidy look
Call me at 416-515-2780 or email me info@pauljunggardening.com to set up an appointment soon as my calendar becomes quickly filled starting April 1, 2015.
Flowers: Toronto gardeners, remember those things?
Tulipa kaufmanniana at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
The beginning of spring, according to the calendar, is a mere 3 weeks away but looking outside of my Toronto garden, winter is still winning the battle. Good news for gardeners and lovers of greenery: this year's version of the Allan Gardens Conservatory Spring Flower Show is underway and the national flower show ("Canada Blooms") is scheduled to open on March 13.
Here are some pictures of tulips, crocus, daffodils and other reminders of colour-to-be in our gardens soon. I'll post a second article once the hyacinths, daffodils, and other tulips are in bloom at the Conservatory.
Goodness, the sight of these tulips et al. are welcome right now, given how harsh February was.
Crocuses at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Pale blue crocuses at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show pale blue crocuses
Yellow daffodils at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Double yellow daffodil at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
White gerbera daisy at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show white gerbera daisy
Verbascum phoeniceum 'Violetta' mullein at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Purple streaked tulip at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show Tulipa kaufmanniana
Kaufman tulips at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show Kaufman tulips
Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show white Dianthus barbatus (Sweet William)
Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show pink gerbera daisy
Orange schizanthus (butterfly flower) at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Agapanthus (Lily of the Nile) at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Orange tulips at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
Yellow Cymbidium at the Allan Gardens Conservatory 2015 Spring Flower Show
